Yvonne has a contemplative look on her face, but she waits until we’re back at our ship and I’ve typed in the coordinates to the last orphanage on our little trip to sit in the copilot’s seat and wait for me to make eye contact.
“What?” I ask, wishing the chairs weren’t part of the floor and I could scoot mine away
“Did you see me talking to that man with the tablet?”
“The gum-chewer? Yeah.”
She snorts. Over her shoulder, I watch Anya dig through the icebox and come out with the extra box of chocolate and mint cookies her sister bought her yesterday. She stuff three in her mouth at once, catches me watching, and offers the box. I take a few before her and Bat can devour the entire thing. She steals my tablet and settles on my bed in the bunkroom, Bat sitting on her shoulder. He looks a lot bigger next to her than when he does that to me. It’s difficult not smile.
“So, get this.” Yvonne steals one of my cookies. “He overheard our argument with that hag in the front—”
Despite my discomfort, I start laughing all over again.
“Focus,” she says, but there’s laughter in her voice. “So he felt bad that we wanted to know something so simple and you were over there helping that kid. So he comes up to me and shows me his tablet and says the lady was lying.”
“I figured she was.” I suppose we ruined our chances of hacking into the building discretely.
“Apparently, all the years from 5628 to 5636 are completely wiped off the record.”
I blink.
“There was a planet-wide power failure about a year or two after you would’ve been there. It wiped out stored data on most of the computers across the planet. Most places of any importance had backups off planet, but stuff like this wasn’t backed up. At least, not in that newest chunk of records. Stuff before that was. He says they back up massive records more often now. But they have no records of any of the kids at that orphanage at that time period.”
I tap a finger along the control panel. Typical. Completely typical. Even if the last orphanage turns up nothing about me, that isn’t conclusive because there’s one place that can’t answer. I suppose it isn’t that big a deal, considering we’ll be heading to Zar no matter what, and DNA is the best evidence there is, but I’d been hoping for something. I know this little detour was just a way to get away from the sibling’s house, but I’d been hoping.
“You okay?”
I nod. “Just the story of my life.”
I mean it as a flippant, amusing remark, but I regret it immediately when her eyes soften, her fingers finding mine along the console. I look at them. It’s strange. Her soft, unmarred fingers along mind, scarred up, still a little red and angry from previous injured, and places where flesh didn’t quite regrow correctly and metal is visible. She has me put those hands on her face when she kisses me.
Humans were hard enough to understand in the first place, but at least fear and disgust is understandable. I don’t much understand this, and it’s beginning to bother me more than any human seeing me and crossing the street with fear in their eyes.
“This is going to work out, Aaron,” she says.
“So nice to be traveling with a group of eternal optimists.”
Her lips quirk. “It takes all of us to balance you and Bat out. Actually, Bat’s pretty good compared to you.”
She eyes the bunkroom, finally figuring out he can hear her, but there’s no sound from the other room.
“It will be,” she says. “Those two really care about you, and we’ll get the right answer on Zar. This will all seem really small afterwards.”
Her being encouraging is a little odd. “Oh, really.”
She nods, eyes unfocused on the wall. “Everything that happened before we got Anya off Amerov seems pretty small and silly to me now.”
“You mean like nearly breaking my ship.”
She grins. “I’m actually kinda sorry for that part, did I mention that?”
“I think once.”
“Did I thank you for that? Amerov?”
Everything seems far away. It’s been a hundred years since Amerov, but it was only yesterday at the same time. The visceral fear of the place is right under the surface if I think to deeply.
“I think so.”
She nods. “Well, I’m saying it again. Thank you for helping me get my sister. I’ll even admit now it was incredibly stupid of the both of us.”
“How gracious of you,” I say, but her thanks is more pleasing than I expected. I shouldn’t let it affect me so much.
“I am nothing if not a benevolent royal,” she mutters, grin returning as she leans over the gap between the two seats to kiss me. Again, I flinch more than I mean to. She doesn’t push it, but I see the slight furrow between her eyebrows. I don’t know what she thinks of me, and I shouldn’t be so concerned over it.
From the bunk room, there’s a soft, “Ooooooooooooo.”
Yvonne laughs, breath drifting against my face, leaning away and clapping a hand over her eyes as she laughs. Face heating right back up, I lean back around the hair and slide the bunk room door shut, turning back to the console and folding my arms.
We have another place to visit, but by the time we near the city, it’s only a shimmer of lights in the dark. Rain started up a while back, and it creates a haze of shimmering, smeared colors to my eyes. Raindrops pelt the viewport and metal paneling. I haven’t been in the rain in ages. I’ve missed it.
It’s too late to go snooping around, so I find the clearest place in the forest I can and settle, glad we don’t have to go hunting for another shipyard. We crush a small sapling, but that’s not going to do anything to our hull. Otherwise, we brush past branches as we settle, a canopy spending above us as they shift back into place. Rain still trickles down.
