220 AA

 

I have seen the barren forests! I’ve heard the voices of our scientists! We have to fight before our planet becomes a wasteland of fairy tales and woody detritus!

Snapping awake from her dream, Neek sucked in a chestful of air and nearly rolled out of her bedding. She blinked the room into focus, her eyes tight and dry from the rally last night, and her throat burned from all the yelling. She was planning another one for next week—well, her brother was, but she had every intention of going—but Neek tried, for once, to push politics from her mind.

She swallowed, cringing at the burn of spit on her dry throat, and pushed away her soft cotton blankets. Today, the andal failing, the deforestation of their old-growth forests, and the president’s asinine policies could wait. Today, she would pretend to be a devout Neek. In a few hours—or a few minutes, depending on how late she’d slept—she and her family would leave for the ceremony marking her graduation from the Heaven Guard Academy, where Neek had taken top honors. Today was the day she officially moved out of the academy dorms and into a Heaven-Guard-sponsored apartment and began real pilot training. Whether there would be formal charges brought against her for the anti-government rally last night, or subsequent vandalism thereafter, it wouldn’t matter in a few hours. In a few hours, she’d be untouchable.

“Are you coming down for breakfast?” her mother called from downstairs. “We need to leave soon!”

“Shit.” Was it that late already? Neek grabbed the first pair of pants and shirt she saw on her floor, shoved them on, and then slammed her feet into her boots before quickly braiding her red-blonde hair. She took a minute to press stuk-covered fingers to a poster of a gleaming, crimson settee and her favorite Heaven Guard pilot dressed in the traditional golden robes piped with forest green.

“Soon,” she whispered to the petite woman on the poster. “I’m going to be there soon.”

“You going to meet Guard Four in that?” Neek’s brother asked from the doorway.

“Huh?”

He came in, picked at the sleeve of her battered rayon shirt, and critically eyed her pants. “Your clothes. You can’t go to graduation like that. You look like a Terran. Uncle will have a fit.”

Neek huffed and batted her brother’s hand away. His hair was a few shades darker than hers, his skin more ocher than copper, but no one would mistake either of them, even at a distance, for a Terran. Well, not unless they had never seen a Neek in person before. “No one cares what I wear underneath. The trainee silver robe will cover everything, and I want to be comfortable. You know those graduation speeches go on forever.”

“And when they change your silver robe for gold?” her brother asked, his face turning smug. “When you sit in your trainee settee for the first time? This is what you want to be wearing?”

Neek frowned and ran a hand over her hair, tucking loose strands behind her ear. He had a point. She was hours from being in the Heaven Guard and having the freedom to fly wherever she wanted, to be whomever she wanted. Neek could fly her settee to the upper atmosphere of her homeworld and look out at the galaxy beyond filled with Risalians and Terrans and Minorans and so many others she had heard about but had never seen. She could even stay low to the ground and look at all the forests of Neek laid out before her—at the wilting leaves, the barren understories.

Neek’s stomach turned. Even dying, the trees couldn’t possibly care that her shirt was torn and that the hems of her pants weren’t neatly tucked into the tops of her thick, brown boots. The trees—and the Heaven Guard, really—would care more about her intent, surely. She wouldn’t be the heretic niece of the High Priest of Neek once she put on that gold robe. She wouldn’t be Daughter from the Tertiary Forest Preserve. She would be Pilot, Heaven Guard Pilot, beholden only to the andal and a fantasy planet that didn’t exist.

“Do I really need to change?” Neek muttered. She scuffed her boots against the floor. “What do you think?”

“I’ll get you one of my high-necked shirts. A green one. It’ll look amazing under both robes, and you won’t look like a vagabond anymore.” Her brother turned to leave, but Neek swatted at his shoulder.

“I look fine,” she insisted. “I’m not dressing up for anything, not even the ceremony.”

He clucked at her. “Not even for Guard Four, it appears. But hey, no violence now. Don’t forget the most recent set of Charted Systems laws. You leave a bruise and they’ll…I don’t know. Lecture you to death or something.”

Neek punched his shoulder, hard, for good measure.

Her brother laughed.

“The shirt won’t fit. I stopped wearing your hand-me-downs last year. I’m taller than you, remember?”

Her brother tousled his curly, red hair and pursed his lips. “Yeah. Thanks for that reminder. Jerk.”

Neek stuck out her tongue. That she was nineteen years old didn’t matter. If her brother was going to act like a kid, then she was happy to meet him at his level—even if she had to duck down to reach it.

“I’m better at carving than you.”

Neek snorted. “I’m better looking than you.”

“Your girlfriend tell you that?”

“Did yours?”

“Children!” Neek’s mother stormed into the room, took one look at Neek’s clothes, and set her jaw. Her auburn hair hung limply, and although her clothes were clean and well pressed, they draped sharply from her shoulders, poorly concealing a thin frame. “No. Daughter, change. Son, stop.” She shook her head and sighed. “Just…stop. We have to leave in ten minutes. Your talther and father are already in the land skiff.”

“I didn’t bring any other clothes,” Neek said. “They’re all back at the dorms.”

Her mother produced a hacking cough. Neek’s stomach twisted. How long had she been sick? Four months? Five? After the ceremony, after Neek had her robes, she’d take some time off. Help nurse her mother. Give the family a break.

“Then, go get something from your talther’s closet. You two are about the same size. Meet your brother and me outside.”

Her brother blew a raspberry at Neek before brushing past their mother and leaving Neek’s childhood bedroom. Neek was about to follow, ready to punch him again, when her mother grabbed her wrist.

“Atalant.” Her mother’s voice was low. Dangerous.

Neek cringed at her child-name, at how demeaning it felt—today especially.

“Last night was too far,” her mother warned, pulling her close. “You’ve made it about all of us.”

“The riot wasn’t planned. I had already stopped speaking by then.”

“You think that means you won’t be held responsible?”

Neek closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t have the mental energy for this right now. “It’ll be fine, Mother. No more until I’m Pilot. I promise. The family will be safe.” Neek tried to soothe with her words, but her insides squirmed. She felt like a child being scolded for something she’d done just to get attention, instead of an adult who was desperately trying to save her planet and her people.

