2. Zeerah

Two years earlier…

No one puts on a feast like the Kingdom of Nigeria.

I'm sitting at the table nearest to the banquet hall's exit and stuffing my face with all the delicious dishes my uncle's provided—spicy crayfish soup with soft yam balls, smoked fish in creamy bean porridge, salty fried plantains—when my favorite aunt sees me. She hurries over and clasps my elbows.

"Oh, Zeerah, I just had the most wonderful conversation with Uncle about you."

I choke on my food and cough, stagger to my feet, and tip over my folding chair. It hits the ground with a loud clang.

The table goes quiet, and our relatives peer over at the commotion.

I quickly pull the chair upright and hiss at her, "What? What did you say?"

"I'm so proud of you. Flying the first spaceship to planet Vanadis? On the other side of the empire?"

Her skin is warm brown, like my mother's, and she looks beautiful in her stylish cream iro blouse and gold-patterned buba wrap skirt. Her kinky black hair is contained in a puffy gold gele headscarf.

She touches my cheek. "Uncle's kept his secret for too long."

"His secret? What secret?"

"Oh, you." She elbows me like I'm teasing. "Using Uncle's factories and business partnerships to make your ship."

"Well, actually—"

"You can't glue one together out of scrap parts in an old field." She laughs, describing exactly what I've done. "That would be crazy."

My heart thumps. "Yes, crazy! Ha-ha. Who would do that? Ha-ha-ha."

"You'll make history and bring my poor patients relief. Oh, I'm getting a call! Perhaps it's one of my patients." She pulls a vibrating mini-phone out of her pocket. "Oh, no. It's just the president."

President of the hospital, of Nigeria, or of the world? It's hard to say. Urgent messages from the hospital where my aunt heads the number one world-class neurological department always take her away from family gatherings.

"Now, you should cut down on the swearing," she advises me as she puts away her phone and smooths my wrap. "Around the press conference and also around your elders."

Oops. "H, I'm sorry. I'll watch out for that."

She lifts a brow.

"H," I say again. "H-ing-H."

"H" is the worst swearword we currently have. It stands for hullcrack, the one thing you don't want to have happen in space. And also something worse…

I speak slowly, enunciating to filter out the swear words. "I'll, uh, I'll try to stop."

"Good. Your work should be recognized and respected for the great achievement it is. I don't want anyone to be distracted by silly propriety." My aunt hugs me and whispers in my ear, "Your father would be proud."

A lump forms in my throat.

I return her hug and watch her leave.

My aunties and cousins gossip quietly in our old language, English, about everything she said and about her leaving early. They gossip about her being unmarried and having no children. As a young child, I was told to avoid her, but the older I get, the more she's become my hero. If I hadn't gone all-in on mechanics, I probably would have tried to follow her path.

Actually, right now, I am going to follow her path. Literally.

I leave my half-filled plate—oh, so many delicious leftovers!—and signal across the room to my cousin.

Tayo's lounging at a men's table, chomping on flavorful bean cakes and sweet puffs, relaxed. He catches sight of me and straightens, then flattens his lips in disappointment. It's too early, his body language says. We're going to be eating sand soon enough. But I'm already sidling out the door.

My uncle's voice cracks from the host table. "Zeerah, come here."

I flinch and involuntarily take two more steps toward the exit.

Tayo's eyes go wide. Am I really going to disobey my uncle in front of our entire family?

I manage to pull up and circle around to the head table, where my uncle rules from the largest, most ornate ceremonial seat. It's basically a throne. My heart thuds. Anger wars with fear, and it takes all my will to drop to my knees in front of him and give the correct greeting for his age and station.

"Zeerah." He returns the honorifics in a mix of old languages, Yoruba and English. "Child of a family who falls asleep beside a river of gold and silver. Orphaned daughter who is sheltered and clothed as a princess by her extended family. Royal niece with the heart of a cunning hyena. Be well."

Hmm. Royal niece with the heart of a cunning hyena? Usually, boys get an honorific like the prowess of a hyena. Cunning of a hyena, huh? Here we go.

I stand, acutely conscious of the wrinkles in my faded maroon wrap skirt and the grease clinging to the underside of my short nails. "Uncle."

