Chapter Nineteen

Nem

I am pain.

And Oten is my partner in the torture.

I loathe my need to be touched. It’s not my own. But if I have to be touched I want it to be him.

He’s gentler with me than I am with myself and gives me as much satisfaction as he can without hurting me.

But he denies me, too.

I spasm through orgasms, needing him to come in me. Like I am dying of thirst for him. My throat convulses each time he pulls out of my mouth.

I know why he does it. Or I used to know why he keeps emptying his come on the ground instead of inside me. I know I should want this. But it hurts. The dreadful pain of not being satisfied eats me.

I drift from consciousness, resurfacing when the pain gets too bad. I call to him, and he helps me. He calls to me, and I help him.

We are partners.

My lungs contract with the burning sensation, and my breathing becomes ragged. I get weak, so weak that to breathe becomes a labor.

Then everything goes dark.

Voices.

Movement.

A smooth liquid down my throat.

More darkness.

The world comes back after I don’t know how long. I notice first that he’s not near me. I don’t even have my eyes open and I know. I had no idea I’d learned to know him just by feeling his presence. Until he’s gone.

Sound returns to my ears.

Women’s voices. Ones I don’t recognize, except that they’re human. I lie on something soft—a bed. The air I breathe is clear. I’m covered in a light sheet.

My eyes flutter open.

The cave is gone. I stare at a shiny metallic ceiling.

“Hello there,” a voice says. A woman sits beside me—dark hair, kind eyes, concern wrinkling her brows. “Can you drink?”

A gentle arm lifts my head, and a cup is pressed to my lips.

The water sliding down my throat is a life-giving elixir.

“Not so fast,” the woman says, and lowers the cup from my lips. “A little bit at a time.” She brushes my face with her hand, and the gesture is so comforting, I turn my cheek into her palm and rest it there.

“It’s all right,” she soothes. “You’ll have your strength back soon.” She holds my hand with her other hand. I can’t remember the last time I took comfort in the touch of another woman. It’s like a balm after the striving and the fighting—and the pain.

Something about the woman, her voice, her energy seems familiar, and taking comfort from her seems so easy and natural. But I don’t have the faculties to question it.

“What’s your name, dear?” she asks.

Something amazing happens. A name, my true name, that I haven’t thought in years—Nemona. I haven’t gone by that name since I was a child. Since before I entered military school at fifteen.

“Nem—” My voice catches, and I have to cough. I try to sit up, but a horrible pain low in my body pushes me to lie back down. I roll to the side, hacking hard, like a bag of needles lodged in my throat and won’t come out.

I expect the woman to pat my back or say something else comforting, but she doesn’t.

My cough finally subsides, and I look up at her.

All her kindness is gone, and she is stiff beside me. “Nem? As in General Nem?”

I clear my throat again and nod, afraid to speak again.

She stands and puts space between us, letting me see her uniform. She’s one of mine. An Origin crew member. A doctor by the rank insignia on her lapel.

“Leinit?” I choke out. That’s why she’s so familiar. She’s my crew’s chief medical officer.

“It’s Leinita,” she says with bitter disdain.

I lift my head. “You’re alive.” The relief I feel at seeing her lets me know just how much worry I had over all of my crew being dead. “Are there others? Who else survived?”

She shakes her head. “Many. Not that you cared about us. Only the mission. We were just a means to an end for you.”

I want to scream that it was because I cared about my crew so much and protecting our dreams for exploration that I was so strict. But that’s not what she wants to hear.

My voice catches. “I—I care about all of you. Truly. Please believe—I’ve been desperate to find you. To know that some of you, any of you are alive…” I swallow, so weak I have to clench my emotions in my throat. “I’m grateful you’re alive, Leinita.”

Her expression softens like she believes me. “I’ll get the others.” She ducks through the door of the temporary metal shelter where I hear other women’s voices outside.

“Wait!” I shout, but she doesn’t hear.

I don’t get to ask about Oten, where he is, if he’s okay. What happened to us.

