“I never saw Jason on Nugene. I was there. He wasn’t.”
Cesar watched me, but didn’t ask me to elaborate. “After we confirmed his suspicions about the location of the station, I loaned him my only shuttle so he could go off on his damned righteous quest.” Cesar ran his hand over his face and a look of great exhaustion crossed his features. His hand shook like mine.
It occurred to me then that Cesar may not be as strong on the inside as he looked on the outside. Maybe Cesar’s world was crumbling like mine.
He sighed and looked at me with bloodshot, wet eyes. “That was Jason, righting all the wrongs, exposing the corrupt. He was one of the old-school journalists. He’d go anywhere and do anything to get his story. I tried to tell him…”
He stopped and composed himself. “I warned him but he wouldn’t listen.”
“So what did he do?”
“He took my shuttle to the station while we waited on the far side of one of Jupiter’s moons. Nugene wouldn’t even let him dock with the station. They said he was unauthorized, and sent him packing.”
“No one comes to Nugene, except for supply ships and the Gran. I’ve never heard of other ships trying to dock.”
“Well, I’m sure the people running that hellhole hushed it up.”
“They tried to keep secrets. I knew most of them. But I am learning things I didn’t know, so please continue.”
“As you probably know, Nugene is floating on the edge of the electromagnetic zone of Jupiter – not the ideal location for anything electronic or sensitive to electromagnetic storms.”
He obviously didn’t know a thing about Nugene Station. “We had massive battery packs, and our solar collectors generated enough power in one month to run the station for an entire year. The techs bragged about our state of the art hull shielding, some kind of thick polymer layering. Cosmic rays, gamma rays, radiation – nothing got through our shielding.”
“Did it ever occur to you or anyone else, how expensive it is to build and maintain a station that far out from Luna and Mars? Why anyone would go to that expense?”
“For the Gran, of course. Nugene serviced the treaty, providing the Gran with worker drones.”
“That was Jason’s theory. You sit here talking about it like its nothing, the sale of human lives to a warrior race of aliens. I don’t know if you were born on that damn station or what, but anyone Earthside or Colonial will tell you there is no such provision in our treaty with the Gran. Not according to the version of the treaty disseminated by the Defense Council.”
“I read the treaty in Nugene’s system archives. It clearly gives the right for the Gran to purchase specially made workers. Nugene provides the Gran with worker drones. You saw them in the cages. We walked right past them.”
“Yes I did, and if it wasn’t for Jason, I’d never have known this shit was happening.” He slipped his hand across the table to pat my hand. “The things you take for granted are highly guarded secrets on Earthside. Jason intended to expose those secrets.”
“Yes, he said the same to me. None of this explains how he ended up prisoner on a Gran jumpship, or why your men killed him when Jason swore you were coming to rescue us.”
Cesar’s jaw tightened and his grip on my hand grew hard. “It wasn’t supposed to go down like that! We were there to get him out!”
Tears blurred my vision and Cesar let go of my hand. What I really needed was his arms around me, if only to pretend he was Jason, for a moment.
“Listen. What happened was a horrible accident. We walked into a fucking massacre, and all we could see was body parts and blood everywhere. I have no idea how you survived. You got lucky. Jason didn’t. Stop trying to place blame. Stop blaming yourself.”
This was going nowhere. “Forget about the blame. Tell me about Jason, how did he get captured.”
“Jason decided that to blow the whistle on this mess, he needed proof – hard evidence of Nugene’s genetic manipulations and crimes against humanity. Jason piloted our stealth shuttle, out near the station with plans to spy on the Gran jumpships that showed up every few months. His last transmission was a garbled mess. I couldn’t understand him. The high-rad zone of Jupiter does that to instrumentations and radio.”
The impact of it settled into me slowly. I’d already pieced it together for myself, but my mind refused to admit it.