He studies me. "Do you think one in your position should be showing off to the world, making arrogant claims and clamoring for the spotlight?"

My belly twists. "No."

"You're jealous that my daughters have good husbands and big houses and large families. You want their new hovers and fancy wraps, so you seek to embarrass me in front of the other tribes. Isn't that right?"

I shake my head vigorously.

"Then what are these lies, Zeerah? Delusions that you're going to be the first human to reach an alien planet? That you won't get swallowed by the darkness between the stars?"

I keep my eyes trained respectfully on his gold shoes. "It's just a small dream…"

"Stupid ideas should remain in your head. Unheard, unspoken, unseen. Like you." He leans forward. "You are unmarried, have no children, lack in manners, and are unattractive in every way. Making wild claims will not change this. Any potential husband will have his worth brought down and degraded by your presence. This." He gestures at his even eyebrows. "Is very ugly."

He's referring to my right eyebrow scar. My uncle used to have one too, apparently, but he had it removed and fixed up so long ago, I don't remember.

"What is best for you?" my uncle continues on his familiar tirade.

I force the words past the tightness in my jaw. "To stay home."

"But instead, I am magnanimous. I invite you to come here, to celebrate with your tribe. No other family would tolerate you. We only do so out of obligation. What do you say?"

My heart thuds. Tears of frustration prickle in my eyes.

He waits.

I force out the expected words. "Thank you."

"Yes." He sighs. "But now you've created a problem for me. I'd rather pretend you don't exist, but because you've got delusions of grandeur, you will leave your mechanics shop behind and come to my home."

My stomach lurches. "What?"

"You can't be left alone, it seems, and I could use another cleaner."

No!

"Um, but it's not just mechanics." My lips go numb. "Great-Uncle M needs me."

"Cousin Tayo will care for him."

"But—"

"Your father isn't here, so I must teach you your place." Uncle's gaze is flinty. "It's what he would have wanted."

Heat fills my chest. I want to snap at him so badly. You don't know what he would have wanted. You're the one who killed him.

Someday. Someday, I'll say that to him.

Today, I remain silent.

The chatter of my extended family fills the massive ballroom on this, the top floor of the shortest building in Cloud City. We are the least important family in the richest city on the planet. In the land of kings, I am an orphaned princess. And my benefactor keeps his guillotine well-honed.

Uncle waves for me to go.

I give him the proper respect and flee the banquet hall.

My dream might be stupid, but I'll die if I have to drop it and become a cleaner.

In the hall, I leave an urgent message for my aunt. "There's no time for a press conference. Tell your clients we're leaving now."

"Now?" Tayo gasps, catching up to me at the elevators clutching a hastily packed takeaway box. "We barely assembled the last part. We don't even know if it works."

I close my phone. Hopefully, his words didn't get recorded. "Call Shoyebi. Have him meet us at the airfield."

"We should do more than two test flights. We've never left the continent." Tayo moans. "How could Uncle find out now? Of all times?"

Yes. It's bad.

Tayo calls our third partner, jogging to keep up with me as I navigate the sweltering hot streets.

Greater Lagos is a thriving megalopolis. Everyone around the world wants to live here. It's said that in the streets of Lagos, even the rats are fat.

Despite my threadbare party flats, I dodge hawkers and aggressive taxi drivers who see my fancy clothes and know there's money to be shaken out of me—or out of my relatives. We clamber into our creaky hover. It turns on, and the air conditioning wheezes.

The controls abruptly go dead.

We hit the ground with a loud clunk.

Everyone stares at us.

I smack the dash, cursing. The engine returns to life.

We careen around the pedestrians and nicer hovers, rumble across the rebuilt shoreline, and navigate the floodplains toward the interior of the kingdom.

In the distance, floating nutrient cube farms cast late shadows.

They were planted by our alien overlords.

The Arrisans.

And now they form the wealth of our country and the wealth of Africa.

The Arrisans discovered our planet during my great-grandmother's generation and forcefully added it to their empire. They took over in a day, batted away our missiles like toy balls, and sliced through our planes, tanks, and buildings, destroying landmarks for the fun of watching them crumble.

The world leaders surrendered, so the Arrisans treated us even worse. They lasered deep through our crust and shifted our planet's orbit.

Tsunamis swept continents, and super volcanoes blackened our skies.