My head floats with nausea, and I roll to my back.

I don’t understand why I care so much—about Oten, about my crew. I don’t get emotional, ever, and I’m having to choke back tears. I can’t be attached to anyone. I have a mission. I have a duty. I have to deal with a huge crisis: a crew with no ship. And no ally for rescue.

Dr. Leinita is female. That’s a surprise. I didn’t know, but I’m elated. I assumed most of my crew was male. Which was partly why I kept the regulation of everyone wearing their shellskin armor, helms, and voice scramblers at all times.

I didn’t want snap judgments about each other’s differences—gender, beauty, race, speech—to interfere with our work.

My right-hand lieutenant, Jens, whose real name she said was Jenie, revealed herself to me and asked me to lift the regulation. She maintained the crew needed to exist as individuals in order to work better together.

I abolished the unfair Ten Systems’ regulations—corporal punishments, torture, imprisonment for infractions—the barbaric and inhumane things. But I didn’t want to change too much and cause chaos among the new crew. I stuck to as many of the humane regulations as I could.

I chastised Jenie for breaking protocol and revealing herself to me, without administering the abusive punishment the regulation called for the infraction. Because I’d abolished the punishment was why Jenie felt safe coming forward in the first place.

Perhaps I was harsh, though. I didn’t tell her I was female.

We were on the run, desperate for our lives, racing away from the Ten Systems’ fleet. I feared any rift or sudden changes would compromise us.

I assume that’s what Dr. Leinita doesn’t approve of.

But even as I sit, forced to face the anxiety I feel in being connected as I am to my crew, I wonder if that’s the real reason I kept the one-gender regulation. If I didn’t know who they were as individuals, I never had to worry about growing attached to them. I didn’t have to worry about the pain and loss of losing them—like I experienced with my parents—if I never knew my crew personally.

Other female voices sound from outside. One shrieks in surprise, “General Nem is female?”

I cringe and roll over in bed, facing the wall.

They’re alive, so many of them. Even if they are rebelling against me, I’d rather that than have them dead.

“We found her with a Ssedez,” another voice says.

There’s a hard gasp. “Did she—?”

The voices drop to a low level that I can’t understand.

I cover my face in my hands. The way they must have found us… Naked, countless spots of Oten’s semen all over the cave floor, both of us chafed from too much sex.

Shame isn’t something I feel. I made the choice to have sex with Oten as a preferable alternative to the pain and delirium.

I wanted to be seen with him. The kind of pleasure I experienced with him is something everyone should have. Since I took off my armor and got to be myself for the first time in decades, I want to be known this way. To be the feminine sexual being I am and for everyone to know it.

I understand now how inhumane it was to force us to hide in armor.

I didn’t know how important it was to be seen. Until now.

I reveled in sex with Oten for more reasons than to relieve my bodily misery. The desire toxin in the air doesn’t explain the trust I grew to have in him. He could have treated me much differently. If he had been someone else, someone less honorable or respectful, it wouldn’t have mattered the pain, I never would’ve touched him.

My crew don’t need to know that though.

They’ll understand. They will have felt the…

Wait.

It’s gone.

I don’t feel it—the burn—for the first time in days.

It’s like floating in water after days of being enflamed.

My body is mine again.

I have other discomforts. I reach between my legs and wince on contact. I am so sore, it’s impossible for me to put my legs together.

I don’t think I’ll want to have sex again for the rest of my life.

Two other women enter, one I recognize as my number one.

“Lieutenant General Jens,” I say, unable not to smile. She’s alive! I try to sit.

“Please. Lie down. Rest,” she says in an even voice. Her expression is cool, disciplined, but not harsh. Her brown hair is pulled back in a braided crown that rests at the nape of her neck. She kept her hair long, despite needing to keep it wrapped up inside her helm every day.

The other woman has short hair like mine.

So many female members of my crew—how did I not notice? No wonder they’re angry with me.

“It’s Jenie, by the way. I’m not Jens anymore.” She gives a crack to her neck, and her jaw hardens into a sharp line. “The surviving officers and I voted on some new policies in your absence.”

