Page 18 of Seven Oars (Rix Universe #3)

Rosamma woke up shivering. It was so cold, like she was inside a freezer.

She tried to pull her thin, crinkly blanket more firmly over her shoulders, but something was in the way.

She sat up and blinked at the dim lights, sensing she was alone. Her eyes were swollen, and her face stiff from dried tears.

A shadow nearby caught her attention.

Then it all came rushing back.

She lurched, pulling her forced co-joint twin, Father Zha-Ikkel, into swaying and squeaking like an old swing in the wind.

Cold forgotten, she clawed at her neck, at the metal band encircling it.

The miracle of miracles, it gave under her trembling fingers and snapped open.

Dragging her precious blanket after her, she stumbled out of the Meat Locker like a drunk spilling from a bar in the wee hours of the morning.

At the Cargo Hold, Gro and Eze sat together in a small, forlorn group, eating. Anske was with them.

“She!”

Anske went wide-eyed as she pointed first at Rosamma, then at Gro.

“You told me she died!”

Gro was already in motion, rushing forward to wrap Rosamma in a bear hug. She was crying, and Gro never cried. So Rosamma started crying too.

Eze groaned.

“Not this again! You promised me you were done with the watershed.”

“That was when we thought she’d died.”

Gro clung tightly to Rosamma.

“And now?”

“And now it doesn’t count!”

That made no sense, but Rosamma got it.

She cried unabashedly, grateful to still be alive.

Gro inspected her face, which no doubt looked swollen and pallid.

“What did he do to you?”

she asked, smoothing Rosamma’s unkempt hair.

What did you do to me? Rosamma thought accusingly.

He’d changed her. She couldn’t undo the change.

“He took me to the Meat Locker,” she said.

Gro blanched.

“Another sick fuck!”

Rosamma opened her mouth to describe what had transpired, to explain, but she didn’t know how to make it sound any less awful than it really was. Plus, the memory of the headless corpse so close she had smelled it made her throat close up.

“I want to take a shower.”

Gro found a cleaner “towel”

for Rosamma, and Eze went to check that the tank had enough filtered water.

“I’ll pray for you, Rosamma!”

Anske called out when she went into the shower stall.

“Thanks, Anske.”

As she washed the Meat Locker’s stink out of her hair, she thought of Fincros. It was hard not to think of Fincros. Impossible.

What he had done was abhorrent.

And he’d left her there!

But he wasn’t a sick fuck like Gro thought him to be, like some other pirates prided themselves on being. He was tough and rugged, but not twisted. In some ways, he was almost… normal.

Anske was singing softly when Rosamma came out of the stall.

“Galan is on duty,”

Eze informed Rosamma with a twist to her lips and a sigh.

Anske’s singing stopped.

“What does that tone mean?”

Eze assumed a bland expression.

“Nothing at all beyond my most fervent hope that his shift ends soon, so you can move your spirit-worshiping to the Habitat.”

“Always sneering and negative! You won’t end well, Eze,”

Anske pointed a finger at the Sakka.

“With your shady past, it’s only a matter of time.”

Eze’s thick Sakka brows twitched.

“Oh, it’s my shady past! And what do you know about it, holy one?”

“For one, you were living on Meeus illegally!”

Anske declared to the room.

“You’re not human.”

Eze gave her a flat look.

“A keen observation.”

She wasn’t taking Anske seriously, but the other woman was too caught up in her righteousness to notice.

Her round, protruding eyes narrowed sharply.

“What brought you to Meeus?”

she asked, suspicious.

“I was born there,”

Eze replied.

“But you’re a Sakka.”

Anske’s eyes widened like a cartoon character’s.

Eze propped her chin on her fist.

“Yes. And yet, I was born. On Meeus.”

“Did you have papers?”

Anske’s tone implied a gotcha.

Eze chuckled.

“Well, no. You got me there.”

“See?”

Anske was practically vibrating.

“And what were your parents doing on Meeus, again?”

“Working,”

Eze said.

“My mother was commissioned as a domestic servant by a rich family. Not super legal, but at least she was invited. And before you ask, I don’t know my father. There, satisfied?”

Anske pursed her lips.

“Your mother let you down by not getting papers for you.”

Eze laughed without rancor.

“Yes, she let me down by dying in a fire when I was a baby and leaving me alone on a foreign, hostile planet without papers.”

Anske drew back.

“Meeus is not hostile!”

“Spoken like a human,”

Eze scoffed.

“But I managed alright. And anyway, doesn’t your Holy Guide teach you to be more accepting?”

“Only if you open your mind to freedom. Which you’re refusing to do.”

Anske sucked water through her straw.

Eze sighed. “Figures.”