“You’re naïve,” her mother said.

“We can debate later. Shouldn’t we get going?”

Her mother sighed and released her arm. “At least change your shirt.”

Grumbling, Neek stalked from her room to the one her three parents shared, pulled the first tunic she saw from her talther’s closet, and shoved it over her head, on top of the shirt she was already wearing.

“Hurry up!” her mother wheezed from the foot of the stairs.

Neek heard the door open and then caught the scent of trillium as it wafted up to the second floor of her house. For the briefest moment, she thought about running into the forest, hiding amongst the andal trunks as she had as a child, feeling thick moss between her toes, and bathing in a field of white petals. But it was only for a moment. She didn’t have those dreams anymore, not since the first time she’d flown a ship. Not since her brother had bribed an engineer to get her a ride in a decommissioned settee. Not since she’d sat at the stuk interface and the natural secretions from her fingertips had linked her with the ship’s outdated computer core.

Flight was what she wanted. A pilot was who she was. And nothing—not even the tempting smells of trillium flowers and andal sap—would keep her from her goal.

 

CRIMSON SETTEES FLEW overhead in a perfect parabolic formation, pulling Neek’s attention from the graduation speaker. Neek stood on a short podium, just a step ahead of the rest of her cohort, but she could still hear her roommate gasp as the small ships flew overhead. Neek’s heart soared with them as her silver robe flapped against her legs. She wouldn’t get her own settee at the end of this ceremony, but soon. She was first in her class, after all. Her flying had shattered every record, her timing and reflexes stupefying her professors. Master training would only be a formality, no doubt. A superficial step. She could pass the skills exam now if the academy would let her take it, but she doubted they would break the rules just for her. Still, she’d fulfill any stipulation, participate in any stupid ritual, to get into her own settee. She’d have a communal trainee ship in the meantime to practice in, and Neek knew that the moment her fingers hit the interface, the moment her stuk gelled into the cellulose biometal, she would fall in love.

“And now, I will introduce the graduates. Twenty in all—like the twenty years of the first don—but only ten will graduate to master class, and of those, perhaps two will receive permanent assignment to the Guard. Look upon their faces, dear family and friends. Our future stands before you.”

The crowd cheered. Neek’s parents and brother sat in the front row, their hands clasped to one another’s, their faces beaming. The joy in Neek’s chest burst across her face. Her stuk gelled.

Thank you, she mouthed to her brother. He frowned at her, seemingly confused, but it was him, after all, who had encouraged her to apply to the Heaven Guard. He had taught her to fly. To question. That she could calculate a p-value as well as she could turn a settee into a barrel roll was his doing. His patience. His guidance. This was her moment, but in some ways, it was her brother’s, too.

“Daughter of the Tertiary Forest Preserve, N’lln, step forward and become Pilot.”

The crowd fell into silence. Neek took two steps forward to the short gatoi who held a gold robe out to her, its hem, sleeves, and collar piped in green. She reached for the folded robe, let her gummy fingers grasp the fabric, and pulled it to her chest. It felt like touching a cloud, like if she loosened her grip even for a moment, the robe might condense and slip through her fingers. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she swore she could smell hints of trillium in the air, even though the academy was over an hour away from her parents’ land.

“I’ve done it,” she whispered to herself. Neek brought the fabric to her mouth and spoke into it. “It’s finally done.”

The gatoi moved behind her and began to unfasten the tiny metal hooks that ran the length of her silver robe. One by one, she felt the freed hooks loosen the fabric. She held the gold robe out in front of her. Smoothed the wrinkles away. Waited for the silver to pool at her feet so she could slide the cooling cotton over her head.

“End the tyranny of Ardulum!” a voice called from the crowd.

A rush of gasps sounded as Neek jerked her head up to scan the audience. The seats were mostly filled with family members, but at the sides and in the back, Neek were standing up. They wore simple clothes, not ceremonial ones or even formal dress gowns like the families. Neek saw clenched fists. She saw bruised faces and eyes looking at her with determination, hope, and anger.

“The Heaven Guard is a lie!” a man shouted from too-near the stage. “Ardulum is a lie! The president is a lie!”

Not here! Neek thought desperately. She tried to catch her brother’s eyes, but he wouldn’t look at her. In fact, he was looking at everything but her—at the families, the protestors, her parents. He almost looked…guilty.

Brother! she thought wildly. Did you do this? She couldn’t imagine it, and the possibility shredded her heart. He was the one who had been so adamant that she join the Guard. They both had plans for what they could accomplish once she was beyond the president’s reach. This was counter to all of their goals.

The gatoi’s hands had stilled near her waist. “Oh,” zie whispered.

A golden skiff flashed in Neek’s peripheral vision. She turned towards it, and whatever remnants of joy that had swelled inside her only moments before burst and leaked from her with her thinning stuk. A hundred or so protestors could be dealt with. This…

“No,” she whispered to herself. Because it couldn’t be. The president of Neek had no business at a Heaven Guard ceremony. There were other gold skiffs on her planet. Perhaps it was someone’s parents, arriving late. Perhaps a dignitary from another planet had made an unexpected visit. Perhaps one of the Cell-Tal board members, a Risalian cellulose engineer, was on-planet and wanted to see the ceremony. Either way, there were other possibilities. It wasn’t going to be the president. He had no right to be here, protestors or no! The Guard belonged to the high priest. The Guard belonged to the Ardulan religion. On her world, Ardulum was greater than the president.

He has no right to be here!

The skiff landed just beside the stage, its repulsors burning the sedge. Its engine whine faded. The skiff’s door opened, and Neek stopped breathing. Her heartbeat turned erratic. The President of Neek stepped from the ship. No stuk dripped from his fingers, which might have given Neek a hint to his mood. His curls were slicked back, and his face was so impassive that Neek wanted to slap him.

