Page 11 of Seven Oars (Rix Universe #3)

Someone was crying, a long, keening sound that went in all the way to the soul.

Voices. Not Universal—the words were too familiar.

The din of a strange mechanism working, scraping, laboring deep underneath.

Cold. She was so cold.

Reality gradually returned.

Rosamma was back in the Cargo Hold, with no memory of how she got there.

The dim, flickering overhead light cast wavering shadows on her fellow countrywomen’s stooped, huddled figures that radiated soul-crushing distress.

Then it all rushed in: the scene at the Habitat, Phex, the charm spice, and the desperate feeling of time running out as she watched Striker Fincros’ boots walk toward her.

Rosamma rose on her elbows and spoke Sassa’s name, but only a croak emerged.

Gro rushed over.

“Thank God you’re back! I thought…”

Gro had to wipe her eyes as her voice hitched.

“I thought he killed you.”

“I guess not.”

Rosamma wasn’t sure of anything at the moment. Her head was not on right. She clasped Gro’s bony hand and looked around in a sort of dry disbelief.

The door to the shower stall creaked, and Alyesha emerged, face freshly scrubbed and drawn. She made her way to the provisions shelf and, selecting a pack of dried sweets she normally steered clear of, tore it open and chewed, standing up.

Anske was praying, tears dropping on the brightly colored geometric shapes in the book in her lap.

Fawn lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, hiccuping.

Phex wasn’t among them.

“Tell me it didn’t happen,”

she whispered to Gro.

Gro looked away and said nothing.

The crushing disappointment was unlike anything Rosamma had ever experienced. It wasn’t disappointment in Phex, but in the cruel fate that had stripped them of their will and allowed the unthinkable to happen.

If they were guilty of some terrible sin, Rosamma wanted to know what it was, because the punishment heaped upon them was severe.

“And the others?”

she whispered.

“The others were spared because the pirates got into a fight over who got to choose first.”

Gro rubbed her knobby knee that showed signs of swelling.

“Who’d they choose?”

“Not me. I’m too old. And not Eze. Sakkas are the lowest of the low to them. They beat her, though. Nud worked her over real well.”

She let out a shuddering sigh.

Eze was sleeping nearby. Passed out, rather. Her slack face was misshapen like Phex’s had been, the same grotesque mask of inferiority and pain.

“Will she be alright?”

Rosamma asked, her voice still groggy.

“Don’t know. Don’t want to think about it. Can’t help her more than bring water. Ain’t got no medical supplies, and I’m no doctor.”

Gro was crying.

Rosamma’s eyes remained dry.

It was strange to have a whole chunk of time taken from her. The worst kind of time, yet she felt cheated. She should have been present, fully conscious, to share the horror fairly. Not that she wanted to, but she was one of them. A woman.

Ironically, not enough of a one to the pirates, precisely because of the very natural monthly female occurrence. And how twisted was that?

As if reading her mind, Gro added, “Thank your lucky stars the Striker knocked you out when he did. They lost all reason out there.”

Rosamma didn’t feel particularly lucky.

Her gaze landed on an empty pad.

“Gro, where’s Daphne?”

she asked, looking around.

The sharp movement caused one side of her head to throb. When she touched the tender spot, her fingers found a knot where the Striker’s fist had connected with her skull. For whatever reason, he hadn’t wanted to kill her, or she’d be dead, her skull smashed.

She felt almost regretful.

Gro also looked around.

“I’m not sure. Eze told her to hide when they brought in that drug. She scampered out of the Habitat.”

Gro put her head into her hands.

“I know we have to go find her before someone else does. I just can’t… not now.”

Alyesha finished her snack and folded the wrapper neatly.

“Well, the worst is over.”

Anske stopped the prayer mid-sentence.

“Come again?”

“I said, the worst is over.”

“Do you think it was a one-time thing, what happened with Sassa?”

Anske asked, her voice full of hope.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what?”

“Now we know that for all their big size and alien bodies, the Rix are no better or worse than our men. They like to fuck. Great! We can work with that.”

Anske’s face pinched in concentration.

“Alyesha, I’m not sure I get your drift. What are we going to work with?”

“Male nature, dummy. We’d be fools not to exploit it. And we are going to use it to our advantage, so we can escape.”

