Page 5 of Ava Stargazer (Planet Xai #2)
Ava danced in the control room. She danced in the engine hall. She danced in front of the biologics. Her energy was not able to be contained in walking, even after her fast, nervous run back to the engine room.
The biologics in the tank followed her movements, sloshing as she danced from side to side, until the panel in the control room lit up and an alarm sounded, suggesting an error code from all the extra movement. Oh no. That brought Ava back to reality, and she rushed to the tank to soothe them.
“Shh ... not so much, not so much.” She laughed at the bubbles, waving her hands slowly until they stopped swirling so fast. Smashing her face against the glass, she spoke in a rushed tone. “They found another Human, that’s why I’m so excited. Remember that photo I always carried? They found her! Joy!” Ava watched and clapped her hands as the biologics swirled again, choosing to assume they were as excited as she was.
Between today and yesterday evening with the rain, Ava felt so much better. It was almost enough to put the meeting from yesterday morning with the quorum out of her mind. She tamped down her thoughts and breathed deep to try to settle her heartbeat. Alright now.
Dancing wouldn’t help the situation, even if it felt good. She huffed out loud and retied her hair as she looked around the engine room, hands on her hips. Credits. Right. Need credits. She could do this.
As she was sorting through more boxes, Vox came back in, taking steady, measured steps across the engine hall. She glanced up to see a speculative look on his face. What happened now?
He answered before she could ask out loud. “Iryl pinged back soon after you left. He wants to meet with the quorum this afternoon to brief them on the peace talks.”
Ava paused with one hand on the box she was in the middle of sorting. “So soon? He looked nervous earlier when talking about it.”
Vox leaned against the railing and looked up at the engine, appearing to think hard as well. “Yes, I had to leave your dancing in here to go answer the call.”
“You could have joined me.”
He chuckled. “The biologics were already excited enough. At any rate, maybe you could go visit with Orla, as some of the quorum will be here for this meeting. Orla has been asking about you. She said she could use some help in getting ready for her ceremony.”
Ava nodded, her eyes snagging on his strong frame as he stretched. That’s a good idea. I don’t want to see any of the quorum right now. Seeing just Orla on her own was fine, and welcome. She liked meeting with all of the five women they’d rescued from Torga. “Sure. I bet Sai will come too.”
“Probably. She can’t seem to leave you alone lately.”
Ava had to smile at that, warmth traveling through her body. Of all the women that had traveled back to Xai with her, Sai had been the most vocal in trying to help Ava adapt. The friendship felt good, even as it stung a little, reminding her of how she used to be with Nuor.
“I’ll go get another box. You can be my muscle and take this one down to the cargo bay,” she said to Vox, tapping on the open one in front of her.
Vox looked down and quirked an eyebrow. “Your muscle. And here I thought we had a genuine connection.”
“Yes, and you are strong. Dual benefits.” She looked at the boxes still scattered around her. “I want to get through at least a few more before going.”
“I will carry for you.” Vox sat down with the boxes she had already gone through and looked over her notes. “The meeting will not be for a few hours still.”
“Okay.” Ava looked down into the engine parts. I can do a bit more. She left Vox with the boxes she’d already sorted and waltzed into the control room to get another.
Inside, however, her eyes snagged on the monitors toward the back of the room. She changed direction and her foot missed a step, making her stumble a bit as she caught sight of what was on the screen. What is that?
Right ahead of her, on the monitor Ebel usually used, was the data packet Iryl had referenced earlier from Cipra, now finished loading.
Oh. Her face fell as she crept forward slowly to look, as if the screen could bite. She was almost afraid of scanning it, and actually walked out of the control room first on impulse, turning her back from the screen and skittering away like a pom.
Ava stopped herself after only a few steps and sighed. I’m not a coward. I need to look. Especially after Joy. There’s more out there. I know it. She went back a moment later and walked quickly to the monitor. A brief signature was displayed, flagged by Iryl to be the first thing highlighted.
Her fingers opened the packet Iryl had in the foreground, placing the information prominently on the monitor. She sank down on the same beanbag chair Ebel always sat in as she read the screen.