The protestors sat down. The families quieted. The president seldom left his governmental offices, and for all their rallies, Neek doubted that any of the people out in the crowd would dare insult the president to his face. He had bribed and manipulated his way into almost every aspect of society, had too much power over their world. Even the Heaven Guard trainees kept rigidly still. They’d not yet graduated. To leave the stage now would be to leave the Guard.

After him came four Old Family guards, dressed in what looked like riot gear. Neek had only seen pictures of such outfits. There was no call for that kind of clothing, not with the Charted Systems’ omnipresent peace. Not even to deal with protestors who might have also been involved in some property destruction last night. No one got hurt, after all.

Neek stepped to the very edge of the stage and held her hands out. “Don’t,” she said. Her hands shook. This wasn’t the time. This wasn’t the place. He could be angry at her for the rallies and protests, or the editorial she’d gotten published in the Neek Journal of Science & Technology just a few days ago, but they could sort that later. That was for behind closed doors—a visit to her parents’ house or an ambush at the temple. Not here.

But they didn’t stop. Two guards grabbed her arms while a third grabbed fistfuls of her robe and ripped the silver fabric from her body. Dozens of protestors and no one said a thing. She let go of her gold robe, and it fell to her feet.

The president approached her, eyes hard.

“Stop!” she screamed, jerking her arms against the guards’ hold. “You have no right to be here! Coward! You’re as inept at timing as you are at leading!” Tears stung her eyes. Everyone was so silent. Her roommate. Her parents. Her brother, watching her with infuriating calmness. Even the damned people that were brave enough to damage an innocent person’s stall but apparently couldn’t be bothered to even speak up against actual physical violence.

“You wanted my attention.” The president’s voice was cool and calm. He stroked her cheek with dry fingers. “You have it. Unfortunately, you no longer have a place here. No place among us.” He pointed to the crowd. “Look at what you cause, what you bring to a holy ceremony.”

“Bastard!” she hissed at him. He wasn’t special, was just as soft and sticky as any Neek. There was no reason to be afraid of him, strong-arm tactics notwithstanding. “This wasn’t me. And you coming here, it will be all over the feeds. It will only boost our message further!”

The president’s hand fell away. Again, Neek pulled at her captors, but their grips were firm and their stuk gelled, holding her even more tightly. They dragged Neek off the stage, her boots tearing at the sedge.

“My robe!” As they pulled her forward, Neek looked over her shoulder at the torn silver and trampled gold. “My robe!”

“Exiles don’t wear robes,” the president said in his syrupy voice. “Put her inside.”

Neek’s parents did scream, then, as the guards picked her up and threw her inside the skiff. Her palms tore as she fell onto the coarse biometal floor. She cursed—cursed Ardulum, the president, her uncle, the silent crowd, the failing andal plantations, and the old religion that would destroy her planet in another generation.

“She’s our daughter!” Neek heard her father plea.

“She’s the niece of the high priest!” That was her talther. Neek heard coughing, too. That was her mother. Neek’s stomach twisted, and she scrambled to her feet.

“She is nothing, anymore,” the president responded. “She is Exile.”

“You can’t!” Neek burst towards the door just as it slammed closed. She rebounded and fell back to the floor, her tailbone taking the brunt of the fall. The ship’s engines began to whine, and the floor jostled as the craft left the surface.

Neek ran to the controls and slammed her hands on the stuk interface. Through the viewscreen, she saw capital buildings, the Ardulan Temple, and then treetops as the skiff left the city and moved to the suburbs. She tapped command after command into the computer, but each try brought an angry beep and no change in course. The ship was on autopilot and password locked. She had no control.

Neek swallowed, trying to ease the ache in her throat. Wherever they stashed her, she would find a comm. She would smuggle out handwritten messages if she had to. She wasn’t going to give up. That she had lost the robes, lost the Guard…she could mourn that in time. Saving the forests, that was her job. Helping her people move beyond Ardulum so they could truly participate in the Charted Systems, that was why she did all this, right? That she loved piloting was just a bonus.

Right?

A low tremble went through the ship. Neek had never felt a skiff do that before. Had she lucked out? Was it malfunctioning? Neek sent another query to the computer. The ship was…

Neek blinked. It couldn’t be.

The ship was going up.

Neek frantically queried the computer. The viewscreen still showed treetops, but that silo in the distance…that had been there the first time she’d looked. It had seemed closer for a while, but now, she realized as she squinted, it was far away again. She was watching a prerecorded loop!

“No!” The skiff was clearly going up. Neek’s ears were popping, and there was a funny feeling in her gut. Her planet’s skiffs were not designed to leave even the lower atmosphere. Only settees could do that, and this was no settee. Whatever the president’s engineers had done to make it spaceworthy, it hadn’t been nearly enough.

Neek threw commands at the computer. Land. Coast. Glide. STOP. Each returned with a ping and the perpetual image of treetops. He couldn’t do this. He had no right to do this! What in Ardulum’s name was the president thinking? Neek pounded at the controls, and the recorded loop fuzzed out to reveal space. Endless space.

Text scrolled across the computer screen:

 

Hours of air left: 233

Gallons of water remaining: 2

Food rations available: none

Communication systems: disabled

Destination: high orbit around planet Neek

Entertainment options: one video available of Heaven Guard airshow #4194, highlighting the double barrel rolls of Guard Four; all Neek holy texts available

 

Neek screamed. She kicked the console, her boot denting the cheap biometal. The Neek did not leave their planet. They did not live on space stations or strange worlds. They stayed put, to wait for Ardulum’s return. And she…she was meant to rot up here, in Neek space—rot while watching a planet she could see but never again touch. Rot while the Heaven Guard executed flawless formations in Neek’s upper atmosphere, ignoring her gold coffin spinning by. Rot while reading texts she’d had shoved down her throat since she was old enough to read—texts that were slowly destroying her planet.

And…and…

She would never get her settee.

She was only nineteen years old, and she was going to die, alone, in space.

And there was nothing she could do.

 

HER ROOM SMELLED like silage. It should have smelled like wood, because her mother had just installed a new andal wardrobe and hadn’t had time to varnish it, but this smelled…unattractive. Maybe something had curled up and died in the walls?

