Songs of Love & Death

capsule had rightly figured that it was safer for the occupant not to be floating in a battle zone, and found refuge.

I landed the Wasp, popped the canopy, and pushed out with such force that I almost hit escape velocity from the tiny planetoid. Jahan’s tail caught my ankle, and pulled me back.

Moving with a bit more caution, I approached the body-shaped container resting in a small crater. The black surface was etched with messages in every known League language, urging the finder to contact the navy headquarters on Hissilek. There was also a dire warning to any that might stumble upon the body that the DNA of the human inside was not to be harvested or touched in any way.

I brushed away the layer of fine dust and ice that covered the faceplate of the life capsule. It was Mercedes. Placed into a deep coma by drugs injected by the capsule. Her long dark brown hair, streaked now with silver at her temples, had been braided, and the braid lay across one shoulder. A few strands of hair had come loose, and caught in her lips at the moment that the capsule had slammed shut around her. I wanted to reach out and brush them away. I studied the long, patrician nose, the espresso-and-cream-colored skin. She was so beautiful—and she was alive.

“Hmm, I thought a princess would be prettier,” Jahan said.

“She’s beautiful!” I flared.

“Ah, I see now. You’re in love with her.”

WE RETURNED TO the Selkie. There was no way to fit the capsule inside the Wasp. I reprogrammed the clamps and secured Mercedes to the hull. It made me uncomfortable treating her in such a disrespectful way, but I couldn’t open the capsule in vacuum and I had no suit for her.

“That was a quick trip.” Baca’s voice filled my helmet.

“We found a survivor,” I radioed back as I brought us in through the bay doors and dropped the Wasp onto the deck.

It was the work of minutes to unclamp the capsule from the side of the Wasp, and blow the seals. I eyed the tangle of IV tubes and the pinpricks of blood that stained her arms and legs where the needles had driven through her clothes and into her veins. While I was trying to figure out how to remove them without causing her pain, the capsule sensed warmth and atmosphere, and withdrew the needles that kept her in a deathlike coma.

I slid my arms beneath her and picked her up. I’d like to say that I swept her into my arms, but at five feet eight inches tall, she was not much shorter than me, and I had to work to carry her.

“You could have waited for a stretcher,” Jahan said as she listened to my panting breaths, and noticed the way I braced myself against the wall of the lift. I shook my head, not wanting to waste the air. “And have you considered that you have put us all at grave risk by bringing her aboard? We were smuggling to a Hidden World. The League will not only imprison us for that, they will assume we know the location of other such worlds, and they won’t be gentle in trying to elicit that information.”

“I couldn’t just leave her there.”

“Because you’re in love with her.”

I summoned up a glare. I didn’t have the breath for a response. We reached the fourth deck level, and I carried Mercedes into our small, but well-equipped, sick bay.

DALEA WAS WAITING for us. I wasn’t sure if Dalea had a medical license, but whatever her training was, she was very good. There had to be a story about why she’d signed aboard a ship, because she was Hajin, and the herbivores weren’t common in space, but I hadn’t managed to worm it out of her yet.

Her coat was white with streaks of red-brown, and a thick shock of chestnut hair curled across her skull and ran down her long neck and even longer spine to disappear beneath the waistband of her slacks. Somewhere along the evolutionary chain, a creature like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe had stood upright, the front legs had shortened to become arms, and the split hoof that passed for feet developed a third digit that served as a thumb.

I laid Mercedes on the bed, and Dalea began her examination. I was jiggling, shifting my weight from foot to foot, waiting. Finally, I couldn’t contain my anxiety any longer.

“Is she hurt?”

“Bumps, bruises.” Dalea filled a hypodermic. “She took a pretty good dose of radiation, probably when the flagship blew. This will help.”

She gave Mercedes the injection. A few moments later there was a reaction. Mercedes stirred and moaned. I laid a hand on her forehead.

“She’s in pain. What was in that shot?” I asked, suddenly suspicious of my alien shipmate.

“Nanobots that will repair her damaged DNA. That’s not why she’s moaning. She’s coming out of a rapidly induced coma, and she’s got that feeling of pins-and-needles in her extremities.”

Dalea exchanged a glance with Jahan, who shrugged and said, “He’s in love with her. What else can you expect?”

“Would you stop saying that,” I said, exasperated.

“So stay with her,” said Dalea. “I’m assuming that if you love her, you must know her, and she should wake up to a familiar face.”

The two alien females left the sick bay. I broke the magnetic seal on a chair, pulled it over to the bedside, and sat down. I took Mercedes’s limp hand where it hung over the side of the bed, and softly stroked it. It was her left hand, and the elaborate wedding set seemed to cut at my fingers.

She should wake up to a familiar face. What would that have been like? To sleep next to this woman? To have her scent in my nostrils? To have her long hair catch in my lips? Once, twenty-two years ago, I had experienced only the last of those fantasies. We had violated lights out at the Academy and met on the Star Deck. We had kissed, and her hair, floating in free fall, had caressed my face.

I was lost in a daydream, tending toward an actual dream, when Mercedes sighed and her fingers tightened on mine. My eyes jerked open, and I shot up out of the chair. She looked up at me, smiled, and murmured,

“Tracy. I dreamed I heard your voice. But you can’t actually be here.”

“But I am, your highness.”

She frowned, and reached up. I leaned forward so she could touch my face. She looked around the tiny space, and she accepted the truth. “Once more you rescue me,” she murmured.

WALKING ONTO THE bridge, I was met with three conversations all taking place simultaneously.

“Why are we still here? No trade, no money,” from Jax.

“Are you going down?” from Baca.

“I think I know what killed the Imperials,” from Melin.

I answered them in order of complexity. “Because I say so. Yes. What?”

Melin picked the question out of my surly and laconic reply. “Kusatsu-Shirane only has three moons now.”

I sat down at my post. “They blew up two of their moons?”

“Yep. Apparently, the Imperials closed with the planet in their normal arrowhead formation. Given the regularity of the moons’ orbits, the folks on Kusatsu-Shirane picked the two moons closest to the ships to destroy. The resulting debris went through the ships like shotgun pellets through cheese. Boom!” Melin accompanied the word with an expressive gesture.

“That would imply that the other three are booby trapped too.”

“Most likely.”

“Madre de Dios! I landed us on one of the remaining moons.” I wiped away the sweat that had suddenly bloomed on my upper lip.

“I think it took a person with a finger on the trigger to set off the explosions,” Melin offered. It was comfort, but not much.

“New plan. Let’s stay away from the remaining moons,” I said to our navigator.

“Good plan,” she said, and turned back to her console.

Baca spoke up. “Then why the dirge from the planet? They won a mighty victory.”