“She was never just a tool to me,” Ava said the phrase out loud in a whisper, her tongue tripping on the words in Common. Her heart felt like it was skipping beats. Ebel. Tears pricked her eyes. She repeated it a second time, a bit louder, but her tongue tripped just the same again. He sent this to me.
Ava turned away from the screen toward the main engine hall, where Vox was still ripping boxes apart. She tried to yell but her voice came out in a croak. “Vox. Come here.”
Vox’s large frame filled the doorway a moment later.
“Look.” She waved her hand, beckoning him to come closer.
His brow was furrowed as he leaned over next to her to see the monitor.
Despite the screen being large, Ava scooted to the side for him to sit closer, pulling on his arm. “Do you see? It says, ‘She was never just a tool to me.”
“Yes. It has to—”
Ava cut him off, nodding rapidly. “It’s definitely from Ebel,” she said in a soft voice. “I miss him so much.”
Vox sighed, his touch heating her where his hand rested on her shoulder. “I know. Look inside further. See what he gifted you.”
Ava steeled her heart and opened the data. Okay. She sat in the chair by the desk to lean forward and concentrate. “This information is different from what I had access to. It’s from behind the classified area on the Phor mainframe. I never asked or talked about my family to Ebel before, and he never mentioned anything. I didn’t know he had access to ... this.”
Vox regarded the data carefully. “Maybe he always did and never shared since you didn’t ask. He felt distress to see you upset, Ava. He avoided—”
Fire was in her tone as Ava barked back, “You don’t know him like I did. He ...”
She immediately regretted the snap, taking in Vox’s open eyes and startled expression. “I’m sorry.”
Vox pressed down on her shoulder comfortingly as he gestured to the tablet. “It is fine.” He shook his head. “That Phor surprises me more and more. I underestimated him. Do you want company, or to look alone?”
“I think alone first to focus. I need to sit and think in the quiet to ... remember. I only remember pieces from back then. It’s hard.”
“I’ll continue sorting. Call if you want me. I can help scan your mind for you if your conscious memory fails. If you want.” Vox gave her one last pat on her shoulder before leaving the room silently.
Ava nodded and looked at the tablet, not watching him leave. I don’t want that, not yet. If she went too deep in her memories, she was worried they would overwhelm her. She put her head on top of her hands. The sheer amount of data was overwhelming. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. There’s just so much here. The data was going to be hard to go through, but she steeled herself, straightening her shoulders . I need to know.
The main bulk of the information was from Cipra, the place Ebel had bought her from, and where she was born. “Humanity, the perfect help,” she read the headline and then the words underneath, written as an advertisement, aloud, in a whispered tone. “Only strong stock now resides within these walls. Compliant and helpful.” Ava spent a few minutes trying to figure out what that meant. Can’t mean anything good.
The descriptions of Humans were hard to read. The advertisement was short and to the point, with even their intimate anatomy being described. But the descriptions were done in such a cold, clinical way that it turned her stomach. I'm so lucky that I ended up with Ebel . So lucky that she ended up on a ship where her only job was to help Ebel and climb in the vents.
Her eyes started to hurt from reading and concentrating before she finally hit the right place in the file. She cleared her throat and called out. “Vox? I think I found something.”
He came to sit next to her, bringing her some food. It had become a ritual of his to do so, feeding her if she was upset. The fluorescent lights shone bright in the control room, competing with the blue light from the tablet in front of them.
Ava expanded the logs the Phor had, which had been sent by the minders on Cipra as a sort of pedigree. Right here. Her hands trembled as she opened the feed, her body swimming with anxiety as she forced herself to focus. And look.
She spoke slowly, patting his arm until he bent over to listen and look with her. The words came out in a rush. “It doesn’t say what happened to her, but this is her name. My mother never liked us to say her name. She said she wasn’t that person anymore, and we couldn’t say it. But she said it to herself sometimes, and wrote it too. We only called her Mama. But there it is.”