Hesitantly, she opened her eyes. She saw hock spurs. Brown hair. Cleft hooves.

She gasped in air, her chest too tight. She was surrounded by biometal and quadrupeds. She was no longer in her presidential coffin with the oxygen going so low that she couldn’t stay awake. She was dead, surely. She was dead, and her soul hadn’t made it to Ardulum because she was a heretical nonbeliever but apparently believed enough in the Minorans to end up in their afterlife instead.

That made complete sense.

“Do’ya have something to eat?” Neek croaked from her dry throat. Were you supposed to be hungry in the afterlife? Then again, what did she know? She hadn’t expected death to smell so much like plant decay, either.

“She’s awake.” A Minoran knelt down onto the soft cushion Neek was curled into and nudged her nose at Neek’s shoulder as she spoke in a clunky approximation of the Neek language. “Your uncle wishes you well, young Neek.”

Neek blinked. “Can comms pick up prayers or something? Am I dead?”

The Minoran’s ear twitched. “You’re not dead. You’re rescued. And your uncle asked us to give you this.”

Another Minoran dropped a biofilm on the ground next to Neek. A faulty one, apparently, since it rolled in on itself instead of lying flat in its plastic scaffold. Neek just stared at it, trying to wrap her mind around being alive in a stinky Minoran ship instead of being dead in a stinky Minoran afterlife.

“It’s a Neek-to-Common translation guide,” the first Minoran said. You’ll need it. We’ve almost arrived.”

A yawn overtook Neek as she pushed herself into a sitting position and crammed the crappy biofilm into her pocket. Alive. Huh. Everything around her still felt fuzzy, and she definitely sensed a headache coming on. Still, it did give her hope that at least someone in her family knew the president had tried to kill her. If her luck hadn’t run out, then this ship would be landing on her homeworld and she’d be able to address the whole situation in person. Loudly. Hopefully with a crowd.

The kneeling Minoran stood just as the ship shook. Neek rose on wobbly feet and followed the Minoran—at least she assumed that was what the tail swishing indicated she do—out a gate-like door to a very definitive ship hatch. Usually, this close to a hatch, the air filters started pulling in native air—assuming it was breathable—to prepare the crew for the temperature and smells that were about to hit them. Smells were definitely crawling towards Neek, but they were rich and salty, not…mossy, which was the best way she could describe the smell of her planet.

“Wait,” Neek said, putting her hand on the Minoran’s shoulder. Her stomach twisted. “Where are we?”

The hatch opened, and Neek’s headache hit. Everything was a blur of color and action. Pheromones and body odors assaulted her nose. There was screaming, screeching, the sound of metal on metal, as well as flesh—unwashed flesh—brushing and nudging and pounding into every surface.

She was led to the bottom of the ramp before she realized what had happened. The Minoran who had nudged her there clomped back up the biometal walkway—and the damn thing immediately began to retract.

“Wait!” Neek tried to jump to reach the receding edge of the walkway, missed by a hair, and fell onto her knees, ripping the thin fabric of her pants. Her mind spun. Her hands tingled. What was happening? Who were all these beings? How many languages was she hearing? Three? Ten?

“Where am I?” she yelled up, her voice squeaking.

“Callis Spaceport,” the Minoran said. Over the yelling and haggling and shouting, Neek thought she might have caught the faintest bit of sadness in the Minoran’s voice. Or, maybe she just wanted there to be some emotion in this exchange, for while she was glad she wasn’t dead, being abandoned in a spaceport where she didn’t speak the language wasn’t much better.

“My uncle!” she tried one last time. “Please, if I could just—”

The hatch closed. The warning lights in the bay flashed, indicating imminent departure. Someone with long claws pulled her back from the ship, behind a blue, painted line, as its repulsors engaged. Her head thumped along with the rhythm of the crowd. Her stuk burned with the heat from the thrusters. And finally, she watched the last connection she had to her home fly into silver-spotted darkness, leaving her alone.

Again.

 

NEEK STOOD IN the center of a five-way intersection at what felt like the middle of the spaceport, but was probably just a small artery, and gawked. She needed food, and she desperately wanted to find a comm to call home, but she had no idea where to start with either problem. Andal help her, she didn’t even know what half these beings were, much less how to talk to any of them.

What the hell was she supposed to do in a spaceport? Beg? Wander around until someone took pity on her and gave her a piloting job?

In the back of her mind, the childish part, Neek had hoped the Minorans would have given her a few diamond rounds to get by, or a tip about where to find a job, or even just a friendly parting smile. Rotting andal, they could have let her use their damn comm! She had nothing except her tattered clothes, the translating biofilm, and a bunch of emotions she wanted to bury. Thousands of beings swarmed around her, their arms brushing hers, their hair in her face, their hooves and claws clipping her boots, and all Neek could do was stand there and think about that stupid Heaven Guard video the president had uploaded to the skiff. Now, she didn’t even have that. All she wanted was to curl up in her mother’s arms and be told that everything was going to work out. At the very least, she wanted the chance to say goodbye.

Goodbyes meant finding a comm though, and chances were that comms took currency of some sort. Neek, of course, had none, nor did she speak much Common. She’d taken one course at the Heaven Guard Academy. It hadn’t been a required class, and why should it have been, given that no one ever left the planet? She spoke her planet’s primary dialect and the one from her province, but neither were going to be helpful out here, especially not if she was trying to find a job.

So, she covered her nose against the utterly incomparable smell of thousands of beings and tried to make a decision. Turn right? Turn left? Head forward? Follow the green sign with some sort of aquatic animal on it and words she couldn’t read, or follow the yellow sign with a distinct image of fast-print cellulose perf?

Neek’s stomach growled. She had to choose. A plan would be best. It would mean that Neek wasn’t adrift in a tide of flesh, just that she was merely getting her bearings. Right? Who needed a settee or gold robes when one was in the biggest spaceport in the Charted Systems? She’d find some fast-print shop, grab leftovers from one of the tables, wash them down with her pride, and then go from there.