Alyesha’s face actually brightened; her cheeks regained some color.

Anske looked up at Alyesha with utter seriousness.

“I don’t know if I can survive alien sex, but I’m with you.”

Then she turned toward the corner where Sassa was hiding from the world under her blanket.

“But I can only speak for myself.”

Fawn had by now stopped hiccuping.

“Sassa’s too neurotic. She should’ve taken a hit like Thilza said. It helps a lot.”

Alyesha curled her lip at Fawn.

“How you smoked that rank shit and didn’t rupture a lung is beyond me.”

“It does smell kind of vile, doesn’t it?”

Fawn admitted good-naturedly.

“But when you take it in…”

She whistled.

“Velvet. And Thilza’s nice.”

Anske made gagging noises.

“You can have him. All of them.”

Fawn giggled.

“He told me their dicks really are internal. They pop out, already hard, at just the right moment. Jack in the frigging box! Asked me if I wanted to see. You knew, right? Rosamma?”

“You can shut up any time now,”

Gro mumbled.

“She’s still tripped out,”

Alyesha dismissed Fawn, and the subject of alien penises was closed.

Rosamma crawled next to Eze, feeling helpless and despondent. She tried to pass her energy into Eze, rationalizing that if Rix were receptive, then Sakkas could be too, but it didn’t work. Her precious energy trickled out from her fingers and washed over Eze like water over boulders. It was the same with humans. Their compositions didn’t incorporate energy flows the way other aliens did.

With Eze out of commission, she helped the women restart the water filter so they could bathe. It was a welcome distraction, and she was glad she knew how. Gods, she hoped Eze would survive and recover.

The women washed some of their clothes as well, careful to take off only as much as was tolerable. They tidied up the Cargo Hold as a form of distraction from what had happened, but mostly from what was yet to come. The anticipation was wearing them down.

The worst part was cajoling Sassa from under the blankets. She’d stopped crying but mutely refused to come out. She didn’t wash, didn’t eat, and didn’t talk. The only thing she accepted was a sip of water taken through a straw Rosamma stuck between the folds in the blanket.

“She needs time to heal,”

Gro said in a tone that suggested her words were a platitude rather than a true sentiment.

Sassa had been unraveling since before their capture, and this latest development had the potential to break her irrevocably.

And Phex was at fault.

Rosamma wondered what the pirates were doing to him now. She wondered what he was feeling after what he’d done.

Her head ached in two different ways: the sharp pain of the blow, and the dull ringing of low energy. She was cold and hungry, but the effort it would take to rise from her pad and get something to eat was too much. Asking Gro would be an imposition. And the others? Forget it.

She’d never asked for much, never complained in her life, partly because there was no one to appeal to. She hadn’t had a close friend growing up, coached to stay out of larger society on account of her illegal status. Her mother had been too far gone on drugs and booze and too deeply depressed to listen, much less care about her sickly, half-breed daughter’s issues.

So Rosamma learned to keep her hopes and fears to herself. From early youth, she’d become adept at processing the frightening changes taking place in her imperfect body, and coming up with ways to cope.

After her mother’s death, she’d been adrift, alone and unsure where a safe haven might be for someone like herself. Puberty hadn’t been kind to her, molding her girlishly cute looks into the thin, pale creature she was today. It had crushed her strength and vitality.

Finally, after an incident involving her, a drunken man, and Ren armed with a stun gun, she had been confined to her room at the apartment. At the time, she’d been on board, grateful for Ren and Uncle Zaron’s support and protection. She’d been secure in her conviction that they knew best.

And then, little by little, day by day, trapped inside those lovely cream walls, left one-on-one with books and yarn for knitting, she shut her hopes down and unplugged the cord.

Nothing to complain about.

If Ren hadn’t decided to go to Priss, Rosamma would’ve spent the rest of her days like she’d spent the last ten years. Alone.

She closed her eyes.

She didn’t blame Ren for dragging her out into this harsh and unforgiving world. She hated the pirates, but going back to the apartment had become unthinkable. All she wanted was to have a future. Why was that too much to ask?

Eze groaned.

“She’s coming ‘round!”

Her fatigue forgotten, Rosamma scrambled after Gro to fuss over Eze, who was in and out of it.