Ninety-eight percent of the population died.

And yet, out of the destruction, Nigeria rose like a spear.

When we couldn't suffer anymore, forty-eight-year-old Lolade Sarah Obasanjo walked across the scorched, battled-wrecked plains to the commander's ship. Holding her last living grandchildren against her hip, she banged on their door and demanded that the Arrisan conquerors stop their wanton destruction.

And they did.

Maybe they were bored. Maybe they realized they were running out of servants to tend their future nutrient cube farms. Maybe they felt more comfortable with a "lesser" who'd lost all fear and refused to beg or bargain.

Whatever the case, that was the day we, Nigeria, became the center of the new world.

But, in the same way I'm technically a princess, Nigeria wears a sad, dingy crown.

Our planet, which the Arrisans renamed Humana, has little advanced technology and no useful resources. No aliens willingly land here. We're far from the center of the empire, and we scrabble in the muck for whatever technology happens to fall from their back pockets.

I'm going to change that.

Someday.

I bounce through the airfield's back entrance, avoiding the government security gates. My uncle's employee, the one who has it out for me, races from the tiny private guard station with a shout. "You're not supposed to be here! Uncle said—"

"I'm just getting my stuff!" I floor it.

He stumbles to a stop, coughing.

In the rear camera, I see him get out his phone.

We've got a couple of hours, max.

It's plenty of time to test our last parts, launch my super-awesome ship that awes all who witness it, tour exotic countries while picking up my rich clients, and soar off into space while everyone cheers.

Yep, a perfect plan.

I gun it down the airfield, past the business shuttles, to the other side of trash mountain. The stink is familiar and pungent, but my nose soon dulls to the grease and rot. Around the back side is my hut. It's not much, but it's a place to crash, and nobody bothers me way out here.

Behind it, Shoyebi is pulling the woven mats of camouflaging garbage off my beauty.

It's a Harvester-class spaceship, a real one. It's an old Vanadisan model, ironically, a clamshell shape. The pearl on the back is the bridge. I park and help Shoyebi pull off the last woven mat while Tayo takes frantic client calls. My aunt has shared the good news already, I guess.

"No Great-Uncle M?" I ask Shoyebi.

He shakes his head.

I'm not surprised, but a little disappointed. "He knew we were leaving?"

"I tried to wake him. But…"

Great-Uncle M took me in when my mother sent me away from the capital, and he's the reason I know anything about mechanics. He's not technically related to me. He was my father's mentor. During family celebrations like tonight, my uncle would taunt and insult him. It's not unusual for him to skip and drink himself into a stupor.

Well, no matter. I'll simply add his hut to the destinations I fly my Harvester to say goodbye.

I turn on the generator.

It's silent.

Normally, when we turn on the generator, it's clunking and loud, so hopefully…

I peer inside. All the lights are on! "It started? We're golden."

"The last one started too." Shoyebi follows me inside, lanky and covered in grease. "The problem is it stopping. Abruptly. When we're already in the air."

"I've got a good feeling about this assembly."

"Yeah, but if you think about it, there's a reason these parts keep falling to earth."

Our parts come from other servant races, mostly, who fly by to collect our farmed nutrient cubes for the Arrisans. Their ships are barely space-worthy, and they're often made with old parts with patches upon patches. A better source is the occasional wrecks we find from the original invasion. Not that we caused the Arrisans to go down. Oh, no. They were arrogantly hot-dogging or messing around. Crashing over themselves out of boredom, barely aware of any humans they were crushing underneath.

Anyway.

I tear open a packet of cold stims, knock back the bitter liquid—so harsh, so black—and continue into the bridge.

As the caffeine-like substance zips into my veins, tingles go down my spine. I really feel alive.

Most people prefer a little sweetener mixed in. Even Arrisans don't drink it black.

But Great-Uncle M taught me how to do it, just like he taught me mechanics. Stims, like swearing, is basically something I do without thinking about it. It's life.

The bridge viewscreens are all on, glistening, and it's like walking into a beautiful glass dome. Only a few dead lines give away that we're actually sheltered by a meter's thickness of metal.

Also out the viewscreens, I see my uncle's men driving across the field.

Less than an hour! Forty-five minutes? Uncle's serious.

My communication viewscreen dings.