Neek took a step into the crowd towards the yellow perf sign, her Neek-to-Common biofilm tucked into the pocket of her pants. She had enough Common to get herself into trouble. Wonderful. Maybe someone would have an antique gun and just shoot her in the head.

A Risalian in a blue tunic walked into her.

Neek lost her balance.

The Risalian’s claws, perhaps grabbing her shirt to steady her, instead ripped the fabric and spun her a quarter turn before she hit the floor. She had tried to grab something on her way down but had managed only to glide off the bare arm of a gigantic Terran. Her elbow took the brunt of the impact, and Neek cursed Ardulum as her head was kicked by a pair of feet. No one except for her was wearing footwear. That didn’t make any sense at all. Was she finally full-on hallucinating from oxygen deprivation and the lack of food?

Beings chided her in languages she didn’t understand. The Terran she’d covered in stuk was staring at her with what looked like fascinated disgust. Neek frowned and made a shooing motion, like he was some gigantic, hairy insect. “You’re not so hot-looking yourself, you know,” Neek muttered. “Got enough arm hair to be mistaken for an Alusian, and it looks like a small animal has taken residence on your face.”

That was all in Neek, of course, but the Terran was studying her now, like he was contemplating her words.

“Jeez, buddy. Never seen a Neek before? Don’t you read?”

The Terran chuckled.

“Come,” a voice said in Common. That voice was much higher pitched, and it didn’t belong to the Terran.

Neek pivoted on her hip. The Risalian she’d run into reached out and helped her stand. His black hair was loosely braided down his back, and his blue skin looked pasty in the artificial light. He was only wearing a blue tunic made of what looked like rayon, pressed and sharp. As he breathed, the gill slits in his neck flapped open and shut with a little wisp sound that made Neek feel vaguely seasick. Why was he… Wait, no, not a he. Neek chided herself. Risalians had one sex and reproduced through budding. Their pronouns in Common were…argh! She couldn’t remember. It? No, that wasn’t right. Xe maybe? Not zie though—that was for sure a third-gender pronoun. She’d have to ask directly and hope the Risalian wouldn’t take offense.

“My Common is bad,” Neek said in Common—the one phrase she’d made sure to memorize—as the Risalian led her through the crowd to a small seating plaza. Colorful flowers grew under an artificial sun lamp. What with the walls and floor of the station all a uniform pale brown, it was a welcome change. Neek even heard the sound of flowing water, although none was apparent. “Your…not name. Your small name. Your…not ‘he,’ not ‘she.’ What?”

The Risalian’s neck slits flushed purple. “Xe…and hir,” the Risalian said and then motioned for her to sit.

Well, she was offending beings already. Great start to her first week as Exile.

“Sit,” xe ordered.

“Food?” Neek asked hopefully, her stomach growling again. “Job for a wayward Neek, which pays in advance and provides comm access?” she added in her native tongue.

“Sit.”

What else was she going to do? Run off? Neek sat.

The Risalian squinted at her and rubbed hir neck slits. The Common words came slowly then, each well enunciated. “You walk without thinking. Why are you here? Are you lost? Do you…belong here?”

Neek pursed her lips. Really? Xe was irritated with her? She wasn’t the one who’d done the pushing. And her presence wasn’t that unusual. Neek were members of the Charted Systems. Just because her people chose not to leave the planet didn’t mean they weren’t a fully participating entity. She had the same right to be here as anyone else.

“Are you Alusian?”

“Are my arms covered in fur?” Neek asked incredulously, forgetting to use Common. “Do your eyes work?”

Apparently, her tone didn’t need translating. “Terran?” the Risalian countered.

That, at least, was a reasonable mistake. Terrans had a lot more phenotypes than the Neek, but they both had a lot less hair than Alusians and their skin didn’t run into the blue spectrum like the Risalians’. “Neek,” she said, pointing to her chest. “Job?” she added in Common, because if she was already a spectacle, then she might as well get something out of it.

The Risalian spouted a fast string of words in response, none of which Neek understood.

“Neek,” she said again. This time, she held up a hand and splayed out her fingers. She had eight per hand, like most Neek, and the stuk glistened in the fake sunlight.

Xe opened hir eyes wide and nodded in understanding. “Neek,” xe repeated. Xe pointed to hir own chest. “Kelm.”

Neek frowned. A blue tunic on a Risalian, not quite the same color as their skin, signified something. Governing body? Cell-Tal? She couldn’t remember. She knew that Risalians were bipeds with an aquatic lineage, hence their lithe frames and the gill slits in their necks. Everything else was a little hazy. They had only one inhabited planet. Maybe. Maybe a moon or two, as well. They oversaw the Charted Systems’ peace—she was sure of that—which was why this one was hovering over her like she was some distraught child.

Kelm said another garbled sentence and pointed at the hallway to Neek’s left. Several neon signs hung suspended from the ceiling, flashing in pink and orange. The mass of colors and blinking lights and characters she didn’t recognize made her head hurt. Neek followed Kelm’s finger to a pale green one that had four words on it, one of which was “child.”

“I’m not a child,” Neek said acerbically, forgetting to use Common again. “And I’m not lost. I need a job, and I need food, not necessarily in that order.”

Kelm gave her a tried look. Neek really, really wanted to smack hir in the neck slits. Instead, she took a deep breath and said in Common, “No child. Adult.”

Kelm laughed and again pointed down the hall. This time, xe spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable.

Neek pursed her lips. Memories tumbled in her head for a few moments as she tried to recall how the Systems dealt with childcare or even orphaned children. What did they do with vagrants of any age? Were there vagrants in the Charted Systems? Hadn’t poverty gone away when crime had—or had it been the other way around? Who would just be wandering…

“Withering andal. No. I am not a Journey youth.” Her Common disintegrated as her temper flared hot. “I don’t need two years of guided wandering set up to teach kids how to act like competent adults. I am an adult. I’ve finished my education. I graduated with top honors from the Heaven Guard Academy. I’ve been through every form of apprenticeship and training I will ever need. I’ve had a gold robe in my hands. I know where my life is going, I’m on track…sort of, more or less, and I don’t need your—your guidance. I’ve had enough well-meaning oversight to last me a lifetime. You can take your asinine cultural exchange program for teenaged symbionts and shove it through your neck slits. Some of us take real jobs when we become adults, instead of going on a two-year vacation around the Systems. Some of us are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves!”