Cesar wiped his eyes with a napkin and continued. “I told him to come back, but he didn’t. The Gran couldn’t detect the shuttle in stealth mode, but they did catch Jason as he was trying to sneak into the airlock of the Gran cruiser, the same ship that picked you up from Nugene. He found his evidence, but in the end it cost him his life.”
The sick irony assaulted me, twisting the chicken soup in my guts. Tears cascaded down my face. I was the hard evidence. I was what Jason needed all along. Sitting on his lap, sleeping in his arms, I was the very thing he sought. Jason didn’t need me to witness to Nugene’s crimes. All he ever needed was a strand of hair or a sample of my blood. One look at my DNA and Nugene Station was bust.
Cesar handed me a napkin and I wiped my face. I fought to find the words to admit to Jason’s brother that in the end, he had found what he was looking for. Once more I bottled up the jagged grief and shoved it away. All I needed was a few more minutes to tell the last of Jason’s story.
“He found the Gran, and they considered him a criminal, which is probably their word for spy.”
“You speak their language?”
“Some.”
“I shouldn’t ask, but I’d really like to know … if you’re up for telling me. What was he like? How did he spend his last days? Was he in pain?”
I fought so hard to keep from crying again. I seized ahold of my boiling emotions and clamped them down hard. I just needed to make it through a couple minutes without breaking, to finish this gut-wrenching conversation.
“Jason may not have felt the same way, but to me, our time together was some of the best days of my life.” Hot tears blinded me again. “He was a good man, Cesar. I loved him so much and now I don’t know what to do without him.”
* * * *
Chapter 8
They had arranged a bunk for me in what used to be a storage room. I held onto my grief long enough to lock the door and turn out the lights. When I finally released the torrent of emotions welled up inside me, I bawled myself to sleep.
Wisely, they left me alone.
I assumed no one cared what I was going through, trying to realign my life again, trying to figure out the point of my useless existence. Yet again I had pinned my world on the life of another. Now I was lost with the loss of him.
I crawled inside my misery and did not want to come out, ever. If the hallway outside my door had been anywhere near the airlock I’d have walked into space and ended it. I hated myself for not forcing Jason to hide in the ducts instead of letting him talk me into flying headlong into the fray. I hated myself for not taking vengeance on his murderers. I hated myself for not being strong enough to tell Jason the truth. I would never know how he felt about the real me, the Angel he never knew.
I realized then what my problem was, and the solution. Love. If I was to live much longer, I had to stop loving people. They were liars, backstabbers, selfish creatures who had no care in the world but for themselves, and their selfish pursuits. I couldn’t survive another Jason in my life – if I was ever lucky enough to find anyone else like him.
Going to the bathroom, I tripped over a bottle of water someone left at my door. That was the sum of my worth to these people: a shower, a meal and a bottle of water. I was an unwelcome guest aboard a ship full of liars who wouldn’t tell me who they were, what they were doing, and how they acquired this tech that shouldn’t exist.
Hours turned into days. There was no sense of time aboard a ship that had no lights-out cycle. I only knew my endless grief, and eventually, I had to eat, though I didn’t want to. I wanted to die.
Knock, knock, knock. “It’s been three
days, Angel. Why don’t you come out and join me for a meal.”
I didn’t say a word but my stomach spoke for me, growling and churning. I stood and came out into the hallway to meet him. It seemed the cruelest joke in the universe, a man who looked exactly how Jason would have looked if he’d lived a few more years. Cesar was handsome in all the same ways I had appreciated Jason, only older, more confident, and wiser.
“We have more of the same, chicken soup. It’s hot and salty, and goes down real smooth with oyster crackers. If you can get through the soup, I have a stash of rum you can try. I’m not above bribery to get you out of this room and back among the living.”
I pulled my hair out of my face and looked at him without a word.
He watched me for a minute, nodded and turned away to walk towards the galley on the lower floor. I followed him down the hall and the stairwell because it was the thing to do. No one else on the ship would speak to me. Where Cesar went I followed.