It's a client! Well, technically, a client's mother.

"Captain Zeerah?" She speaks formally in the universal language, Arrisan Standard. "We're at the back gate of the airfield, as your steward directed, but there's no one to let us in."

"Stay there. We'll come to you." I sever the connection and click the intercom. "Prepare for liftoff."

Tayo scrambles inside. I see him on the viewscreen sitting in our cafeteria. I close the door from the bridge and begin navigating.

Shoyebi holds his breath.

The ship lifts silently over the trash heap.

Yes!

My uncle's men stop the hover car, get out, and stare.

I zoom over them.

They rotate to follow our progress, gaping.

"They're awestruck," I tell Shoyebi with a grin.

One of our external escape pods scrapes the summit of trash mountain.

Trash cascades down, burying our hover.

A horrible grinding noise fills our bridge.

My heart catapults to my throat.

Oh, no!

Shoyebi clings to the bridge doorway, praying while I fight the controls. Beyond the airfield fence, there's a wide, open space. I land, narrowly missing the client's car. The whole ship hits the ground with a dusty splat.

"Check the escape pod," I tell Shoyebi, and pass Tayo, still in prayer in the cafeteria. I stand next to the door and operate the controls to extend the gangplank. Hopefully I can salvage my grand entrance in front of the paying clients…

Halfway to the ground, the gangplank stops.

H.

H, h, h.

I work on the gangplank controls, muttering swears under my breath. Finally, it extends to the ground.

Then I walk down the gang plank just as smooth as you please.

The clients stare at me. They have a nice, shiny hover covered in a fine layer of dust from my near-miss.

"Is this the ship?" the mother asks in Arrisan Standard with a note of horror.

"It's optimized for deep space travel, not flying in the atmosphere." I give what I hope is a reassuring smile while inside I'm screaming. "Do you have the rest of your payment?"

They snap out of their dazes.

The nineteen-year-old daughter claws at her father like a wild serval.

The mother puts on her saddest face and switches to English. "Zeerah, child, please. My daughter is your fourth cousin twice removed. We're family."

I raise my voice. "Tayo?"

He hustles down the gangplank and lands fully prostrate in front of them, still in his good party clothes, chin all the way to the dirt. "Auntie, Uncle! Honored elders. This unworthy child greets you."

They huff, but propriety forces them to return the greetings.

The daughter sees Tayo and goes slack.

Perfect.

I guide her into the ship.

The parents' bargaining drifts after us.

"Times are so tough right now," her mother laments, flipping between languages depending on which has words to better suit her point. "How could you ask for money when our daughter is this ill?"

"Auntie, Uncle, do you know how much it costs to stock a ship for outer space?" Tayo responds, keeping to a formal but friendly Yoruba. "For months, we've been eating sand so that we can afford to give real food to your daughter. You won't make her eat sand with us, will you?"

Yoruba are a high-loyalty people. We are required to give generously to family, tribe, and nation, in that order. This is a huge problem when we deal with low-loyalty foreigners. And certain tribes have taken advantage of their distance from Cloud City to pretend they're less Nigerian than they really are.

For example, the suppliers at Humana's one intergalactic port in North America are charging me an eye-watering price for our supplies. Tayo isn't kidding when he says that shorting us on fees will literally take food out of their daughter's mouth. And we got this price after Tayo talked them down using the same arguments that the parents are trying on him.

You can't fast talk a fast talker.

But they're going to try.

I bring my client into her room. Her parents sent over her bed, clothes, and some toiletries when they paid the deposit. I stick with Arrisan Standard. "Well, here you are. We've, uh, gotta fill our reprocessors, so we only have cold stims. You want a cold stim packet?"

She stares at the upper corner of the room.

"No? Um, hold tight, and we'll get on our way shortly." I hurry back to the bridge. Tayo joins me shortly after, and Shoyebi calls that we're ready, which is good because my uncle's people have finally gotten back into their hover, done a U-turn, and are opening the security gate to drive through.

I lift off—silently—but at a too-sharp angle, nearly taking off the top of the fence.

My client's parents try to shield their nice car from the flying dirt.

My control screens flicker.

Oh, no, you don't!

"H-ing H." I smack the glass.

The screens turn on again, and the ship rises once more.