I sit on the edge of the open airlock, letting the scent of the damp forest fill the ship’s cabin. It’s probably past midnight, but Bat goes flying out the open door with the screech of metal claws on the metal floor, skidding to a stop in a puddle and shooting off into the trees.
“I’m hosing you down if you get muddy!” I call, then wave my hand at the trees.
He probably woke up the humans with all the noise, but Anya seems to fall back to sleep with ease. She fell asleep in my bed again and I didn’t have the heart to move her. Yvonne is in my bunk room as well, probably sharing the mattress. I hear the rustling of blankets, and Yvonne’s familiar footsteps on the floor. When did I start recognizing the sound of her?
Before she can come out, I slide down off the airlock and wander into the trees. It isn’t a terribly cold rain, and I left my coat in the ship. It feels nice, even if the sudden cold momentarily hurts my damaged implants. I lean against a tree, hidden from the ship, and close my eyes. It’s so silent past the fall of rain, my new ears picking it up nicely.
“Aaron?”
I ignore Yvonne’s soft call. She doesn’t need anything, and maybe if I have some time with her eyes not on me, I won’t want to snap every time she gets too close.
“I know you’re out here,” she says. “Where did you go?”
Off to my right, I hear rustling as Bat runs back and then away again. He’s probably finding something else inedible to eat. Yvonne steps up past the tree I’m leaning against. I glance at her. She’s just a shape in the dark, an outline of a heat signature. I catch her soft smile.
“Are you hiding?” she asks.
I don’t want to answer. “No.”
She leans against the broad trunk next to me, arms folded to copy mine. “You’re brooding about something, and I’ll eventually figure out what it is.”
“I’m not brooding—”
She gives me such a disparaging look I don’t even bother continuing.
“Tell me,” she says, nudging my arm gently.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Oh sure, you can ask me what I’m up to, but I can’t ask what you’re up to?” There’s amusement in her voice.
“I’m not up to anything.”
She’s momentarily quiet. Maybe if I’m quiet and dismissive for long enough, she’ll take the hint or give up and go back to the ship. I’m not holding out hope, but I don’t want to talk to her about this. I don’t like having to think it, let alone tell it to some human.
Instead, she leans her head against my shoulder, and I resign myself to her not leaving me alone.
Yvonne has a contemplative look on her face, but she waits until we’re back at our ship and I’ve typed in the coordinates to the last orphanage on our little trip to sit in the copilot’s seat and wait for me to make eye contact.
“What?” I ask, wishing the chairs weren’t part of the floor and I could scoot mine away
“Did you see me talking to that man with the tablet?”
“The gum-chewer? Yeah.”
She snorts. Over her shoulder, I watch Anya dig through the icebox and come out with the extra box of chocolate and mint cookies her sister bought her yesterday. She stuff three in her mouth at once, catches me watching, and offers the box. I take a few before her and Bat can devour the entire thing. She steals my tablet and settles on my bed in the bunkroom, Bat sitting on her shoulder. He looks a lot bigger next to her than when he does that to me. It’s difficult not smile.
“So, get this.” Yvonne steals one of my cookies. “He overheard our argument with that hag in the front—”
Despite my discomfort, I start laughing all over again.
“Focus,” she says, but there’s laughter in her voice. “So he felt bad that we wanted to know something so simple and you were over there helping that kid. So he comes up to me and shows me his tablet and says the lady was lying.”
“I figured she was.” I suppose we ruined our chances of hacking into the building discretely.
“Apparently, all the years from 5628 to 5636 are completely wiped off the record.”
I blink.
“There was a planet-wide power failure about a year or two after you would’ve been there. It wiped out stored data on most of the computers across the planet. Most places of any importance had backups off planet, but stuff like this wasn’t backed up. At least, not in that newest chunk of records. Stuff before that was. He says they back up massive records more often now. But they have no records of any of the kids at that orphanage at that time period.”
I tap a finger along the control panel. Typical. Completely typical. Even if the last orphanage turns up nothing about me, that isn’t conclusive because there’s one place that can’t answer. I suppose it isn’t that big a deal, considering we’ll be heading to Zar no matter what, and DNA is the best evidence there is, but I’d been hoping for something. I know this little detour was just a way to get away from the sibling’s house, but I’d been hoping.
“You okay?”
I nod. “Just the story of my life.”
I mean it as a flippant, amusing remark, but I regret it immediately when her eyes soften, her fingers finding mine along the console. I look at them. It’s strange. Her soft, unmarred fingers along mind, scarred up, still a little red and angry from previous injured, and places where flesh didn’t quite regrow correctly and metal is visible. She has me put those hands on her face when she kisses me.