We slurped soup with crackers and it was delicious. In minutes I was asking for another bowl. Cesar smiled – Jason’s smile. I couldn’t cry anymore, but I wanted to. I’d burned it all out. I was an empty shell with nothing and no one to fill me. Still, seeing Jason’s smile on this man hurt me anew.
Cesar sat in front of me with another bowl of steaming soup and pushed it my way. His eyes looked at my wild black hair I hadn’t combed in days, and then trailed down to my throat. “What’s that around your neck? Is that from the Gran?”
My metallic slave collar fit around the curves of my throat tightly, as if it had been made just for me. I could barely get a finger in between it and my skin. I’d tried to take it off in the sonic shower, but it had no seams, no buttons, no latches. “Yes. I don’t know how to remove it.”
He looked worried. “We don’t know much about Gran tech, but we do know that some of their metals carry embedded nanos that … do things. Some of their electronics are molecular, infused in the metal. We need to get that thing off your neck and get rid of it. Same with that nasty blade you brought on board.”
My gauntlet. I’d left it in my room. “I’m keeping my weapon.”
He raised his hands in the air. “Far be it from me to take a woman’s gadgets away, but you realize the potential issues, right? The Gran might be able to track that cutting torch you call a weapon. If not the torch, then certainly the collar. Why else put it on you?”
To mark their property.
All my life I had been someone’s property. Nugene, the Gran. Suddenly the prospect of killing myself made sense again. Cesar watched me as I stared out the little port window into the blackness of space. “Where are we, Cesar? Where are we going?”
“We’re in Gran territory, near as I can tell. We don’t have much data for navigation on this side of the galaxy. We followed the Gran’s jump wake when they left Nugene. We’ve been jumping on their tail for weeks. We’re praying the navsym can chart us back to our own solar system. The Gran jumped over a dozen times before they settled in at a cruise speed. We suspect this is their home system.”
No one knew the precise location of the Gran’s home system. Why would Cesar follow the Gran to the far ends of the galaxy? For Jason? Or was there something else? “You risked your entire crew to find your brother? When are you going to tell me the truth, Cesar?”
Cesar chuckled, and then an olive-skinned man with dark hair walked into the galley. I recognized him as one of the men who’d participated in the assault that killed Jason. Cesar dropped his voice low and his eyes darted back and forth between me and the other man. “We’re not military, Angel. But you’re not wrong – this ship is DC military. Like I said, we’re businessmen. The war with the Gran created a heavy trade in asteroid mined minerals and the supply lines. These men, hell, my whole family, we worked mines and ran supply out to the richest asteroids. That was before the treaty.”
He put on his best fake-serious look. “Jason may have been an altruist, but I am not. We’re pirates. We’ve been operating outside the DC for many years now. We snagged this ship from the DC port at Luna. I suspect we gave her the maiden voyage, broke her in real good too.”
I chewed on it for a few and realigned my worldview once more. “Why would pirates in stolen military tech chase a Gran cruiser?”
“Beyond recovering my brother from his crusade, we’ve been looking for new territory outside the DC control. The Gran know their way around our galaxy far better than we do. Seemed like a good idea to hitch a ride and catch a guided tour. With the stealth tech on this Shadow class ship, the Gran never knew we were there.”
“You still haven’t told me what’s in it for you, for your crew. The Gran wiped out most of the DC fleet before the treaty. They are not to be trifled with. Why risk them turning on you?”
“For the past two decades since the treaty, the DC has been expanding its fleet by absorbing all sorts of mining equipment and supply ships. My family once controlled several billion credits in freighters and asteroid mining claims. When the Gran backed off from the war, the DC started rounding up every resource and ship in the damn solar system. The DC does whatever the hell they want outside of Earth and Luna. It’s as if there are no more laws, except the laws the DC enforces against everyone else. When they get their hands on you and your tech, it’s called conscription. Legalized theft and forced labor.”
“But the war is over. Why would they draft anyone?”