Fawn, who had fallen asleep, sat up groggily.

“Is she alright?”

“As well as can be.”

Sounds of revelry came through the open hatch. The pirates were not sleeping. Those ghouls hardly did.

Gro sighed.

“I have to go look for Daphne.”

“I wouldn’t go out if I were you,”

Alyesha cautioned.

“If the girl could find a place to hide, she can find her way back.”

Gro shook her head.

“I can’t count on it. And she’s been gone a long time.”

Alyesha shrugged, refusing to make it her problem.

Rosamma chewed her lip. She thought of waiting longer. Then she thought of Daphne by herself, easy prey.

And she came to the unwelcome decision.

“I’ll go look for her, Gro. You stay with Eze.”

Gro raised her head sharply.

“It’s a bad idea. Do you remember what happened the last time you ventured out?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, let me just…”

She tucked a cover around Eze.

“And I’ll go with you.”

The prospect of venturing out alone made the soles of Rosamma’s cold feet break into a sweat. But she looked at Eze’s battered face, suffered for nothing more than being available when a pirate needed to blow off steam. If something like that happened to Gro, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself.

“Eze needs you now,”

she said.

“I’ll find Daphne and be right back.”

Gro looked torn, but Rosamma didn’t give her a chance to argue.

She slipped out of the Cargo Hold and tiptoed along the passageway. Her heart was beating way too fast. She had to slow down and put a hand on the wall, waiting for the vertigo to pass.

Then she crept forward more slowly.

If she were Daphne, where would she hide?

The passageway seemed dimmer than usual, but it could’ve been her imagination. There was smoke clinging to the mesh floor, its tendrils weaving low, hugging the walls.

It was a different kind of smoke, not Thilza’s pipe. It was odorless. Menacing.

Rosamma kept going.

Her biggest fear was that Daphne had made it to the Crew Quarters and tucked herself into some pirate’s sleeping node, Goldilocks-style. She might now be sleeping peacefully in a warm bed, waiting for the three bears to discover her.

If that were the case, she’d be safer in the forest with real bears. Here on Sever Oars, the ending to the fairy tale would be stomach-turning.

Saying a silent prayer to keep the girl from harm and cursing her weakness in the next breath, frightened to the point her legs shook and refused to obey, Rosamma reached the Crew Quarters.

It was a larger area with its own small passageway and an outer room. She saw a table with stools—a dining nook—and racks of exercise equipment. On one wall, there was another kind of rack, with weapons clipped in place by fancy bio-sensitive locks.

All was still. Not a body in sight. The oar in this module was quieter, but no less powerful. She picked up its rhythmic vibrations through the floor.

Edging closer, she eased the flap to the first node aside just a hair to peek inside. She didn’t know what she’d do if she found a pirate occupying it. Her sole focus was Daphne.

The node was empty.

She checked all the sleeping nodes. Every single one. She was very lucky that the pirates weren’t here.

But neither was Daphne.

Back in the passageway, Rosamma leaned against a wall, thinking. The girl wouldn’t have gone far; she wasn’t known to run off or explore.

Slowly, Rosamma retraced her steps. Adrenaline subsiding, she started to feel uneasy, as if she were being watched. Music blared from the Habitat as she scurried silently by, and Tutti was speaking in its movie-star saccharine tones.

Only two areas, the Cargo Hold and the Crew Quarters… but wait, there was also the Bridge.

She walked there briskly and studied the airlocks.

The smoke was denser here. The lights flickered.

The tightly fused aperture of the trash chute was wide enough for a body to fit through. A horrifying thought.

But Daphne wouldn’t be able to activate the chute on her own.

To her right, the chrome lever of the Meat Locker gleamed through the veil of smoke.

Rosamma swallowed and took a step forward.

The smoke swirled, and she was no longer alone.

A large figure stood where the Bridge flowed into the passageway. The haze and poor lighting concealed his identity.

Large. Male. Alien.

That was all Rosamma knew, and that was all she needed to know.

She’d been busted.

But she’d come this far, and technically, the Striker had given the women permission to roam.

The figure was motionless.

Emboldened by his lack of advance in her direction, Rosamma concentrated on the Meat Locker’s door.