“Voted?” It was always a chain of command, all orders to be followed. “I don’t understand. There is no democracy in the military.”

The other woman by her ranking insignia could be one of a dozen lieutenants among my officers. “We’re not in the military anymore, Nem. We escaped to get away from it.”

My confusion must be obvious, because Jenie puts a gentle hand on my arm. “We’re in this for research and discovery. You got us away from the Ten Systems. Now it’s time to let that all go.”

Tears well in my eyes. If I weren’t so weak I could contain them, but in my vulnerable state, I can’t stop them. But I’m too full of elated surprise to care.

What I’ve realized over the last few days with Oten, being myself, not disguising who I am or what I desire, the way I haven’t since…before I enlisted at fifteen, is I need that. We need that, to be free and not have to hide ourselves. To have our opinions be heard and acknowledged as equal. For everyone to have a say in our mission forward.

I try to keep my lip from quivering and fail. “You’re right. We don’t have to do the things the Ten Systems forced us to anymore. We should be free to be ourselves.”

Both women let out a sigh of relief, and Jenie’s mouth bends in a smile. I realize now how worried they were about me disapproving of their decisions.

I clasp Jenie’s hand. “You are in charge without me here. The situation required changes. I respect your choices.”

“If we’d known you were alive, we would’ve waited,” she offers. “You should know that.”

“We want to follow you,” says the other woman. “You are the center of all of us. Without you, we would still be enslaved to the Ten Systems’ empirical regime.”

I’d never thought of it that way. “I guess we were enslaved to them, weren’t we?”

“We had no choice,” Jenie says. “They forced us to be there on pain of death.”

I’m desperate to know about the rest of the crew. “Did everyone survive?”

“Not all,” Jenie says carefully, though she doesn’t offer the names of who are among the missing. “But our numbers are above five hundred, and more trail into camp from the scattered escape pods every day.”

It’s more survivors than I expected, but five hundred among a crew of over a thousand still leaves too many casualties. So many dead.

I’m too afraid to ask the names. Too raw to endure the grief.

I wipe the tears from my face as best I can and try to control my voice through the hoarseness. “I’m Nemona.”

Both women give me broad smiles.

“General Nemona,” the woman beside Jenie says, “I’m Lieutenant Uhlah.”

I smile back at her. She was “Uhl” before, my naysayer, the soldier who invaluably questioned my every decision. Often to my annoyance but always helping me see more options. “It’s good to see you.”

Jenie nods her approval. “We should speak alone.”

Uhlah gives me one nod of acknowledgment then leaves.

Jenie pulls a chair up beside my bed. “You have no idea how relieved I am.”

“I’m grateful you did what needed to be done.”

She tilts her head. “I’m glad you’re back.”

I have to ask. “Any chance you were able to salvage—”

“We have all of Dr. Klearuh’s research files intact.”

I breathe for what feels like the first time in days. “How have you combatted the desire component of this place? Did you give me an antidote?”

“We created one with the ship’s still-functioning medical systems. As soon as we got our homing device functioning, it picked up your computer’s signal. We followed the path around the cliff side to the cave and gave you the antidote as soon as we found you.”

I look away, unwilling to hear more about what she saw. “And Oten?”

“The Ssedez?”

“Was he administered the antidote as well?”

Her eyes narrow with confusion. “No. Why would we?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” I gasp in horror. “How long has it been?”

“He is surviving. We have him chained and—”

“As if chains will work on him,” I rage. “You can’t just leave him burning and alone.”

“Yes, we can.” She stiffens away from me. “Nemona, you were forced to have sex with him for days. How can you care about what happens to him?”

I shake my head so hard it hurts my neck. “No. I was not forced. He did nothing I didn’t ask him to do.”

“You only asked because there was no one else to relieve you.”

I can’t agree with her. The thought of lying contorts my stomach. “I chose him because I wanted him.”

