3. Zeerah

There are a million ways to die in space.

But the one I'm most worried about is becoming prey.

Even the Arrisans have an alien that they fear.

It's hard to imagine, but there's something so terrible out there that it gives even the Arrisans a sense of dread. It destroyed their home planet about a thousand years ago and nearly ate them into extinction. We don't say the name on Humana. We just say the initial as a swearword.

But I am no Arrisan.

Any aliens could prey on us.

And right now, the main predator I fear is Eruvisan pirates. I just synced with the local satellites to send and receive messages, and also received the warning that they're trawling our area. The images and description put me in mind of crocodiles. Green skin, sharp teeth. They fly bullet-style Marauder ships designed for piercing defenseless ships and sucking the life out of whatever's inside.

Defenseless ships like mine…

"Anything interesting?" One of my favorite clients, Allie, crosses her arms and rests a generous hip against my control console.

She's a fierce American, and she has African heritage. Red tones warm her dark brown skin. Her black hair is plaited into beaded locs that I admire but have absolutely no patience for. I shave my kinky hair the instant it starts to bother me.

She waves at the viewscreen. "Anything worth our time?"

I close the report of pirates. "Not really."

"Then why do we keep slowing down?"

"We're not slowing down very much," I assure her. This is because, sadly, we're not very fast. "We have to sync with the satellites to send and receive messages. Satellites have instant communications. We don't."

Catarine, a young Dutch-Malay scholar, opens her mouth. "Can…"

Allie waits patiently. A lot more patiently than I do. "Can what?"

"…we…not…?"

"Can we not what?"

Catarine stares. A slight frown touches her tan lips.

"Can we not slow down?" Allie guesses.

Catarine slowly nods.

Allie tosses her beaded locs over one shoulder. "See? The diplomat says what we're all thinking. This voyage is already taking forever. Don't make it take even longer."

We're six months into our journey, which is a little less than a quarter of the way, and still in sparsely traveled space.

It's been a pleasant trip.

Relatively.

The kindness of these women continues to surprise me.

This group is low-drama. We all speak Arrisan Standard. Even the countries with similar language groups stick with the universal language, like they're deliberately trying to be inclusive.

They take over my bridge for movie night and painting their nails. They clean the hall floor with old toothbrushes and upholster my hard metal captain's chair in a frilly pink fabric that one of them has inexplicably packed. (Who brings pink frilly fabric into space? For real.)

But they're nice.

Maybe there's no energy for drama because they're too focused on the mystery illness twisting up their brains.

My aunt called it a nymphomania disease because they can't stop chasing it. Also, sex momentarily cures their weird neurological problems. The Vanadisan aliens specialize in bioengineering, and they're interested in obscure diseases. Out of the hundreds of cases my aunt's hospital is allowed to send to them every year, this is the first one that's triggered their invitation.

And so here we are.

"I thought you didn't care about getting cured, Allie." Esme, a freckled surfer from Iran, is nicknamed the ingenue because her weird neurological symptom is fainting. She wears a helmet at all times. "Your illness is your superpower."

"Yeah, I love taking a powerful man to my bed whenever I want. That's why I'm going to drop you all off at Vanadis while I hitch a ride to Arris Central. I'm going to be the first human to walk into the Palace." Allie forms claws with her shapely red-tipped nails. "And I'm coming for the emperor."

Noemi looks up. She's a Brazilian with clear bronze skin, white teeth, voluminous, shiny hair, and an almost unearthly symmetry. Her nickname is the ace. "You can't sleep with the emperor. Arrisans are asexual."

Catarine frowns. "Actually…they're…not…but…"

"But they had their lust organs removed." Esme nods supportively at Catarine. "And ground them up into powder. They have to eat the ‘lusteal,' or they can't reproduce. They can't even get hard."

"I'm not going to seduce the emperor." Allie flexes her claws again. "I mean, I will, but after that, I'm going to grab him by the throat and say, ‘Do you have any idea what you've done to Humana? We're so much more than a food-producing planet!' And then I'm going to kick him in the balls, once for every million people he had killed."