“You’re looking for the girl.”

The statement floated on the wisps of smoke, the voice low and oddly beguiling.

Of all the pirates, it had to be him. And he knew about Daphne.

Rosamma’s heart sank.

Oh, Gods, please let her be alive. Please let her be whole.

Rosamma didn’t acknowledge the Striker’s statement. She had no words that would sway him. She had no words for him, period.

She wanted to run back to the Cargo Hold so badly she could taste it. But not without Daphne.

A fleeting glance confirmed he still hadn’t moved.

She took hold of the chrome lever and pushed it down.

It didn’t budge.

“Such effort, weak one,”

he taunted her softly.

“What will you do if she isn’t inside?”

Despite the distance separating them and the din of the space station, she heard each word, picked up every inflection.

He had a smooth way of speaking their bastardized version of Universal, with rounded vowels and no nasal overtones. In an odd twist, the smoothness only enhanced the terrifying aspect of his hypnotic voice.

Frantic now, Rosamma pressed the lever harder. She knew the door wasn’t locked, but the latch wouldn’t respond to her feeble efforts.

“What will you do if she is inside? Will you go in?”

Heaving a dry sob, Rosamma yanked at the lever.

A shadow passed over her. Her insides shrank in foreboding.

The lever gave way, and the door swung open.

Daphne was sitting on the floor inside the Meat Locker. Her lips were blue from the cold, but she didn’t seem bothered by to it. Her eyes skipped over Rosamma without recognition.

She was busy. With her untrimmed nail, she picked off tiny chunks of icy fat from Father Zha-Ikkel’s flank and flicked them. Scraped and flicked, leaving deep scratches in the dead flesh.

Rosamma bent over and threw up the pasteurized gelatinous soup she’d had for lunch.

When it was over, she looked over her shoulder.

She was alone, and the smoke didn’t seem as heavy.

*****

“Thank God you’re back!”

Gro smothered Rosamma in a hug after she fussed over the indifferent Daphne and opened a can of food for her to eat.

“I was about to go look for you too.”

“No worries. I am glad I found her,”

Rosamma said.

So many other things to be glad for: that she hadn’t found pirates in their beds, that Daphne hadn’t pitched a fit when Rosamma pulled her away from the Meat Locker, that the Striker hadn’t harmed either of them.

Now, she wasn’t even sure there had been a Striker. Or smoke. Maybe it was just a hallucination born out of a massive swell of emotional distress, overlaid onto her diminishing mental state.

In other words, she was losing it.

Rosamma told the women about finding Daphne in the Meat Locker, but spared them the details.

Afterwards, she joined Gro at Eze’s bedside. Eze was conscious but in too much pain to follow Rosamma’s account of snooping in the Crew Quarters.

“There are weapons,”

Rosamma told Gro.

“Locked up on the wall. I’m thinking we should go back and see if we can get to them.”

The idea sounded wild even to her ears.

Gro wasn’t taken in.

“I still can’t believe you went into the pirates’ sleeping area by yourself. You’re mad. And I’m mad at you.”

“Yes, it was nerve-wracking,”

Rosamma acknowledged.

“I was very lucky no one was there.”

“Good. Don’t do it again.”

Rosamma centered her attention on Gro’s lined face, with flinty gray eyes that weren’t as forbidding as the older woman wanted the world to think.

“You sound like my brother Ren, Gro.”

“And so I should. He must worry about you.”

“Of course. But Ren isn’t here to protect me. The cavalry isn’t coming. There’s no white knight to sweep in on his high horse and save us. We’re on our own.”

“What’s your point, Rosamma?”

Gro frowned slightly.

“Only that if I have to go back to the Crew Quarters for any reason we think important, I will. I’ll do anything, for as long as I have a drop of energy left in me, to send a distress signal. To get those weapons. To shoot them! Whatever it takes to get us out of here.”

Gro’s frown deepened ominously.

“What is it about your energy?”

Rosamma only shook her head, pretending to rearrange Eze’s covers.

“You’re sick, aren’t you? Like, with cancer or something?”

Rosamma sighed with resignation.

“Yes and no.”

She gave Gro a high-level explanation of her condition and the role her brother played in keeping her alive.