She recoils from me then checks herself. “I’m sorry. I don’t judge you for your choices. But I would not have done the same.”

“I would make the same choice again.” And what a pleasurable choice it was. I have no regrets, none, no matter how she disagrees with my decisions.

She holds up her hands in a peace offering. “I concede, I only went twelve hours without the antidote, and I was in an escape pod with two other female crew members and, well…” She smiles. “Let’s just say, we took care of each other very well.”

“I did the same as you.”

She leans on her knees. “It is not the same. You were compelled to have sex with the enemy who attacked us without warning or provocation! They destroyed our ship and killed members of your crew!” The horror in her voice makes it sound like sex with Oten was some form of torture.

Well, it was, but not in a bad way. Until the end at least. But that wasn’t because of Oten. That was the damn cloud we climbed into. “I only did what I wanted to do.”

“You can’t possibly have wanted to do it with him!” She’s outraged, and I’ve offended her.

I arch up in the bed. “I hadn’t had sex with anyone in ten years. Ten years, Jenie!” I fall back, exhausted from my outburst.

She gasps. “No one?”

“I didn’t know how badly I needed it. He didn’t hurt me. He helped me.” At least, that’s a believable reason for why I would do it. Though I know it’s not the only reason.

She gazes at the floor and says softly, “I have certain restrictions of my own around celibacy.” She meets my eyes. “I understand. And the point is—it’s over. He’ll never touch you again.”

“What if I want him to?” It’s out of my mouth before I can think twice about it.

Her stare ices over with bitterness. “Members of our crew are dead because of him. Assura is gone!” Fury rages from her eyes, and she sits forward in her chair.

My heart beats faster but not because of Oten. “Assur…?” My voice of reason, the one person who I could depend on. The operative who was instrumental in gaining us the information we needed to escape and staged a seamless diversion that made it all possible. “She”—I didn’t know she was female either—“is dead?”

“Her name was Assura,” Jenie nearly spits in my face. “I saw her stabbed in the gut by a Ssedez. I don’t know how the knife pierced her armor, but it did. She didn’t make it onto any of the escape pods.”

“That you know of. She could still be out there.”

She shakes her head. “The wound was fatal.”

I mourn her loss, but the pain I hear in Jenie’s voice sounds worse than mine. “You were close?”

“She…we were lovers. For a time.”

My heart clenches, and I stroke her hand, comforting her as best I can. “I will miss her very much, too.”

Uhlah sneaks her head in the side of the door. “Some more crew wandered in from the jungle.”

“I’m coming,” Jenie calls and wipes her eyes. “You concentrate on healing. I’ll keep charge until you’re well enough to take the reins again.” She stands to go.

“Wait,” I call to her.

She stops at the door. “Yes?”

“What will happen to Oten?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from betraying my fear.

Jenie straightens her shoulders, and her eyes betray a hardness. “The researchers are combing through Dr. Klearuh’s files for a way to execute him. That’s what we voted on. I’m sorry, Nemona.” She ducks out of the tent.

Horror slams me in the chest.

He can’t die. Oten won’t die. They’ll never find a way to kill him. It’s impossible.

But in their war with the Ten Systems a century ago, a huge number of Ssedez were killed. They can die somehow, but it’s difficult to kill them.

That thought doesn’t stop my heart from racing. I have to get to the files. If there is anything to find, I’ll get to it before the others. I know the organization of those files better than anyone.

I try to sit up, to get out of bed, but a bolt of agony shoots from my core up my spine.

Dr. Leinita reenters. “You’re not ready to sit up yet.” She walks to a cabinet and pulls out an ointment. “I’ve already applied this to your vulva area twice, but I’m sure you need more.”

Oh, that’s why I can’t sit up.

Literally, too much sex.

She hands me the tube. “Use as much of it as you want. It should heal by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I accept it, grateful. I’ll have to be up before that.

I gingerly apply it at first, but there’s a cooling, soothing quality to the cream that feels so good, I apply it generously.

I have to get some of this to Oten, and the antidote. Tonight.