"You can't," says Lia. She's pale, a refined politician's wife from Europe.

"He'll be mush."

"No, I mean, you're going to be there all day." Lia tidies up the drips from an overturned nail polish bottle. They've nicknamed her the housewife. She's always mothering the other women and making the trip a little more pleasant. "That's over six thousand kicks."

"I can do it in an hour."

"An hour? Really? How many times can you kick in one minute?"

The women set up a test, counting how many times Allie can kick her spiked red heels—close to fifty—in one click, which is the Arrisan Standard equivalent of a Humana minute. Technically, it's shorter than a minute, but there's a hundred clicks in an Arrisan Standard hour, which is called a cleg, so it almost works out.

Everything is in tens. Ten clicks in a cleg, ten clegs make up one shift, ten shifts make up one gora. A gora's like a half week, because ten goras make one kortan "month," and ten kortans make up one Standard Year. Which is close to a Humana Year in length, but we just get there using a completely different method.

Esme watches the test, giggling. Then her eyes roll up in her head and she collapses. She got too excited, I guess. Catarine positions her onto her back and guards her.

A few clicks later, Esme wakes up again with a harassed sigh. "How long until we arrive on Vanadis?"

"You don't want to know." I tear open another stims packet.

"There's really no aliens out here? No spaceships of men? Or alien men? Or patrolling Arrisans?"

Noemi carefully oils her cuticles. "I wish we'd get stopped by patrolling Arrisans."

I choke on the bitter black drink. "They wouldn't stop."

"If we were in trouble—"

"Even if we were wrecked and dying, they'd fly right on by." I mime flying by my stack of crumpled packets. "They killed off six billion of our people for no reason. What's twenty more?"

Everyone's quiet.

Because it's true.

We're nothing to the Arrisans.

And that will never change.

We're attacked.

Because of course we are.

I get my passengers into escape pods, and we eject into space like a puff of sand into a hurricane.

As soon as the Eruvisan pirates leave, I'll bring us all back in and fix this…

But the Eruvisans don't leave.

My atmosphere gauge ticks down, click after click. I fight hunger pangs, and thirst. I doze, I wake from a shaky sleep. The atmosphere gauge bottoms out in the danger zone of impending asphyxiation and the pirates watch our demise in a deadly stalemate.

Then, out of nowhere, an Arrisan dreadnought appears.

The gargantuan behemoth destroys the Eruvisan pirates and collects our escape pods.

We're rescued?

By Arrisans?

I am equal parts confused and terrified.

Arrisans don't eat people. They eat the nutrient cubes we farm for them. But we're about as important as ants beneath them. What can this mean?

My escape pod is carried into their ship, past an epic hangar filled with hundreds of smaller ships of the empire, then down smaller hallways deep into their ship.

And then I'm left alone.

The silence is unnerving.

Outside my escape pod viewport, the Arrisan facility is white and sinister.

The air is breathable.

I crack open my escape pod and step out.

This…office?…is shiny, high-tech, and smells neutral, like the air is pristinely filtered. The flooring is firm and gray. The wall viewscreens are so clear, they seem three-dimensional, and every light on the office's control panels is on.

Ooh.

Based on the slides of dead aliens cut up and parts identified on the walls, I think I'm in a science office.

Alone.

The door is locked. The walls look unnaturally thick, like they need the extra strength to contain any unwilling specimens.

I suspect all their specimens are unwilling…

Can I crack the lock? I should consider—

Suddenly, a long, curved sword stabs through the center of the door.

I step back.

It carves out a large circle. The circle is pushed in.

Clang!

The thick metal falls into the office.

An Arrisan soldier steps inside.

My heart stops.

Before I can back away or scream, he's in front of me.

The hood of the oil-slick-gray skinsuit, the Arrisan's impenetrable spacesuit, casts an unnatural dark shadow across his face. I can only see his gray chin. The rest is concealed in shadow.

Like a grim reaper.

His voice is soft but commanding. "You're not Catarine."

Wha…?

Catarine? My Dutch-Malay scholar Catarine?

