Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Deacon

M y eyes did not wish to open, but a shift in the light begged for attention. Huffing, I regretfully opened them. I had hoped I was wrong. However, the view out my window told me I was right.

I called out, “Intercom-bridge.”

Allegiant , my ship, responded through the intercom, “Bridge on.”

“Drift, why do I see the suns?” I asked.

My pilot sounded nervous. “There were some Gorrk and Doxude ships in the nearby orbit cloud, and I didn’t like the look of them, sir, and I certainly did not like how close they were coming to us.”

I couldn’t help but smile, in spite of my irritation. Drift Skir always worried. It was part of his job as my pilot, but the more important part of his job was to follow my orders. “Didn’t I tell you we were to wait on the dark side of Halla’s orbit until my business with Jacaranda Cozz has passed?”

“Yes, but—”

“But you thought you knew better?”

He huffed. Like so many Ladrians, he had taken to using Earthen responses in conversation. I tried to avoid such disdainful behavior, but after centuries of exposure to humans, their culture had permeated my own. I supposed it was inevitable. These days, it was the eldest generations who saw human expressions as rude. Most of us could not recall a time before their ubiquity.

Drift explained, “The dark side of Halla is no place for good people to be.”

“Then, it’s exactly where I need to be.”

“But Deacon, I—wait— Sovereign is calling.” A pause, then Drift said, “Go ahead, Sovereign .”

Jacaranda’s gravelly voice rang clear, “ Allegiant , we will be docking in thirty seconds. Seems our scrubber needs replacing, so we might be there a while to borrow the capacity of yours.”

I called out, “That is not a problem, Jac. Drift, prepare for docking.”

“Yes, sir.” My pilot sounded relieved.

“Deacon out.” The hushed background hissing tone of the intercom was off, leaving me with my thoughts. An unpleasant turn of events. Instead of introspection, I chose to focus on everything else. Introspection had not been my friend as of late.

Drift probably sounded relieved because he is likely thinking we won’t be here much longer. He’s going to be very unhappy after our business with Sovereign has concluded.

I stood and stretched from my neck to my tail. I loved my ship, but Allegiant was built for grandeur only, and my muscles always stiffened when I slept on board.

I pulled on my khaki ship uniform and looked in the mirror. With each passing day, I liked what I saw less and less. Today will change that .

Today will change everything .

When I opened the door to my quarters, Jacaranda Cozz stood before me. I grinned instantly at my old friend. Taupe skin with a blue overtone, blue hair, and violet eyes, just like his family was said to have. But he broken with many Ladrian traditions. Jac liked to do things his own way. He always had, even when we were children. Being that the Cozz family were unclassed, they weren’t expected to alter their skin tone or change their hair color. But Jacaranda had marked his skin with an ancestry tattoo that ran from the base of his neck to the back of his legs. It was strange that he chose a tattoo for his skin alteration, but never tanned.

Tanning was the only socially acceptable way to alter one’s skin, and it was the only way for me to avoid earning ridicule for my family—most of my family had gloriously obsidian skin with a purple overtone. My beige skin had a pink overtone, and I had grown up filled with envy for my cousin’s skin. We all shared the same gray hair, thankfully. From our heads, down our spines, and ending at our tails.

Much to my cousins’ chagrin, my tail was longer than all of theirs, so our envies balanced each other out. Being taller than all of them helped, as well. When Jacaranda had been given to my father as a child, we were the same age, but he was so much smaller than me and my cousins that we had thought he was far younger. In the years that passed, his diminutive height became his motivation to grow stronger and faster than all of us. Some of my cousins had teased him, saying that he was not much taller than a human. They ate those words, along with some of their own teeth. No one picked on him after that.

I clapped his shoulders and said, “Jacaranda, come in.”

He smiled back. “Don’t mind if I do.”

He walked in, wearing those tacky black fatigues he loved so much, and sat on the end of my bed.

“Tell me how it went.”

“She’s in your infirmary, with Wave giving her the once-over.” His words were positive, but his tone was thick with judgment.

“Speak your peace,” I said.

“This is a shit idea, Deacon.”

I laughed. “You have got to spend less time on Earth. Your words are theirs.”

He shrugged. “Not really the topic at hand, is it?”

“I suppose not. Why do you object to—”

“She’s got drugs in her blood, according to Ode. Enough that the doctor was afraid the girl would die in transport, if we kept sedating her.”

“Why would you need to sedate her more than once?”

“She woke up because of the drugs she already had in her system,” he said adamantly. “Whatever she is on, it interferes with our medicines. She even had pain when Ode injected her with our language.”

I frowned. “That should be painless—”

“Exactly. This one…I understand why you want her specifically, but she’s not the right one for the job. She’s too strung out.”

“It has to be her,” I insisted.

“She is not the only conduit—”

“It has to be her, Jac,” I said more firmly. “I can’t trust anyone else to do what I need done. You know I’m right.”

“I know you think you’re right.”

I sighed. “How did it go when she came out of sedation?”

“Not well.” He pointed to a cut on his cheek. “She did this.”

I laughed. “Are you kidding me?”

Jac glared. “Now who sounds like a human?”

“Seriously, Jac, how did she get the drop on you , if she was all drugged up?”

He shook his head and sighed, embarrassment plain on his face. “I got too close when she was looking the other way, and she was much faster than I had anticipated when she spun back around. I’m still not sure how she got a hold of the penknife, but I think it was the one from Ode’s lab coat.”

“So, she snuck a penknife and managed to be faster than you thought. Seems she’s got more spunk to her than you had imagined, drugged or not.”