Gro’s face softened. Hesitantly, she lifted a hand to Rosamma’s face and tenderly moved a stray hair from her cheek. The gesture was so heartfelt that it brought tears to Rosamma’s eyes. Such simple human contact, freely given, even if it came from pity.

From Gro, she’d take it.

“It’s funny, Gro,”

she confided under her breath, “that here, now, I’m starting to make peace with my condition. I wish I could share my energy with Sassa and Eze, but it wouldn’t work on them.”

Gro also had tears in her eyes.

“Silly girl, what do you have to share? You don’t have enough for yourself.”

“I only share small bits,”

Rosamma said, telling Gro about Phex and severely understating the toll the energy sharing took on her.

“It works on him. That’s why he recovers so fast.”

They sat side by side, enjoying the closeness, until Gro cleared her throat.

“I know you care for Phex and think he’s deserving, but I wonder if your sacrifice is prudent in the long run.”

In light of what he’d done to Sassa, Rosamma understood where Gro was coming from. But she wouldn’t give up on him yet, like she wouldn't give up on Daphne.

“He isn’t the enemy, Gro. It’s this place. It’s evil. It’s trying to break us before it kills us.”

“It ain’t the place so much as those malicious alien turds that run it. That’s what’s evil.”

Eze moaned and moved restlessly. Rosamma caught her flailing hand as Gro gently soothed her battered face with a wet cloth.

They comforted Eze until she fell back into a fitful sleep.

After eating a small meal, Anske read passages from her Holy Guide and sang hymns. No one actively participated, but they listened, yearning for the small comfort it provided.

The space station quieted down and stayed quiet, with only the never-stopping oars grinding and straining, invisible, supporting life. The jerking light cast the Cargo Hold in shifting shades of gray. Such was their home now, this unattractive, unidentifiable place.

Time moved slowly, yet there was an undercurrent of urgency, as if there wasn’t enough of it.

The women weren’t locked up in a cage, but they were worse than prisoners.

They were toys.

Suddenly, Phex walked into the Cargo Hold.

He came in limping. Blood had spilled on his shimmering defender shirt, its Rix bluish color perfectly matching the material in tone and somehow also shimmering, as if alive.

The women froze, watching him warily.

Instead of going to his usual spot, Phex singled out Rosamma and slowly lowered himself beside her. His obsidian Rix eyes stared at her from a foot away. She saw that he had pupils, also black, but different in texture from his irises. They were vertical and elongated, three in each eye. All of them—all six—were focused on her face.

He startled her when he touched the side of her head, and she flinched. He withdrew his hand slowly as Rosamma cast her eyes down.

“He didn’t hit you very hard.”

Phex meant the Striker.

Rosamma gingerly fingered the aching place where the blow had landed.

“I’m afraid I disagree.”

She felt unsettled by her instinctive recoil. He wasn’t a lecher.

A humorless smile curved one side of his mouth.

“I’m speaking from personal experience.”

“You stayed out there for so long?”

Rosamma framed the sentence like a question.

He turned his head away.

“I crashed when the charm spice wore off.”

No emotion colored his voice, but Rosamma wasn’t fooled. He was affected by what he’d done. It went deep. It would scar.

“They kicked me around,”

he continued, “but it wasn’t fun without any fight back. So I was left alone.”

“In the Habitat?”

“Yes. Passed out. When I woke up, I listened to them talk.”

“What did they talk about?”

“There was a pressure leak at the station. They waited for Thilza to patch it up.”

“Which one of them is Thilza, again?”

Rosamma asked.

“The druggie. He’s their mechanic.”

Phex shook his head at the idea.

“Did he fix it?”

“Yes. He had to reassemble the system, patch it up, and top off the refrigerant. It steamed up half the station.”

So it had been steam, not smoke… She hadn’t imagined it on the Bridge. She hadn’t imagined anything.

“I’m glad he fixed it,” she said.

Rosamma hadn’t considered what it took to keep this place afloat, which only added to the host of anxieties she already harbored. They were always one breakdown away from open space.

Phex gestured indifferently.

“This place is a heap, and Thilza doesn’t like to work. Esseh and Keerym beat him to get him going, and the Striker threatened to take away his pipe. Thilza wasn’t happy.”

“This is all… crazy.”

Phex nodded in agreement.