This Arrisan knows Catarine?

"No," I manage to agree.

He turns away from me, goes to a viewscreen, and calls someone.

My brain leaps into overdrive.

I've been in this office all of five clicks. I was stuck in space much longer, but still. How in the holy H does this Arrisan know Catarine?

During this man's conversation with another Arrisan—in Arrisan Standard, of course, the one official language of the empire—I learn that my sick passengers are teeming with Arrisan lusteal. Overflowing with it. They have so much inside that they give it off like a smoke bomb. It makes my patients into nymphomaniacs, and it's driving the other Arrisans on this dreadnought crazy.

I am the only human from my ship who's not infected. I'm a "proper" human who's incapable of being infected with lusteal, and I'm totally immune to it in every way.

"We'll operate on them all to find out why," the other Arrisan says cheerfully. "Starting with the control subject, Zeerah."

I'm their control subject?

Nope.

Nope, nope, nope.

The Arrisan who cut his way into this science office leaves in search of Catarine. He's not interested in her being cut up, so we have that in common.

I quickly make a plan.

Step one, get out of here. Step two, hide. Step three, find my clients. Step four, something something save everybody and survive.

Okay, the plan needs work, but it's a plan.

Here we go.

I go to the hole.

The metal is incredibly thick. It's twice the thickness of our Harvester ship's hull. I know from all the times Shoyebi and I patched our hull. This metal is smooth where the sword cut it. My nerves squeak as I shimmy through.

On the other side, I land in an empty hallway.

At the far end, someone moves.

Fear lances me.

Run.

I race through the maze of hallways and duck into a supply closet.

The door closes behind me, and a light automatically turns on.

Whew.

The walls are smooth. I catch my breath, calm my racing heart, and touch the wall. It conceals shelving. Images of the contents appear by magic. Everything is nicely labeled in Arrisan Standard.

Shoyebi would cry happy tears, really.

I gulp water, crunch nutrient cubes, gulp more water as I touch all the shelves. Small tools, cleaning supplies, robots…There's a stack of skinsuits? Ooh, want!

I pull open one compartment and touch the square of oil-slick-gray fabric.

It curls around my finger.

Yikes. Maybe I don't want one. I'm not ready for a personal relationship with my clothes.

Someone rustles outside my door.

My mouth goes dry.

Uh-oh.

I push the fabric back onto the shelf and start to turn away, but it wraps around my wrist like a sentient vine.

Hey, wait a—

The fabric swallows me, and I gasp.

It wriggles across my back, stretches across my chest.

Ah! No!

I dance backward, but it slides over my arms and legs, goes all the way under my feet, and hardens into boots, then travels down my elbows and stops at the wrists, leaving my fingers exposed. It feels a little tight at the wrist and ankle, like it's straining to cover my taller form. I try to push it off or peel it up from my wrist. It separates where I tug, but as soon as I let go, it melts back into one substance again. As it sticks to me, it compresses my clothes in a weird way.

At the back of my head pools the extra fabric the Arrisans use as a hood. When they pull the hood on, it supposedly locks in pressure and atmosphere so they can survive awhile in space. It also creates the dark, concealing shadow.

If I put it on, though, I think it will turn into an anaconda and truly eat me.

The supply door abruptly opens, and three Arrisans walk in.

I yank the hood over my head.

It seals with a slight hiss.

An invisible screen appears in front of me. The three-dimensional display prints the current time, the status of the ship, my location, and the invisible shelf labels. Useful information.

It also tells me these men's names and ranks.

"You, there." The supervising supply officer waves at me. "Are you assigned?"

I cough. "Uh, no."

"Grab that corner." He points to a large metal box. "We're taking it to the bridge."

"Oh, uh, actually, I've got something…"

"No, you don't." He shoves the box into my hands—which are still exposed as extremely brown, human, and definitely non-Arrisan. "Check the all-rankings list. I'm above you, Junior Cadet Supply Officer Koron, so you're coming with me."

Junior Cadet Supply Officer Koron?

Me?

Is that whose skinsuit I'm wearing?