Kelm tapped a claw against hir mouth.

Neek growled, bunched her hands into fists, and tried again in Common. “Adult! Pilot! Adult!”

“Identification.” Kelm held out hir hand expectantly. Neek cursed again. She knew that word well, but of course she didn’t have any on her. The president had made sure of that. Bodies orbiting in space didn’t need identification when they were sealed up in a golden coffin.

“Neek adult fifteen rotations!”

Kelm exhaled through hir lung slits and shook hir head. Again, hir words came slowly and clearly. “Eighteen old enough to leave with guide. No guide, only Youth Journey. At twenty, apprenticeship. At twenty-one, free travel. How old are you?”

“No.” Neek wanted to yell that it was none of Kelm’s business, but she didn’t know how to say that in Common, and it technically was Kelm’s business. But she’d be damned if she was going to be babysat for the next year, and Ardulum could fuck any apprenticeship. She’d become an apprentice pilot when she was ten. She was a damned adult. If she was adult enough to get kicked off her homeworld, then she was adult enough for the Systems. She didn’t need her failure, her exile, rubbed in her face constantly for the next year by being forced through some mentorship program for children. She needed food, and she needed access to a comm. She did not need this.

“How old?”

“No!”

“How old?”

Neek tried to storm off back into the crowd of beings and well away from the brightly lit, little hostel that no doubt held eager, star-eyed teens from across the Charted Systems, but a clawed hand across her wrist held her back. Kelm stood, eyes dark and a stony expression across hir face. Neek caught sight of the bushy Terran slouching against a wall and watching the whole scene with amusement.

“How old?” Kelm asked again, with maddening calmness.

Neek jerked. Claws broke through the thin fabric of her talther’s shirt, ripping it further.

Her talther’s shirt.

Her family…

Neek’s arm went slack. Her bluster bled away. Her stuk thinned. Aliens surrounded her, their smells and bodies and languages grotesque and wild, and the last part of her family lay shredded against her skin. She had nothing. She was nothing. Andal help her, she was supposed to have returned to her parent’s home after the ceremony to help her talther slaughter a titha so they could have bacon in the morning. They had been planning on going hiking afterwards—a big celebratory thing for her graduation. And now…this.

The stuk on her fingertips dried. Her body would reroute it into tears if she didn’t get control of herself. She felt the tears gather anyway.

“How old?”

“Nineteen.”

“Follow.” Another clawed hand closed around Neek’s upper arm, and she was half led, half dragged, around a group of carousing Terrans, a short Minoran, and a shimmering slick of something towards the cheerful, green neon sign. The gigantic Terran didn’t follow, which was a shame, because Neek could have used someone to punch that wasn’t an authority figure, although she’d be damned if she let anyone see her cry. Still, given the stains on his flight suit, that half smirk on his face, and the way he was trying so hard to look nonchalant, he looked like the kind of guy that kept a few antique pistols around, just to piss off the galactic constabulary. Maybe if she wiped off her damn tears and just punched him, he would shoot her and then she’d have a quick death in a spaceport instead of a slow, maddening death by asinine teenaged conversation.

“Hey.” Neek tugged against Kelm’s grip. Hir claws tightened. “Hey!”

“You are to go here,” xe said irritably. “Just walk.”

“Given a choice between being a Journey youth and being pushed out an airlock, I choose the airlock.” Her sentence was in Neek. She didn’t care. At least her voice hadn’t trembled despite her throat swelling with unbearable emotions about a family she’d never see again.

Kelm stopped moving long enough to scowl at her before pushing her through a flashing doorway into a brightly lit foyer filled with Charted Systems teens playing a kicking game with a ball.

“No choice,” xe said firmly, in Neek’s own language, before turning from her, exiting the hostel, and slamming the door behind hir.

 

“I GOT IT.”

“Turn another five degrees to starboard, Sticky. Otherwise, you’ll break the back thrusters before you finish rotation. I thought you said the Neek went to junior pilot school or something. You fly like an Oori.”

“I said, I got it.” Neek ground her teeth and leaned into the console. Her stuk was already thin from irritation, so her fingers slipped across the bioplastic interface. The shuttle banked slightly to port.

The Alusian captain threw up her hands and stormed over to the console. “Clumsy, undereducated Neek! Just stop. Stop! I’ll do it myself.”

Neek continued rotating the ship. “I’m not clumsy, and I’m almost done. Just give me another few seconds.”

“No, you’re done!” The Alusian pushed Neek from the console. With a sneer, she used the sleeve of her long, white robe to wipe the console dry and then reentered a set of commands. The shuttle listed, and the hull thruster misfired. The ship banked into the wall and acquired a five-meter-long gash in its biometal.

Horrible, ear-piercing alarms blared throughout the docking bay. Neek backed away from the console and glared as the Alusian frantically tried to control the ship. Everything would have been fine if she just would have let her finish. She’d done the calculations three times: there’d been plenty of room. She’d flown land skiffs with half as much maneuverability, and through much smaller areas. A little trust, for once, would have been nice.

The shuttle jerked again and launched itself into the opposite wall. This time, the wall itself dented. “Your contract is terminated!” the Alusian screeched. “You are incompetent. No wonder you people never leave your planet!”

The shuttle finally smashed to the biometal floor, Neek barely keeping her balance where she stood. Outside, the sounds of thuds echoed throughout the hangar as Minoran plating fell from the hull of the ship.

With a curse, the Alusian slammed her fist against the console, releasing the lock on the exit hatch. As the gangplank descended to the hangar, Neek snarled, shoved her hands into the pockets of the Youth Journey coveralls she wore—mint green and far too snug across her hips—and stalked out of the ship and into the bay. She was most definitely not going to be paid for this job, especially as she’d only put in half a day’s work. She hadn’t been paid for her last job, either, since the gas leak she’d reported but had not caused had been blamed on her, nor the time before that, when the Terran shopkeeper had taken one look at her hands and demanded she leave the store.