Ava pointed at the word on the screen, voice hitching. “Laura.”
It was spelled in Common and in another way, a funny way, the way she remembered her mother spelling it in her old Earth language, with a right angle for the first letter. My mother. And sisters. And then underneath, fifth in line, was the only thread that the Phor had kept good track of, all the way to R526 . “AVA.”
She traced the line with her finger. Me. Ava’s hands shook, and she decided not to look further at her family lineage, instead choosing to see what else had been sent.
Not all of the data packet was of the information from when Ava was sold. There were also memories there. Simple ones. And much easier to look at.
She widened them on the screen. “These are from when I lived with Ebel. He liked to keep records.”
The logs contained some pictures that Ebel had added from her time with him here on the Phor ship. He measured and weighed her regularly in the early days, when she had arrived and needed to gain extra weight, scribbling little notes in places about what he noticed and silly things she said. Ava smiled as she looked closer. So many records. The file also included a tally of every win he scored at the card games Ebel played against her, until she started winning too, and then that log was abandoned.
She remembered him entering those numbers to declare their victories over each other. At one point she even changed his name to “Ebel is a loser” on his defeats.
Ebel is a loser. . . Her hands shook, suddenly overwhelmed even by these happier memories, and she looked away. I need a break. The monitor got pushed away with a shaky hand as she took a deep breath and forced herself to click off the screen. It made her too emotional to look at that.
“Laura,” Vox finally echoed, leaning close and watching her movements.
Ava sat stiffly, looking absently ahead.
He clicked his tongue at her. “Come here, Ava.”
When she didn’t move, he moved over to her chair, and she felt his strong arms around her as he lifted and carried her away from Ebel’s old beanbag.
His arms grounded her as they sat on another chair. The biologics swirled in the other room, the light muted from a small window overhead that showed her the late afternoon sky of Xai in the background. Ava tucked into him, folding in on herself, and took the security he offered in his arms.
She looked outside through that window over his shoulder as she listened to his twin hearts pump, feeling numb. The stars were up there, hidden right now by Xai’s bright sunlight. But they were so beautiful at night when she gazed at them. What deception . Her head began to pound from the excitement she felt earlier to the grief she felt now. This day is too much.
“How is it?” she whispered into the silence. “How is it that out there is so cruel? I don’t understand.”
Vox swallowed and breathed deep before saying, “I do not know, Ava.”
Another question blossomed, something that Ava never had the capacity or drive to be curious about before. “Who initially sold us?”
Vox just shook his head sadly, his eyes holding no answers. “Did Ebel ever say?”
Ava looked down, thinking. “No. We never had any dealings with the people from Cipra that I can remember. I never saw them again after leaving. I only remember getting shipped from there to R526 ... Celestial ... on a shuttle, and then our ship was off to another quadrant.” She thought for a minute and continued, “The Phor didn’t really care about if something was wrong or not. I mean, they did lots of work for the Tuxa, and look how awful they are.” She paused and then added in a small voice, “But Ebel wasn’t awful. He wasn't a loser.”
Vox spoke in a soft tone. “Ebel told me he bought you because he had another Human before. He must have known more. Maybe he still does know more.”
“If he did, he never shared it with me. That other Human died taking care of the engine.” Ava looked up, her eyes wide on Vox. “Her hair got caught.” She looked back at the monitor on the other side of the room, now displaying a blank screen after she’d clicked off the log earlier. When she had tried to find the party responsible, the species behind Cipra, or anything about Earth, everything came up blank. Ebel apparently only had what the minders sent him, the advertisements and primer on Human behavior, back when he purchased Ava. “I don’t know. They didn’t put anything about their group on there, just the ... Humans. But if the Phor were doing cargo runs for them at one point, it would explain how Ebel knew enough to buy one of ... me.”
Vox hesitated. “Did your mother know?”
Ava shook her head. “I can’t ... remember. A lot of it is fuzzy. She never liked to talk about leaving Earth, said she woke up at Cipra and didn’t remember being taken. She said the Earth was poisoned and destroyed. I don’t know if that means that it's just ruined or if it really is no longer there? The other children, from different mothers, told stories when we saw each other. But I don’t know.”
