leave!” Raxthezana shouted. “You could have been recaptured and executed!” I looked up at him from a hard table in a part of his ship that resembled a medical bay.
“I thought you were following me,” I groused, rubbing the crease in my forehead to forestall a headache. “When you didn’t come, I thought you might need help. And you did,” I said, giving him a side eye.
He stalked away but turned to face me. “You were meant to leave in my ship and disappear, never to be seen by the Ikma Scabmal Kama again.”
“I couldn’t leave you,” I said while jutting my chin. “You saved me.” Then, realizing I was in a med bay, I sat up. “Apparently, twice.”
“It was merely your body adjusting,” he said, the fire gone from his voice. “You are fully recovered.”
“Where are we?” I thought to ask as I explored the small ship. The med bay took up vital space between the hall lined with bunks and a small communal area that led to the open cockpit. The hall with bunks led to a private sleeping quarters and a large cargo bay, and that was it.
VELMA opened the viewing screen surrounding the cockpit, and I saw the shower of stars spreading out in a spill that filled the entire view. I gasped at the ethereal beauty and chose one of the pilot seats to occupy.
“Not far from Ikthe, where the others eagerly await your arrival,” Raxthezana said, his voice quiet. “I need a few rotiks’ rest and will return shortly.”
I watched him stalk toward the rear of the ship, and I looked back out the viewscreen. His anger surprised me, but I wasn’t afraid of him.
Absently caressing the chair arms, I stared into space.
“Was I wrong?” I asked the AI, my voice wobbly on the verge of tears.
“To which action are you referring?” VELMA asked.
“All of them,” I said, swallowing my emotion. “From stealing VELMA-X and hiding it to setting off the klaxons that would guarantee the jettison of dozens of life pods, sending humans every which way with no warning. Sabotaging my employer.”
“You must know that I would agree with your course of action,” VELMA said. “Your choices reflect the directives you coded into my neural network. The only acceptable loss of human life was none.”
Silence stretched between us for a minute, and then she spoke again.
“Hundreds of simulations suggest your actions, while surprising and inconsistent with previous years of your employ, likely resulted in near one hundred percent retention of human life. With each pod outfitted with my neural network and code designed to protect and sustain human life, not to mention scanning parameters that would find ideal planets on which to land, it is probable that the humans who successfully launched from the Lucidity landed somewhere safely and will be found in due time. In cases where ideal planet conditions lead to dangerous wildlife habitats, the pods and neural network will have worked together to keep the humans safe. And might I add,” VELMA continued in what could only be described as a light-hearted tone. “Humans themselves consistently impress me with their ingenuity and innovation, not to mention their courage and pluck. While my coding guarantees I would approve of your recent decisions, please know that my machine learning capability and observed positive outcomes of the past months validates your choices with concrete evidence that you fulfilled your objective satisfactorily.”
Huffing a soft laugh, I shook my head.
“I can’t argue with that,” I said.
“Nor should you,” she replied. Then, “Status notifications suggest Raxthezana is awake.”
Turning in my seat, I saw that he beckoned me to join him in the med bay. He’d taken off his armor, and I assumed he’d done so for his nap.
Like all of the Theraxl people I’d seen, his skin was a shade of green, but unlike the Queen, the maikshel, or the people in the market, Raxthezana’s skin was mottled with hundreds of puckered scars. From his wrists to his shoulders and covering the breadth of his broad chest and sculpted abdomen, the dark scars formed constellations covering every inch.
When my gaze followed the line of his skin-hugging mesh undershorts, I saw the same scarring crept from under his shorts; they must exist from his groin to his ankles, and I gasped. What had caused the scars?
“We have much to do,” he said, his voice clipped. “Watch as I replace my armor, that you might learn of its proper care.”
Confused at the banal suggestion, I stepped back, allowing him room to maneuver. He walked to a panel and pressed it; a drawer slid out, and I could see it contained the slender pieces of his matte gray armor submerged in liquid. He pulled out a leg piece and turned it toward me so I could see the skin-side.
Gasping, I took a half-step back before he grabbed me with his free hand and kept me close. The inside of the armor writhed with dark worms, each boasting a little barbed head. They appeared embedded in a thick gel. Raxthezana placed the piece on his right shin, and it adhered, snug flush to his leg.