Whew.

"Call the rest of the clients," I order Tayo. My original plan of cruising to each shuttle port—Japan, Brazil, and so forth—is too risky. I might land and never be able to take off again. "Tell them to meet at the intergalactic port."

He tries to drag my captain's chair to the communication viewscreen, but it's welded into the middle of the floor. It's not exactly the most useful there, but whatever. It's my own little throne.

Half way across the Atlantic, well below sanctioned and scheduled shuttle traffic, and also without any approval, I hear a strangled cry.

"Hello?" I don't dare leave the bridge. My stack of empty stims packets is crumpled in a pile next to me on the console. "Tayo, go check on our client."

He does.

But he doesn't come back.

Solo on the bridge, I greet the great glass mountain of North America. This used to be an area of five huge lakes, but now it's a dry and cracked wasteland. This is where the Arrisan laser pushed our planet into a new orbit. Now, it's the intergalactic space port.

My surprise arrival causes a bit of scolding, but I beg forgiveness and land as directed.

The intergalactic port is run by one of the many smaller tribes allied to the same larger tribe as we are. That means we're related, but not super friendly. As long as I have the money for the slip and all the reprocessor food, which I will by the time I get all my passengers, they won't turn me over to my uncle.

I land unevenly, thumping that one escape pod with an unforgiving clink, and park the controls.

Then I go find out what happened to my business partners.

They both strain to hold a door closed. My client's bare arms squeeze out of it. She clutches at them, chanting, "Men. Men. Men."

"She won't stop." Shoyebi's got dried tear tracks on his cheeks, and Tayo looks panicked. "She chased us around the ship. She keeps trying to…to…"

I clamp her wrists together and bring her out.

She leers at the boys.

I raise my voice. "The Vanadisans are going to cure you of your nymphomaniac disease. Okay? Your parents are paying an insane amount of money to get you this cure. So ignore my business partners and come with me."

She lets me lead her back to her bedroom, but as soon as I turn away, she pops out again and dashes around me. In comparison to the dazed and cross-eyed girl I brought on board, she's like a lioness hunting down a gazelle.

Tayo curls into a ball and hugs his knees.

I wrench her off Tayo and herd her back into her room. This time, I activate the door lock.

It's really sad.

Nobody can figure out why they're like this. They can't lead normal lives. Any responsible captain would reject them as dangerous. No responsible captain would try to go to Vanadis. We all know this is insane. Me, their parents, and them. The fact that we're all willing to try shows just how desperate we are.

But even if it takes a while, we will make it to Vanadis and they'll get cured.

And then I'll be someone who's worthy of being invited to family celebrations.

Two days and twenty-odd psychotic, nymphomaniac passengers later, I say goodbye to my cousins for the final time.

"You could come back with us." Tayo eyes the ship, his button-down shirt torn from more than one surprise encounter with the patients. "You could apologize to Uncle and live in his house."

"And be what, a cleaner? I'd rather lie down in a nest of bush vipers."

Shoyebi sniffs. "I want to come with you."

"You'll come on the next voyage. I'll have a fabulous ship, no passengers except ourselves, and we'll all be swimming in money."

Tayo sighs with a dreamy smile. Then his expression backslides into worry. "What happens if you get to Vanadis and they treat you like dirt, just like the rest of the aliens?"

"You think I'll actually make it to Vanadis?"

His eyes bug.

I elbow him, teasing. "I'll figure it out when I get there just like I figured out how to get here. Right?"

He nods, only a little reassured.

I touch their cheeks like my neurologist aunt touched mine a few days ago. She's the one who kickstarted this whole project. She told Tayo about rich patients who'd pay anything for a cure. Tayo insisted I could do it, and somehow, I started to believe him. It's taken a few years, but Tayo and Shoyebi and Great-Uncle M helped me to turn this unlikely dream into reality. "I'll see you again."

They look like they're going to protest.

But they don't.

I see their faces on my external viewscreens as I lift off.

The ship manages, shakily, to break through Humana's atmosphere and launch into space.

We cruise through the solar system and soar past the Oort cloud.

Outer space is big, empty, open.

Desolate.

And very, very hostile.

But the horizon is infinite. I can keep quiet, I can sneak around. I can keep running.

This is the start of big changes.