The comm—the pay comm in the corner of the hostel—remained frustratingly out of reach.

She was about to turn towards the hostel—ready to spend the rest of the day staring at the bottom of the bunk above her, practicing the hand motions for settee drills and dreaming of all the vile curses she could hurl at the president when she could finally afford a comm—when an open bay door caught her attention. Neek was in the beta wing of the spaceport, which mostly housed single berths for the wealthier clientele, as well as for those who had something to hide. Doors weren’t just left open.

Since the worst anyone could do was yell at her when she was wearing the ridiculous Journey coveralls, Neek changed course and walked right in. Maybe she’d find a comm with a broken credit charger. Maybe she’d find a ship so beautiful that she’d forget she was stranded on a stinking space station—even if only for a moment.

An Oorin dredger sat in the center of the bay. Its massive, open hold had been recently cleaned. Neek could smell the disinfectant. There was heat coming off the plate armor, which meant it was likely getting ready to leave. Lost in thought, Neek toyed with the insignia on her coveralls, plucking at the stupid embroidered words. A steady rotation of Risalians checked up on her every night in the hostel. If she stowed away on the dredger, even if she was legitimately offered passage, they’d have her back in half a day in that moldy bunk with her Minoran and Terran roommates. But there’d be a general comm on the dredger. She could call home. She could talk to her parents and brother. She could just sneak on and use it. Quickly. No one would ever know.

“You lost?”

Neek jumped, feeling guilty despite herself. Wincing, she looked down. On the ground was a silvery puddle of…goop with a rectangular metal box floating on top. It looked like an old universal translator, which meant this was an Oori. That box would be their breathing apparatus, too, since the station was set up for oxygen breathers. There was a separate spaceport, a smaller one, near one of the other moons where the Oori did commerce with just each other.

“Just dreaming,” Neek quickly replied. “I used to be a pilot.” There was no particular reason to add the last part. Wistfulness would only bite her in the ass later.

“Can you pilot a dredger? My last pilot died.”

Tone didn’t really come through on a universal translator, so Neek had no way of knowing if that was supposed to have been a joke, a lament, or a warning. Still, her stomach fluttered. Piloting was a job a Journey youth could undertake, and it would get her off the station and away from Risalians. She’d be able to use the comm. It didn’t even matter if the dredger was just going to one of Oorin’s moons. She’d be flying.

“Why did the pilot die?”

“Methane poisoning. Hold had a leak. It’s just done being repaired.”

“Your comm work?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Could I use it when off duty?”

The surface of the Oori rippled. “If you know how.”

Neek huffed. “I had a standard education.”

“Yes, but you are also a Neek.”

Her face flushed, and her stuk became tacky. Yeah, she was a Neek. Yeah, they didn’t use much technology. Yeah, they worshipped a planet that disappeared hundreds of years ago and probably never existed at all. Yeah, they were xenophobic, but they were still her people. With balled fists, Neek managed, “I know how to fly, and I know electronics. Neek aren’t technologically inept. We just don’t use them a lot. Do you want a pilot? I’m here, and I want off this station.”

The Oori shimmered into an off-green tint. Their puddle body rolled in on itself, like the being was trying to make themselves into a drippy baguette. The translator box continued to float on top, although now it looked more like it was embedded in green putty than floating on a pool. “The job of a dredger pilot requires a waiver due to dangers.”

Neek ground her teeth. “I don’t care. I’d rather be poisoned than go back to that hostel. Are you registered with the Risalians? Can you sign the waiver for these ‘dangers’ and my paperwork?”

Bubbles foamed across the surface of the Oori. “I am registered. You’re not my first Journey youth.”

“The last one wasn’t—”

“Systems law forbids you from being put in danger. My last pilot was…unlucky. The hold is fixed. I have the inspection paperwork. I can send a contract to the Youth Journey headquarters now. Processing the paperwork will take one day. You may familiarize yourself with the controls immediately.”

A small animal was trying to fly out of Neek’s chest. She needed her heart rate to slow down, her breathing to find a rhythm again. She needed her stomach to stop trying to jump through her throat. Three weeks in this dung heap of a spaceport, and this was the closest she’d ever come to having access to a comm. If it slipped through her stuk-covered fingers now, Neek didn’t think she’d recover. “And the comm?”

One of the Oori’s bubbles popped, and Neek was pretty certain it was supposed to be a laugh. “Yes, you may use the comm.”

“And the contract?” Neek breathed. Her mouth was too dry. The sides of her pants were wet with stuk. “How long would the contract be for?”

“A year. A month. A week. I don’t care. I need a pilot now. We can do week to week if wanted.”

She would have worked on one of the Oorin moons and worn an oxygen respirator for the next year if it meant getting at a comm and away from the Risalians. “Deal.”

Three more bubbles burst near the edges of the rolled-up Oori. With the translator staying firmly on top, the being rolled to the bay door. They paused at the threshold and gave a very loud burp. Neek thought they might say something, but the Oori resumed rolling, eventually turning a corner.

Neek ran up the dredger’s ramp, found the comm, and pounded in the call coordinates for her parent’s home on Neek. When the computer asked for her identifier, she paused. You had to have one to make a call on most comms. She didn’t know what to use. Had she been named Exile officially? If she typed “Daughter of the Tertiary Forest Preserve, N’lln,” would the operators know who she was? She could use her child-name, maybe, as each was unique, but then the operator would have to dig through birth records. Neek had a small global population, all things considered, but it wasn’t that small.

With heavy hands, her stuk all but absent thanks to the damn tears she couldn’t quite keep under control no matter what she tried, Neek typed in “Exile” and initiated the call. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to think. Her coveralls were too tight on her hips and too loose on her shoulders, and her dry feet itched inside her boots.

Answer, she begged silently. Please answer.