It was novel and slightly off-kilter to talk to him like this, to have a conversation where they shared opinions and had a connection. They weren’t friends, but the balance had shifted more toward them being equals.

“There was a bigger issue they talked about,” he said.

“With the station?”

“Yes. It’s Tutti.”

Phex screwed up his face as he said the robot’s moniker.

“It didn’t alert them about the pressure leak.”

“Was she supposed to?”

He paused and considered Rosamma’s question.

“Why are you referring to that thing as she?”

“Oh. Well.”

Rosamma got flustered and then laughed.

“They tried so hard to make it look female, I guess it earned the distinction.”

Catching Gro’s censoring look, Rosamma sobered up.

The women were all staring at her and Phex. The optics of the two of them, sitting together, laughing, must be jarring to the group.

Rosamma ducked her head, a little ashamed.

Phex remained oblivious to the impression they were giving.

“Tutti’s part of the station. She is a component of its ecosystem. They can’t disable her.”

That was news to Rosamma.

“They can’t?”

“No. And from what I heard, the pirates don’t like it. The thing is a pest.”

“I’m glad the pirates and I think alike,”

Rosamma mused.

“It has its uses, like monitoring the station’s health. Except this time, it didn’t. Which means the system is beginning to fail, and there’s no patching it up with the tools they have.”

Rosamma chewed the inside of her cheek.

“How long does the station have?”

“The Striker said it wasn’t critical yet, but they have to make plans.”

Rosamma scooted closer.

“What’s stopping the pirates from flying off and leaving us behind?”

The idea of getting stranded on a failing space station was unappealing, but if the pirates removed themselves from that equation, it wouldn’t be so bad. The women and Phex could work with that.

“They have two ships docked to the station. But those pods are small attack crafts,”

Phex explained.

“Not designed for long flights. I don’t know where they got them, but they shouldn’t be stuck to the side of the station this long, unprotected in open space. Those crafts need routine maintenance.”

“Don’t the pirates know that?”

“They do. They have no choice.”

“But they still have our cruiser.”

“It’s been damaged, but it can be repaired. Thilza is working on it. So he claims.”

“Why wouldn’t they just leave?”

she cried with feeling.

“Because they have nowhere to go, Rosamma.”

She sat back.

“So we’re back to sending a distress signal. It’s our only option to get help.”

“Yes.”

Rosamma was about to tell him about her venturing out to the Crew Quarters with its weapons rack when Sassa decided to emerge from under her blanket.

She appeared gradually. First, her small upturned nose poked out, red at the tip from crying. Then her disheveled head, brown hair still streaked with faded highlights. Her shoulders and arms were swathed in the thick gray hoodie she used like another protective blanket to hide inside.

Her face was blotchy from tears and the rough handling she’d endured. Her eyes blinked nervously at the light, and her mouth opened and closed, as if testing whether it still worked.

Then she spotted Phex.

Her face drained of all color. Even the red spots disappeared as she let out an agonizing, piercing cry.

“What’s he doing here?”

Her arm flew up, pointing at Phex.

He flinched, his nostrils flaring.

“Yeah, nice to see you too,”

he muttered in response to her question, which he didn’t understand because she’d asked it in her own language.

Caught in the middle, Rosamma quietly translated.

Sassa began to shake.

“Why are you talking to him? Why are you sitting with him? So unfair… Traitor!”

She pointed a trembling finger at Rosamma.

Anske glanced nervously at the door and tried to shush her.

Alyesha watched on with a bored expression.

Phex rose to his feet in one smooth, powerful move.

“What’s her name?”

he snapped at Rosamma.

She blinked.

“Sassa.”

“What am I doing here, Sassa? Let me explain,”

he spat in Universal.

“I live here, same as you. If you can call it living. If you’ve got a problem with me, take it up with the Striker. I’m sure he can arrange something different for you. But don’t complain afterward if you don’t like it.”

He stomped to his spot by the wall and sank into stasis, shutting them all out.

Sassa clutched her midriff and wailed.

Daphne wailed.

Fawn, woken abruptly by the noise, also wailed.

Rosamma tried hard to suppress the tears that threatened to spill.

Another day, another conflict. Another fight. Another loss.

If you can call it living.