I shook my head with emphasis. “Oh my god, yes. So awful. Like squealing tires, but worse.”
“Hmm, I’ve always rather thought it sounded like a small animal dying. You know how they do that high pitch death scream? Like that… only worse.”
A giggle escaped and I didn’t bother stopping it. “No, no, more like when a baby pig is picked up, but someone put it in front of a bull horn hooked up to full concert speakers.”
Rathal’s face turned inwardly thoughtful, like he was searching his memory and then his face lit up and he snapped his fingers at me. “Oh, that is good. That’s a good comparison. It's exactly like that!”
We laughed together until our eyes met. The laughter slowly died and was replaced by something else, some kind of tension that strung between us like a corded cable in the silence. I broke first, returning my attention back to the Assembly.
“Have you thought about what I said? You’ve had time to clear your head, what with your jaunt with the twins and their meddling mates. Naughty, Callie. Very naughty.”
The question was asked in a low tone that wove around me and set my heart thumping like a frightened rabbit. I opened my mouth to tell him a lie and that no, I hadn’t thought about it and I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was talking about. I absolutely hadn’t snuck out with the twins and gotten into a gladiator fight with Soreel and won but then the crowd’s energy shifted.
“And now to the main motion of this orbital’s Assembly; the time split,” Som’ae said gravely.
The Assembly room filled with tension thick enough to take a bite out of and the rumbling of agitated voices reached a level ofloud that I sure was going to blow my eardrums until Rathal rose slowly from his seat. The noise dropped in waves as the people of Erral spotted him rise and make his way to Som’ae who stepped down from her stool and waved him to the podium.
Rathal took his time adjusting the little amplification disc, twisting it this way and that before finally looking up and sweeping his gaze over the crowd, who sat waiting in a tense bated breath silence.
“Remember to keep your vote to the Link. I want no shouted votes. It creates too much chaos. Are we ready?” Rathal asked, his eyes sweeping the room from one cavernous corner to the next.
Forearms were raised in unison, the glowing light of the Link embedded in their arms like lighters at a concert.
A tall, willowy alien with ribbed insect-like wings and tall antenna stood from the middle most row, a spotlight moving to shine on her. She shimmered like she was covered in fairy dust, or maybe tiny scales under the light. She tapped her Link and a holo screen popped into place and looked up at the room with huge round eyes that were multifaceted like a fly.
The glittering bug lady spoke in a high voice, projecting the sound around the room with well practiced ease. “The motion is as thus; to keep to the thirty hour rotation, we of the Light propose a more fair split of fourteen and sixteen.”
A sudden and violent explosion of protest erupted around the room. A bulbous flowering type alien pointed a thick vine at the bug lady and screeched a slew of curses at her. The bug lady threw her arms up in a clear challenge and that’s all it took to pitch the animosity from shouting into a brawl. The flowering alien crawled over others with tentacle like vines and the bug lady met him halfway in mid-air. It was on from there. I ducked down in reflex to a falling body and laughed, before jumping over my chair and hiding behind it. When I peeked over the backof it to look at Rathal he was staring at me with a long suffering look of pained acceptance. It made me laugh harder. He shook his head at me in mock disappointment, his mouth curling at the last moment and my grin got wider. Okay, so maybe the chaos of this station was growing on me, but oh lord were we going to be here forever.
Blood splattered on the ground in front of me and a squawking, feathered avian species jumped up from the floor after he landed with a bone breaking crunch to charge back into the fray.
I dodged a rock and picked it up, finding the one who’d thrown it and hurling it back at them, laughing hysterically when it pegged the male right between the eyes, throwing him over the bench behind him.
“Where the hell did they even get rocks?!” I shouted to no one in particular.
“They bring them for this such occasion,” a helpful alien female shouted back from the row behind me. I laughed harder. Aliens were fucking weird.
I was still laughing when Rathal pointed at me with narrowed eyes and mouthed ‘No’. I wagged my eyebrows at him and stepped out into the brawl.
nineteen
Rathal
Afteragruelingtenhours and more than a few broken bones, the motion passed. Dark was reduced to sixteen hours. A resounding victory for the denizens of the Light that was sure to cause a celebration that lasted several rotations and would leave people passed out in the streets for twice that length. He didn’t feel any particular way about it this time. His mind was fixed on the glaring problem of his standoff with Callie. He was beginning to feel like he might, possibly, maybe, perhaps, be in the wrong.
He was pacing in his room, something that was wildly out of character for him, as he was never unsure of his actions. He usually slept soundly during the Light, assured that he was superior in every way and that his actions were the only right ones.
Now? This was his twelve hundred and forty eighth journey across his quarters. At this rate, he was going to wear the expensive fibers of his rug. He’d taken Callie back to her room after the Assembly and left her to her sleep, as she’d had aneventful Assembly to say the very least. That willful female had enjoyed herself and had been the cause of a few of those broken bones by the end of it. He’d had to pluck her off a poor battered Oca who’d seen her smaller stature as a sure win and had one of its wings torn off for that wrong assumption. Callie had taken yet another ride thrown over his shoulder, her shaking fist and shouted challenges still ringing in his ears as he’d exited the Assembly floor.
She’d had blood spatter on her grinning face when he’d finally sat her back on her own feet and he’d had to beat a hasty retreat lest he snatch her up and kiss her senseless. The heated challenge in her gaze hadn’t helped things. It had proven impossible to sleep and he’d only managed to stare up at the mural on his ceiling until the paint had seemed to run together and swirl into an incomprehensible jumble.
So he’d thrown his covers off and started pacing. It wasn’t just his push-pull with Callie that was keeping him up. He also had his promise to keep and contacting Anu was something he dreaded worse than a burn at ten gravities into an unstable atmosphere.
He couldn’t put it off forever. He was many things, a thief, a murder, but a liar? That was something he tried to avoid, if at all possible. He might have started this whole courting on the wrong foot with Callie, but to lie to her was to crush it completely.
He curled his lip and threw himself down onto his overstuffed chair with a groan of resigned dismay and opened the first relay that would connect him with the others that spread across multiple galaxies, through various wormholes, and eventually to Korsal and Anu. It took a lot more work than spying on the Unity ships. Anu’s security was sophisticated and ever changing. Her firewall was more like a vast, empty ocean, the currents shifting every minute to keep you off course.
That he could navigate it was a testament to his skill… a skill that Anu herself had helped cultivate when he was a young male. The accursed Elder had been one of his teachers and a hard one at that. That she was good humored only made it worse. There was nothing quite like being laughed at after a stunning failure to see her trap during a lesson in firewall hacking.
