14

“Unfortunately,” said a flat, toneless voice, “I recognize you. I apologize.”

I tried to sit up with a gasp, but the familiar alien petals of a medical pod gripped my chest firmly. The struthiform with the burn scars stood in front of me.

“Should I tell you my name?” it asked. “Would that be fair? I know your name now: Devlinhart.”

I swallowed. It hurt. Something had been shoved down my throat and pulled out. Maybe I’d inhaled some water? I remembered being yanked out by tentacles and thrown onto the mud by a disgusted Zeus.

“I’m Shriek, of the One Hundred and Fourth Thunder Clutch,” the struthiform said. “What was it like?”

“What was what like?” I asked hoarsely.

“Dying,” Shriek said conversationally.

I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

“The Illustrious Leader, our Commander Zeus, left you in the mud without medical attention for a half hour, where you drowned due to inhalation of water when he yanked you out too quickly.”

“The fuck?” I struggled to get out of the pod, suddenly feeling trapped and claustrophobic. The memory of water rushing up through my nostrils and gagging me filled the back of my head. “How long have I been here?”

“A few days. I had you sleep. Your arm is unable to visit; they are too tired. They’ve been made to run a great deal.”

I groaned. “Zeus.” If anything had thawed with the arm, it would be frozen again. They would hate me now.

“Far be it from me, a simple rebuilder of broken tissues and bones, a low-ranking survivor who failed to die defending my home, to criticize a great leader like Zeus”—the alien glanced down at a readout—“but such instructing might be considered by some, though it is not my place to say this, somewhat callous and wasteful of life. Luckily for you, I am here.”

Shriek leaned forward and delicately tapped my nose with the tip of a finger claw. I jerked back and coughed.

“Yes, lucky for you,” the struthiform mused. “And soon you’ll be healthy enough to go back to training. And you, too, will be alive and full of vigor, ready to experience what it will be like to lose your own home world. Congratulations on not dying; the Arvani appreciate it.”

I shook my head. “Lose our home world?” That didn’t make any sense. “The Conglomeration is light-years away. That’s why we’re going to be shipped far off. Why our volunteers have yet to come back.”

“They are light-years away. But what are light-years to beings like the Pcholem, who run the Accordance’s starships? They live in the Great Ships, skipping from star to star. And for the Conglomeration, a light-year is a few months’ journey. Look at my scars, human. They’re closer than you think. If they found you like we found you, from all the noise you broadcast out to the suns, it will not take them long to come sniffing around to see if your genetic stock will add value to the Conglomeration. I wonder what they will use humans for. I’m told my kind were rapidly evolved into package delivery systems.” Shriek held up wing hands and looked at them. “I hear we can fly again now, even though free will has been bred out. I wonder if there is any joy in flying on your own.”

Alarms wailed through the sickbay. Shriek snapped around and looked over at another pod. Someone flailed inside it, spitting blood as the head jerked back.

Shriek ran over, waving wing hands and pulling up holographic interfaces and controls. Another struthiform joined him. I watched as they moved furiously around. Aliens, and yet the flurry of doctors around a hurt patient an all too recognizable activity.

Then silence fell. A pale face slumped back in the pod as the machines all withdrew. I stared at the unmoving body on the table.

“Who was that?” I asked. “Who was that?”

“Don’t ask that,” Shriek told me. “You know you shouldn’t ask.”

Another struthiform checked my pod over, and then released me. I stood by the open bio-mechanical petals, looking over at the cluster of aliens around the limp human body.

“Go!” one of them ordered me firmly. “Now.”

I cleared out of the sickbay, slowly walking back through a silent mess hall. The arms’ bunks were empty. I found mine and lay down in it, shaken.

I hadn’t achieved anything with Ken. I’d shoved the arm into even more trouble. Zeus had an eye on me. It was all a mess. And what for?

Just to survive? I’d watched someone die in a pod that had more medical technology in it than most of Earth had before the invasion. More medical tech than most people still on Earth had.

That shaved head had just lolled. A stranger, but maybe someone I could have met, or gotten to know, while training here.

Was it better to not know their names?

Because we’re just cannon fodder for some upcoming clash of two alien civilizations?

I curled up into a ball and shivered. “Fuck.”

There was no way out. There was no coming back. I’d been fooling myself. The only way out would be the same way I came, I thought. I remembered landing at the base. The lunar vehicles sitting in rows near where the elevator had stopped.

If I wanted out, I would have to get out.

I had to get ready to get out.

I sat up, looked around, and realized I had nothing to take with me. There was no “getting ready.”

If I wanted to live, and not die in some alien war or right here in training, I needed to walk away now.

But going AWOL on the moon was going to be hard. And as soon as I got to Tranquility City I would have to get a message to my parents to run so they could survive, too.

+  +  +  +

The lunar rovers, blocky and ungainly on their oversize balloon tires, looked like silvered alien beetles on wheels sitting in pools of shadow. Instead of massive compound eyes, there were cab windows. And awkwardly jointed arms folded across their fronts were mechanisms that kept the passengers inside.

The rover nearest the bay airlock opened up when I tapped the door handle, swinging up over my head with a hiss. I jumped in and pulled it shut behind me.

“Okay, that’s halfway there,” I said aloud. In the cab, what was clearly a key hung from a hook near the dash of somewhat familiar physical controls.

There weren’t a lot of vehicles for humans to operate; the industry had been taken over by the Accordance. But I’d been in a few. Seen enough shows. I felt I could run this.

They’d left the keys in the ignition, I thought. Idiots.

I checked to make sure they had human suits inside the locker by the door. I didn’t want to make it all the way to Tranquility City, then get stuck because I couldn’t sneak in through a quiet airlock.

There was a human-compatible suit in a baggie. I put my own bag of energy bars and liquid food bubbles next to it.

Back in the seat I started puzzling over the controls. I found the language swap screen and watched the panes of information around me reconfigure into English. Alien glyphs shifted into readable figures and icons.

And I would have to figure out how to trigger the vehicle airlock from here to get out onto the lunar surface.

Sitting still, poring over the read me files, I jumped in place when a fist smacked the glass right by my left thigh. “Shit!”

Amira stood in front of the rover, expression inscrutable.

Shit.