A sloshing sound came from the comm. Text scrolled past in Common, too fast for Neek to read properly. She tried again. Again, the sloshing sound.

Her mouth was too dry. Her tongue felt like swollen sandpaper. More slowly this time, Neek keyed in the code for her brother’s personal comm. Come on, titha breeder. Answer your comm.

Sloshing.

Neek’s stomach rolled. She felt both empty and heavy. Her hands trembled, and the tears threatening to spill made her feel like she was a toddler having a tantrum. She’d been so patient. She’d taken all those dead-end jobs and put up with all those thinly veiled insults about her homeworld, her stuk, her exile, and her religion just to get to a comm, and now…now this?! Neek ran through the numbers of everyone she knew. Her mother. Her father. Her talther. She tried the planet’s central comm. She tried the diplomatic channels, the open channels, the trade channels… Everything came back with the same nonresponse.

Neek slammed her palm against the comm and bit the inside of her cheek. The pain would keep the tears from coming. She was too old to cry. She knew what exile meant. Abstractly, she knew, but it still felt like the methane in the dredger hadn’t been filtered out. No matter how hard she breathed, Neek couldn’t fill her lungs. All she could hear was the sloshing, the sound of a rejected call. She didn’t exist to her people anymore. She couldn’t go home, and she couldn’t call home—and how in Ardulum’s name was she supposed to move forward when everything she had ever loved, and everything that had ever meant a damn to her, was locked away? Was she supposed to stay on this stupid station forever, surrounded by smelly aliens and incompetent pilots?

The comm pinged.

Neek forced herself to exhale. She rubbed her eyes, hoping that it would take away the black spots from her vision. The comm pinged again. Common scrolled across the screen, but this time, Neek caught the characters for her name: Exile, in big silvery font, followed by more incomprehensible Common.

It was enough. Neek accepted the call. There was a fluttering in her chest as hope rose from the twisting, shameful realizations that if only she had skipped that last rally, if only the other protestors hadn’t resorted to property damage, if only, if only, if only…

The face of Neek’s father filled the screen. Well, the face of her father with white hair instead of silver and a constellation of freckles across the nose that her father lacked. His skin was the same copper color as Neek’s, and they had the same high cheekbones. The man wore a golden robe with ruffles instead of the colored piping of the Heaven Guard robes, and he had the look of practiced serenity that had always made Neek want to throw something at him, just to see if he could emote at all.

“Neek.” Her uncle nodded and smiled tightly. That he’d chosen the common name over her official one was a kindness, but not one that she wanted from him.

“Uncle,” Neek managed to choke out. “High Priest.”

“You are well?”

Neek blinked. Anger rose too quickly and spilled out into her words. “I’d have died in that skiff without the Minorans. He meant to kill me!”

“But he didn’t.”

“Because you intervened!”

“Yes, I did. It’s what Ardulum would have wanted.”

Neek bit back a scream. “Uncle!” Neek pressed closer to the screen. “Forget Ardulum. I have to come home. I have to see my parents. I have to talk to my brother. Can you help me? Please? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Help people?”

Her uncle’s lips pursed. He shifted in his seat, and in the background above him, near the top of the screen, she could see a gold robe piped with green. And then, another one. And another.

“Why are they here?” Neek whispered as her face flushed.

“To remind you of what you’ve lost, I’d assume. The president isn’t subtle. Ignore them.”

But Neek couldn’t ignore them. She could only see up to their waists, but she’d spent enough time staring at the posters in her bedroom to identify footwear. The guard on the left was Guard One, the leader of the current squadron whose record time around N’lln Neek had shattered her first official day in a settee. Next to him was Guard Six, her strapped sandals and slight pigeon toe bringing a smile to Neek’s face despite the mortification that was building inside her. Building, because Neek knew who was standing on the right, without even looking. The president would not have missed the chance to include Guard Four, Neek’s personal idol. Sure enough, when Neek looked, there were the telltale knee-high leather boots, similar to the ones she wore. The clasped hands in front of the golden robe had golden nails, and the pilot’s skin was the same deep copper as Neek’s.

My humiliation wasn’t complete, Neek thought as she wiped her fingers on her legs and swallowed the lump in her throat. It wasn’t complete until just now. Even if I got to go back, even if the president lifted my exile, how could I ever look any of the Heaven Guard in the eyes again?

“Neek?”

Neek looked back at her uncle. There was some part of her that still cared about what he had to say, surely. Her wounds were deep, but he could always cut deeper.

Her uncle reached down and came back up with a rigid, transparent biofilm, which he tapped against his armrest. “Neek, pay attention. I’ve reached a deal with our president that could result in your repatriation, assuming key tenets are met.”

“Key tenets…” Neek blindly repeated. Over her uncle’s shoulder, she could still see the mix of green and gold. She should have been there with them, standing with them, flying with them. What did her shame taste like to the Guard? Were any of her cohorts there too, remembering the late-night agility drills, the early-morning mechanical maintenance, the camaraderie of belonging to the most elite group on Neek?

“Are you listening to me?”

“No,” Neek said flatly. “What do I have to do to be allowed back? Keep my mouth shut? Allow our world to be destroyed?”

Her uncle chuckled and opened the biofilm. Text in Neek scrolled across it in thick segments. “No, Neek. You could start, though, by telling me what you know about Ardulum.”

Where she had been too hot a moment before, now she was too cold. Where her rage had boiled, now her insides felt frozen. He had to be kidding. She believed in Ardulum as much as she believed in the President of Neek being a decent ruler. She’d spent her life running from religious services. There was no way she was sitting through them now without the promise of the Heaven Guard to keep her in line.

“What do I have to do to come home?” she asked again through clenched teeth.

Her uncle placed the biofilm down and folded his hands. “Not as much as you might think. You will speak weekly with me—and no one else. You will have no contact with anyone from our homeworld. When I deem you in an appropriate state to return, these restrictions will be lifted.”

“And what is that state?” Neek spat out.

Once more, her uncle held up the biofilm, The Book of the Arrival plastered widely across its surface.

Neek slammed her hand against the console and terminated the connection.