Or, since I didn't exactly choose to put it on, I should say that's wearing me?

This supervisor is done with my confusion and shoves me.

We carry the box down the hall to the Arrisans' terrifying elevator-shaft transport system called the grav tubes and skydive up to the bridge.

I pass about a million Arrisans.

But I can't care about it because I'm too busy biting back my screams.

My new supervisor suddenly grabs a handle on the wall and swings into a hallway.

I slam against the box, feet dangling, and nearly topple us all backward into the tube.

My new supervisor yanks the box—and me—to safety. "Don't try to get out of work."

I press my forehead to the floor, panting, sweating, and shaking.

Well, except my hood has the barrier. So I press my forehead to the invisible barrier and gasp.

Other Arrisans shuffle around us.

"Honestly." He picks me up and sets me on my feet. "If you're that hurt, you should use a medkit on your burns."

I make an incoherent noise.

"Your burns," he repeats. "Burned hands."

What?

He thinks my skin is ten degrees darker and an entirely different color because I've burned my hands?

No. Nobody believes that. He doesn't believe that.

"If you're not in pain, cover them up until your skin has regrown." He flexes his fingers. His skinsuit extends over his fingers into gloves.

I shakily mimic his movements. Junior Caded Koron's skinsuit travels down and encases me like gloves.

He tsks. "So careless. Come on."

I grab the box he shoves at me again and stumble after him.

This is unbelievable.

It's a trap or something.

I am the luckiest human that's ever lived.

I'm using up every single ounce of luck in my entire bloodline right now.

I follow him through the crowded officer's corridor. My new supervisor watches me closely to make sure I'm not "shirking." Under his gaze, I walk right into the brain of the ship.

The bridge.

My last remnants of panic are replaced by awe.

It's the most beautiful bridge I've ever seen.

"Stand here." My supervisor's eyes narrow in warning, but there's no need. This is the last place I'd try to stage my escape. He restocks the bridge storage closets.

I clasp my still-trembling hands and gape at the majesty.

Although we're in the center of the vessel, separated from Outside by about a thousand meters of halls and rooms and metal in every direction, the viewscreens are so perfect that it's like glass looking out into space.

The bridge officers sit around a giant glass tree trunk. They face outward, typing onto invisible control panels with only the barest flicker of reflected lights.

My hood display helpfully tells me which Arrisan is in each position. It identifies the star charts on the huge wallscreens. Overlaying the false view, maps display different regions of the empire. One, over there, is focused on Arris Central, in the center of the empire. That means way off, too far away to be seen at this magnification, is Humana…

Oh, I feel homesick right now.

Six months—I mean, kortans—of space travel was fine, but right now, I'd give anything to be sitting in the dusty airfield, waving away the insects and stench of hot garbage, chatting with the guys about impossible dreams and infinite life.

One viewscreen switches to an incoming transmission from an Arrisan nobleman named High Commander Drin.

Unlike my little Harvester ship with its dinky comm relay, Arrisan dreadnoughts trail their arrays for thousands of actungs, like jellyfish tentacles, and sync to the satellites automatically. They have instant communication anywhere in the empire, always.

High Commander Drin snarls at the captain. "Falkion, how could you drop everything for these stupid lessers, these…what were they called?"

"Humans." Captain Falkion's gruff voice sends a little shiver down my spine. "From Humana."

"Where?"

"It's a planet beyond Galacticus."

"Beyond? Ridiculous. There's nothing of value out there. The Harsi are a threat."

I jolt. We never say the full name, but apparently, the Arrisans have no problem naming the aliens who once nearly destroyed them.

"These ‘humans' are no threat," High Commander Drin continues. "And how can they control us with our own lusteal? Madness."

"Yes, sir." Falkion's reply is flinty, unyielding. "You'll have your answer after I've caught the Vanadisans and annihilated their treachery."

"If you disappoint me, Falkion, I'll annihilate you."

Falkion lowers his chin. He sets his feet, facing the high commander like a man standing against a tsunami and expecting to still be standing after it passes over him. "Understood."