Cesar started laughing. “Girlfriend, the DC is gearing up for something big. They have been since the moment the ink dried on that bullshit piece of paper they call a treaty. You don’t seriously think mankind is going to sit on their ass when there’s a hostile army of aliens with better tech than ours, and they can jump in and out of our system at any minute? The DC are building a war machine, right under everyone’s noses. I bet the bulk of their Shadow fleet is out past Jupiter somewhere, or hiding in Saturn’s rings. They don’t mess with the asteroid belt, too many pirates, too difficult to police.”
“And you know this because they tried to draft you.”
He nodded. “Yes. I was fourteen when they first tried to take over my father’s fleets. Jason was just a toddler then. We escaped with two freighters and barely a fraction of our wealth in precious metals. We’ve been running ever since.”
“So … these men aboard this stolen ship, they work for you, like mercenaries?”
Cesar eyed the olive-skinned man who was watching us both. “Relax, Azad. We’re thousands of light years from Earthside. Stop worrying about what she knows. I think the lady deserves a few answers. Besides, we’ll be lucky to get our asses back in one piece.”
Azad huffed at him. “I am not a mercenary or a pirate. I’m an engineer, and I’m the one trying to get our asses back in one piece. It won’t do us any good to get home, only to be arrested the minute she opens her mouth and tells someone all these ridiculous tales you’ve been feeding her.” Azad looked at me, instead of talking about me. “Don’t let him fill your head with romantic notions of space pirates. We were miners … once. More like refugees now.”
Refugees with stolen military tech, who were skilled enough to pull off a rescue mission against a Gran cruiser. I knew Cesar was telling me at least part of the truth. These men were pirates, no doubt. And for whatever reason, they didn’t have a single woman aboard ship. D’Anton had a phrase for this kind of situation. He called it, “out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
Cesar nodded at Azad and gave me another Jasonish grin. “That was a long time ago, Angel. Being on the run, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, in the name of survival. When the DC catches up to us – and they have a few times – we don’t go quietly.”
His eyes took on a faraway look. “We’ve been living on the edge for so long, running from the DC and their recruitment squads, I can’t even remember what the inside of a mine shaft looks like. But if we found a way to setup trade with the Gran, started working some asteroids out here, a few thousand light years away from the
DC and their conscription routine, maybe it could be different.”
“That’s what you were hoping for by following the Gran, to establish trade? Do you even speak their language?”
Cesar looked at me funny. I suspected he’d underestimated my ability to cut through his lines of bullshit. There were huge gaping holes in his story, yet I sensed some truth. He was a good liar. His heart rate never jumped once, and he had no problem holding my gaze. No nervous ticks. Cesar struck me as a man who was much more than he seemed, with many dark and dangerous facets to his personality. I decided then I would never tell him the truth about me, what I was.
I had no one I could trust with that information.
Cesar tapped his finger on the tabletop and looked pointedly at my neck, my collar marking me as Gran property. “No, I don’t speak Gran, no one on this ship does, but I bet you do.” Cesar was sharp. Not like doctors and techs, more of a cunning shark-like intelligence.
“You want me to help you do business with the Gran?”
“Perhaps. The idea has occurred to me.”
Azad finished off his cup of coffee and stood to face us. “If you’re done reminiscing, I need help with the navsym. Unless you’d rather starve to death, lost in the middle of nowhere, or let the Gran find us flying around in circles.”
Cesar touched my hand gently. “Duty calls. I’ll catch you later with that bottle of rum, if you’re up for it.”
“You know where to find me. I’m not going anywhere.”
He chuckled and left me sitting in the galley with the last of my cold soup.
* * * *
Chapter 9
Eventually, I began counting the days. Best I could tell, two weeks had gone by, and we still hadn’t made the first jump towards our own solar system. According to Azad, we had another two months’ worth of food and water – if we held to strict rationing. Soup and crackers at every meal. I could get by on it. The soup wasn’t bad, just over salted.