“Don’t sound so proud of your new pet. You don’t know what will happen to her without her drugs.”

“You think she will suffer withdrawals?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ode was worried about it, though. She’s walking Wave through her vitals and her biology—”

“Wave knows human biology.”

“No one knows it like Ode Hrimp.”

I smiled and nodded once. “True, and with the drugs in her system, it is prudent of her to aid Wave. She is a good doctor, Jac. I’m sorry I ever doubted her.”

“I get it—she’s with a Gorrk. That makes it hard not to question her judgment.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “And speaking of questionable judgment, what the hell are you thinking with Sarah Hollinger?”

“We have been over this. Many times.” I walked to the monitor on the wall and said, “ Allegiant , give me a view of the infirmary.”

“Infirmary in progress,” the ship’s soothing voice said as the view changed from the bridge to the infirmary.

There, I saw my new captive. She was striking—a long shock of dark brown hair flowed from her head. Only her head. Wide brown eyes—a darker shade than my own—stared upward at the camera. She wore a strange blue dress, and given her file, I assumed it was something expensive. Wave and Ode examined her together, while Ode took the lead on the matter, pointing out various interests and oddities of human anatomy.

But all I could see was how pretty she was for one of her kind. I used the link and told Wave, “Have her bathed and brought to my quarters, when she can be taken from sedation.”

“Right away, sir,” she responded.

Studying Sarah Hollinger, I noted, “She’s so small.”

Jac said, “Smaller in person. Taking her to Halla is like tossing a cina to a pack of jem’hora. It’s cruel, even for a Ladrang.”

My head whipped around at him. “What’s wrong with a little cruelty when it keeps you alive?”

“You are not like your cousins, Deacon. You never have been.”

He’s right, you know , I could almost hear my father’s voice saying it. Quietly, I said, “Perhaps if I had been crueler, my father would still be alive.”

Jac sighed. “What cruelty could you have leveled against our ruler to save your father, Deacon? He has an army and the support of the realm. What were you to do?”

“If I had been fearsome or terrible, perhaps Justice wouldn’t have taken his head. Perhaps he would have been afraid to do so. I don’t know.”

“That’s my point,” Jac said. “You can never know. We can never know anything anymore. He made it impossible…he made so much impossible…”

I swallowed my anger, while my fists tightened. I wanted to hit something. No, I wanted to hit some one . Justice the Ruler. With time, it might be possible to hit him…

“If he hadn’t murdered all the conduits…if he hadn’t demanded the people stop worshiping the ghosts of Halla and start worshiping him, then none of this would have hap—”

“If your father hadn’t gotten Justice’s daughter pregnant,” Jac pointed out, “then none of this would have happened. There is a lot to this equation, Deacon, and you can’t lay all the blame on Justice.”

I stiffened indignantly. “He did not have to behead my father.”

“No, he didn’t, and he should suffer oblivion for it,” Jac agreed. “But Valor was not innocent in all of this, and I feel like you keep overlooking that fact—”

“He is my father!” I roared and turned around to shout directly at Jac. “I am loyal to my father!”

“Even though he wasn’t loyal to you?”

More than anyone else in my life, Jac knew how to deflate my anger with a sting. I hissed and looked out the window. A Gorrk ship flew by rather close, with its amorphous shape and flashing pink cells. I wanted to stare at it all day long, instead of going through with what I had to do.

But loyalties wait for no one.

I mumbled, “He was in love. What else was he supposed to do?”

“I don’t know—maybe not impregnate the woman you were set to unite with?”

Silence Bateen. A beauty, if ever there was one. Silken hair, satin skin, and curves made of dreams, Silence had the obsidian skin and honey eyes of a goddess. I had adored her from afar my entire youth, but when I learned of my father’s affair with her, it all came crashing down. Like the rest of my life.

“It does not matter now, does it? There is more at risk than just my pride. I have a brother or sister to save from Justice’s executioner.”

He nodded. “I know, but you really think Sarah is the key to saving your sibling?”

“It’s all I have to go on at the moment, Jac. This plan might be cina waste, but it’s all I’ve got.”

Jac stood up and smiled as he joined me at the window. He crossed his arms and stared out at the Gorrk ship. “When all you’ve got is a bullshit plan, you call me. I’m honored.”

I laughed. “There’s no one else I would rather do a bullshit plan with than you.”

“Hey, you said it right this time,” Jac said, his tone amused.

“Bullshit is the same as cina waste?”

He nodded. “Basically, yes. But bulls are thousands of times larger than a cina. On Earth, cina are like mice.”

Jac often taught me the ways of humans and their references. It was one of the many things I learned from him. “I’ve sent your payment to Sovereign for this job, by the way.”

“Much obliged. I think Treg will lose it when he sees how much I’ve set aside for repairs.”

I laughed. “I’m not sure how a Gorrk keeps it together at any given moment, as it is. They’re so…”

“Gelatinous? Squishy? Slippery?”

“What’s squishy?”

He smiled and we spoke like old friends again, instead of like boss and employee. It was a bad habit I had never been able to break with Jacaranda Cozz. Had he not been raised in my father’s household, perhaps I would have been able to keep those lines sharply drawn. But I held Jac in high esteem and great affection, despite being his employer.

Our youth had been one of missions and the odd night of sharing a sleeping fur. We had grayed the lines between us so many times that my father often teased us for our closeness.

But when I reached twenty-two, we had the talk that every classed man must have with his son. Class cannot mix with unclassed, no matter the temptation. But my father’s temptation had nearly ruined my family and my life, so who was he to lecture anyone on such things?