Bile rose in my throat, but I remained silent as he drew out each piece and affixed it in place, his expression neutral as he described how the “shel” must be cared for. “When not on, the shel armor benefits from a water bath. Likewise, whenever your energy reserves are low, you may submerge while wearing the armor to acquire the same benefits.” Saving the pectoral panel for last, he pressed it against his chiseled chest, never breaking eye contact with me.
I remembered that my helmet was still on, so I removed it.
Silent, he waited for me to rest my helmet on my hip and look up at him.
A pulse of crackles sounded across my armor accompanied by a skin-crawling wave of achiness, as if I was coming down with the flu. When it didn’t fade, I cleared my throat and stared into Raxthezana’s black eyes.
“You showed me this because ….” My voice broke, and I tried again. “Because I’m wearing the same kind of armor as you.” My voice sounded high and tight in my ears, but I kept going. “Those. Those worms are somehow in your skin. In the scars,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And now I have those scars. And those worms,” I forced out the words.
I suppressed a violent shudder by squeezing my eyes shut and taking several deep breaths as if I was preparing for a free dive.
Looking back up at him, I couldn’t help the flare of anger I felt in my heart, but I bit my lip until tears sprung in my eyes. I blinked through them and breathed through flared nostrils, willing myself to experience a calm I didn’t feel.
“You had me thank that pit full of dirt,” I said.
“They are called shel, which means life,” he said, his voice firm, and emotion erupted from my chest.
“You had no right,” I said between gritted teeth. Revulsion threatened to bring me to my knees, but I swallowed it down and stood tall. “What happens if I remove the armor and wear my regular clothes?”
Raxthezana’s narrowed eyes swept me up and down, and a nameless emotion seized my throat. Grief? Puzzlement? Longing?
“You must not remove it for several days as your wounds heal,” he said. “Not the scars from the shel,” he clarified. “But the more—grievous— wounds.”
His voice cracked on the word ‘grievous’, and I started. I had no memory of being taken from the War Room. I remembered her. And I remembered an eternity of pain and isolation and forgetting. And I remembered waking up in Raxthezana’s arms, and the recent horror fading, and the absence of a pain so acute I’d almost wished for death many times.
“Okay,” I said. “But when my wounds have healed, what then?”
“You may go several days without your shel armor,” he said but bowed his head. “But then you must replace it or suffer debilitating withdrawal. If the armor isn’t replaced, your body will waste away and become a husk of what it once was.”
His revelation wasn’t unexpected, I thought. Something about his scars had seemed old. Old and a permanent part of him.
But it was a lot. I knew what his next answer would be, but I asked the question anyway.
“Was it the only way to keep me alive?”
“Yes.”
Nodding, I turned away and replaced my helmet and retreated to my bunk. It wasn’t exactly private, but it was tucked away enough that it should be obvious to him that I wanted to be left alone.
He didn’t follow.
Sitting in my bunk, I held my gloved hands out in front of me but stared at the light gray armor on my forearms. Looked down at my chest and my thighs and rapped the metal with my knuckles. My boots and gloves were mine from before—from before Ikshe. I marveled that they were still with me; the Queen must have kept my things near enough that he found them when he got me out.
It bothered me that I couldn’t remember that part, or several other points in time during that infinite hell. I wondered if some alien memory herb had been utilized.
Another wave of stings swept across the skin under my armor, and bile rose in my throat again. Now that I knew what it was, I wanted to retch. I wanted to tear off the armor and run away screaming. But I bit my lip and gripped my knees, or rather the armored joints.
I was alive.
And all those people from the Lucidity were alive.
Joan was alive.
Taking deep calming breaths, I raised my eyes to look at the ship around me. We would join the others, and I would reunite with my best friend.
If the cost of all of this life was some minor pain and frankly, a super gross worm outfit, then I guessed I was going to have to pay up.
Making a fist, I remembered the feats of strength I’d managed when pulling Raxthezana out of the fortress. It wasn’t just healing armor. I needed more information, but the armor seemed to give me strength beyond my normal ability. Speed. Agility. And protection.
Placing my open hand over my former gaping wound, I closed my eyes and shivered.
My new armor gave me new life.
But if I ever saw the Ikma Scabmal Kama again, I would take hers.
Because at the end of the day, the thing that had kept me going these long months wasn’t necessarily wanting to die. It was wanting revenge.