“I can help scan for you later, if you want.”
She lifted her small container of biologics up to her face, blocking out her view of the sky by looking through it. “You tried before. I just don’t think my mind kept many of the memories at all.” In an undertone she added, “It also hurts my head.”
“Your mind is resistant to going there. I don’t want to push too hard. Especially not after what happened on Torga,” Vox said, looking away.
She looked back down, thinking hard. “I remember them, a little. The minders there. I was so young and some of the medical things they did kind of messed with my mind. But I remember they wore long robes. Here, look.”
Ava recalled the picture as Vox shone, breathing heavy. She showed him an image of a looming, tall creature in robes and skin that was sallow yellow. The features were blurry, but there was an impression of many eyes and a shock of hair at the top. What was distinct in her memory was her fear of both them, and the long batons they carried at their sides.
Vox shook his head. “I do not know what that creature is.”
“I think they were called the Yar? I tried to look them up in the species book I had but didn’t get any hits.”
Her fingers shook as she wiggled out of Vox’s arms.
“Maybe eat first?” Vox questioned, his narrowed eyes on her trembling hand.
Ava shook her head as she stood and walked back over to the beanbag to touch the screen again. She didn’t get very far before her eyes teared up and she couldn’t focus. The room spun as her breathing became shallow, her heart pounded, and she felt lightheaded.
Vox gently tugged her back. “We can go to Cipra, Ava. We should, and see what data we can find on their end. The coordinates are handwritten from Ebel here, even though the facility isn’t on any star chart. The work on the ship to change it to one of our own will start soon, and then we can go once it is done. There’s no need for you to absorb all of this at once.”
“I should . . .”
Vox pushed the monitor firmly away from her and brushed his calloused thumb across her cheek. “Ava. No. You have reached your limit. Take a break. Orla and Erox’s marking ceremony is in two days. Come, we should break some reeds to dry to bring to the ceremony, and then you can visit Orla this afternoon to help her while I do Iryl’s meeting.”
Ava didn’t want to move away from the computer. She sat stonily in place, not sinking into his embrace like she usually did.
Vox tugged on her hand until she looked up at him, feeling the tug almost as an echo. Her fingers twitched in his soft grasp as he pushed her hair behind her ears and lifted her up. “Come on, my sweet. Memories can wait. It is time to live now.”
He’s right. Ava moved to stand before she noticed Vox looking at her arm as he turned it this way and that under the fluorescent lighting with a frown on his face. In the stark brightness, it was easy to see that the top layer of skin was peeling off, revealing a muted bronze color underneath. Looks weird, but it doesn’t hurt. The flakes came off as she rubbed her arm.
Vox brushed at the flaking skin with his hand. “What is this? Should I ask Erox to scan you?”
She ran her hand down her arm and shrugged. “I think it’s from the sun the other day when I was out for a long time and my skin got red and hurt, remember? After we spent the whole day outside? It doesn’t hurt now, but I don’t know why...”
Vox kept his eyes on her arm and grabbed the medicine tube he had used when her arm first turned red. “Let’s put some more on just in case. I don’t know why it looks like your skin is flaking off.”
“At least it doesn’t hurt.”
“Maybe we should limit how long you are out in the middle of the day.”
Ava shook her head rapidly. “No. I like being outside.”
“Yes, I know. Well, as long as it doesn’t hurt.”
He uncapped the tube and began to spread the ointment while Ava looked at the monitor lying innocently on the counter. She tried to get control of her emotions. All my family gone. Every Human I’ve known. It’s just too much.
Her eyes snagged back to the screen and away again, feeling Vox’s gentle motions on her arm. It’s all in the past. I don’t have to absorb it all at once. Or any more now that I know all of the important bits.
Vox finished and cupped his hands over her cheeks before leaning forward to press his forehead against hers. “Come, let’s gather the reeds now, okay? Then you can go meet with Orla?”
Ava forced a smile. He’s right . “Okay.”