"I gave you this dreadnought, and I can take it away. You're the youngest captain in the fleet. Don't get soft."

High Commander Drin terminates the connection.

There's a long silence on the bridge.

His officers exchange worried looks.

My aunties exchange those same looks whenever someone tries to stand up to my uncle.

But Falkion doesn't pay them any mind. He studies the viewscreen maps and sorts through them. He tears open a stim packet—one my supervisor has just restocked in his console—and knocks it back cold.

His silver irises trace the possible trajectories of his prey, exceptionally focused.

I can't take my eyes off him.

From the side profile, he looks like every other Arrisan. Short black hair, medium build, gray skin.

They look identical because a thousand years ago, their race was nearly destroyed. The survivors bred themselves into supersoldiers. They mostly have test-tube babies, not families, and never relationships. The only visible difference between genders on a ship like this is that men have four black spikes on the backs of their ears, and women have five.

I wish I dared to stand up to my uncle like that. I'd love to tell him, "Understood," and then go my own way.

That explains my sudden flare of admiration for a man who otherwise terrifies me.

I see he also drinks his stims black, like me.

Maybe, someday in an alternate reality, we'll sit down together, drink cold packets of stims, and have a captain-to-captain chat.

Sure.

Maybe.

Falkion turns to his bridge crew. "Where are the Vanadisans?"

"They've run," the second-in-command says. "In fear, as they should."

Falkion smirks like a god before mere mortals. "No one outruns a dreadnought."

"Captain." The internal officer clears his throat. "What about the tests we're supposed to complete? We are a newly commissioned ship."

"Do whatever can be done while we're underway."

"Ah, sir." The communications officer lifts her finger. "The human who escaped from the science office has disappeared."

"Find her," Captain Falkion flexes his wrists. "Before she causes me any more problems."

Cold runs down my spine.

Are they talking about me?

I slink closer to my supervisor.

"You want her in the brig?" the communications officer asks.

"That'll be a treat for a dirt-planet lesser," their navigator comments, sliding through maps as he searches. "An Arrisan brig is a luxury hotel."

Falkion grunts. "Just find her."

"We can't make things too comfortable for the creature," the second-in-command, Kollok, chuckles. "Or do you want to defy the high commander's orders? Don't get soft."

"Soft?" Falkion's voice takes on an edge. He paces across the middle of the bridge. "Soft on a lesser who's infested my ship like vermin? Do you know what I do to vermin?"

Falkion pivots on his heel and lifts his wrists.

Simple black wrist tattoos show he's not just an Arrisan. He's an elite soldier, a blade. I"ve never seen one in real life, only in the videos of them slicing up our ancient jets and tanks.

Falkion's tattoos separate as silver metal swords emerge from his forearm skin sheaths.

Everyone freezes.

The swords gleam as they grow unnaturally large, bending space and time, nearly touching the ceiling and far edges of the bridge.

Falkion twists, changing the shape of the biological metal. They reflect light like a viper's fangs hypnotizing its prey, about to strike. All of us watch, transfixed.

"I'm going to fillet her. Carve the muscle from the bones." He swings one silver sword in a circle. The air whistles eerily as his molecule-thin edge separates atoms from electrons. "Kick her sludge out the airlock." He slashes the air. "And watch her suffocate, an ooze of shapeless flesh."

My blood turns to ice.

Horror pulses in my throat.

My legs tremble to run.

Falkion sucks in his blades. They slide into his forearms, bulging in unnatural directions, and then smoothing to normal as if they'd never appeared.

Falkion smirks at his vice-captain, Kollok. "Is that too soft for you?"

Kollok and the other officers chuckle uneasily.

Falkion casts his silver gaze over the bridge. "I wish she were here right now."

I quickly lower my head. My hood slides forward and shields my face completely.

My supervisor pulls the box toward the door, and I stumble after him, grateful to carry it away.

We will never drink cold stims together.

I will never tell him I admire a single thing about him.

His face means death.

The day he sees me is the day I die.

Falkion's challenge echoes from the bridge behind me. "Bring me the lesser!"