Humans were hard enough to understand in the first place, but at least fear and disgust is understandable. I don’t much understand this, and it’s beginning to bother me more than any human seeing me and crossing the street with fear in their eyes.
“This is going to work out, Aaron,” she says.
“So nice to be traveling with a group of eternal optimists.”
Her lips quirk. “It takes all of us to balance you and Bat out. Actually, Bat’s pretty good compared to you.”
She eyes the bunkroom, finally figuring out he can hear her, but there’s no sound from the other room.
“It will be,” she says. “Those two really care about you, and we’ll get the right answer on Zar. This will all seem really small afterwards.”
Her being encouraging is a little odd. “Oh, really.”
She nods, eyes unfocused on the wall. “Everything that happened before we got Anya off Amerov seems pretty small and silly to me now.”
“You mean like nearly breaking my ship.”
She grins. “I’m actually kinda sorry for that part, did I mention that?”
“I think once.”
“Did I thank you for that? Amerov?”
Everything seems far away. It’s been a hundred years since Amerov, but it was only yesterday at the same time. The visceral fear of the place is right under the surface if I think to deeply.
“I think so.”
She nods. “Well, I’m saying it again. Thank you for helping me get my sister. I’ll even admit now it was incredibly stupid of the both of us.”
“How gracious of you,” I say, but her thanks is more pleasing than I expected. I shouldn’t let it affect me so much.
“I am nothing if not a benevolent royal,” she mutters, grin returning as she leans over the gap between the two seats to kiss me. Again, I flinch more than I mean to. She doesn’t push it, but I see the slight furrow between her eyebrows. I don’t know what she thinks of me, and I shouldn’t be so concerned over it.
From the bunk room, there’s a soft, “Ooooooooooooo.”
Yvonne laughs, breath drifting against my face, leaning away and clapping a hand over her eyes as she laughs. Face heating right back up, I lean back around the hair and slide the bunk room door shut, turning back to the console and folding my arms.
We have another place to visit, but by the time we near the city, it’s only a shimmer of lights in the dark. Rain started up a while back, and it creates a haze of shimmering, smeared colors to my eyes. Raindrops pelt the viewport and metal paneling. I haven’t been in the rain in ages. I’ve missed it.
It’s too late to go snooping around, so I find the clearest place in the forest I can and settle, glad we don’t have to go hunting for another shipyard. We crush a small sapling, but that’s not going to do anything to our hull. Otherwise, we brush past branches as we settle, a canopy spending above us as they shift back into place. Rain still trickles down.
I sit on the edge of the open airlock, letting the scent of the damp forest fill the ship’s cabin. It’s probably past midnight, but Bat goes flying out the open door with the screech of metal claws on the metal floor, skidding to a stop in a puddle and shooting off into the trees.
“I’m hosing you down if you get muddy!” I call, then wave my hand at the trees.
He probably woke up the humans with all the noise, but Anya seems to fall back to sleep with ease. She fell asleep in my bed again and I didn’t have the heart to move her. Yvonne is in my bunk room as well, probably sharing the mattress. I hear the rustling of blankets, and Yvonne’s familiar footsteps on the floor. When did I start recognizing the sound of her?
Before she can come out, I slide down off the airlock and wander into the trees. It isn’t a terribly cold rain, and I left my coat in the ship. It feels nice, even if the sudden cold momentarily hurts my damaged implants. I lean against a tree, hidden from the ship, and close my eyes. It’s so silent past the fall of rain, my new ears picking it up nicely.
“Aaron?”
I ignore Yvonne’s soft call. She doesn’t need anything, and maybe if I have some time with her eyes not on me, I won’t want to snap every time she gets too close.
“I know you’re out here,” she says. “Where did you go?”
Off to my right, I hear rustling as Bat runs back and then away again. He’s probably finding something else inedible to eat. Yvonne steps up past the tree I’m leaning against. I glance at her. She’s just a shape in the dark, an outline of a heat signature. I catch her soft smile.
“Are you hiding?” she asks.
I don’t want to answer. “No.”
She leans against the broad trunk next to me, arms folded to copy mine. “You’re brooding about something, and I’ll eventually figure out what it is.”
“I’m not brooding—”
She gives me such a disparaging look I don’t even bother continuing.
“Tell me,” she says, nudging my arm gently.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Oh sure, you can ask me what I’m up to, but I can’t ask what you’re up to?” There’s amusement in her voice.
“I’m not up to anything.”
She’s momentarily quiet. Maybe if I’m quiet and dismissive for long enough, she’ll take the hint or give up and go back to the ship. I’m not holding out hope, but I don’t want to talk to her about this. I don’t like having to think it, let alone tell it to some human.
Instead, she leans her head against my shoulder, and I resign myself to her not leaving me alone.