Anske put her nose in the air and took another noisy sip, secure in the knowledge that she’d won that argument.

Rosamma pulled out a meal pack and started eating.

“How is Galan doing with the Holy Guide?”

she asked Anske.

“We’re making some progress,”

Anske replied stiffly, her reserved tone indicating that Galan was not, in fact, progressing at all.

As Anske launched into a detailed account of the two lessons they’d had, Rosamma chewed the dry contents of the packet she refused to identify. She had no real appetite, still traumatized by her close acquaintance with Father Zha-Ikkel.

It was illogical. He couldn’t harm her. Living, breathing boogiemen on Seven Oars were infinitely more dangerous than a long-dead Tana-Tana.

But feelings were feelings.

“And he’d do better if that trollop Fawn didn’t distract us in the Habitat,”

Anske complained.

“She frolics with Thilza right there, out in the open. Can you imagine? Despicable. And,”

Anske lowered her voice, “I have a suspicion that Thilza isn’t the only one. Xorris too. Maybe even Galan, when I’m not around.”

Rosamma blinked rapidly and washed down her food with stale water, racking her brain for an appropriate response.

Luckily, Anske didn’t need one.

“I’ll see about moving our lessons to the Crew Quarters,”

she concluded with resolve.

She left the Cargo Hold shortly afterward, striding off like a determined school principal, committed to elevating Galan from his base instincts.

Eze reached out to touch Rosamma’s hand.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Rosamma. The Striker stopped your energy loss, didn’t he?”

Rosamma looked around the Cargo Hold, noting how the lights no longer gave off halos. She was cold, but not frozen inside. Her head still ached, but it no longer rang like a bell.

Eze and Gro watched her, waiting.

“Yes,”

Rosamma said, suddenly hoarse.

“That’s what he did. He stopped it.”

Fincros had seen her bracelets; he had understood.

Father Zha-Ikkel was Tana-Tana. While Rosamma had been tethered to his corpse, her energy had stayed contained.

Gruesome… and effective.

Why, Striker? Why make me your problem?

Gro’s expression turned somber.

“I guess you haven’t heard,”

she said.

“Alyesha left us. She escaped.”

Feeling wretched, Rosamma looked at Gro.

“I’ve heard,”

she said.

“The Striker told me in the Engine Room.”

The gaze Eze threw at Rosamma was sharp.

“He was in the Engine Room with you?”

“Yes.”

It gave away the fact that her energy lapse hadn’t happened on its own.

“He’s the one who fixed the climate control system.”

Eze rubbed her hands down her face.

“And what they did to Ucai…”

Gro shook her head.

“Fawn said that’s all the pirates have been talking about. Keerym isn’t a Rix, and it pisses them off that he killed one of their own.”

“I can imagine,”

Rosamma murmured.

She certainly could. Nud, for example, was easy to picture pissed off.

She wondered how the Striker was handling the loss of not one, but two of his so-called crew members.

“To add insult to injury, Keerym left the pods unusable,” she said.

They talked about the pods, subdued by this new, seemingly unresolvable problem. But eventually, they reached a conclusion that, in their situation, the pods weren’t as important. They’d never planned to use them for escape anyway, since no one knew how to pilot them. Except for Phex, but his attitude was a separate issue.

“We’ll figure out how to send another distress signal,”

Rosamma said, trying to inject some optimism into her voice.

“Now we know where to look for the transmitter.”

“It seems like that’s all we can do,”

Gro said, uninspired.

They sat in silence for a while before Eze stirred.

“I guess it’s my turn to go look for Daphne,”

she said.

“She’s been gone a long time.”

Rosamma turned sharply.

“She isn’t here?”

She hadn’t realized Daphne was missing!

“No,”

Eze said.

“Been hiding since before the Striker took you away.”

“But she isn’t in the Meat Locker!”

A bad feeling crept up her chest.

Eze sighed.

“She’s broadened her horizons.”

A distant scream pierced the air.

They looked at one another in alarm.

“Was that Fawn?”

There was a tramping of feet, and Fawn burst into the Cargo Hold with terrified eyes and a face drained of color.

“Daphne! Oh my god, it’s Daphne!”

She was gasping for air and babbling unintelligibly.

“What’s wrong?”

Gro took Fawn by the shoulders and shook her.

“Dead!”

Fawn choked out and collapsed.

“She’s dead.”

A wave of despair swamped Rosamma.

They’d failed Daphne. She blamed herself most of all. She’d been too distracted, too absorbed by her own issues. She hadn’t done enough…

“Where’s she at?”

she asked Fawn.

“Crew Quarters. There was so much blood!”

Fawn moaned.

“I’ll never be the same.”

Rosamma wanted to curl up and howl from grief, but she didn’t allow herself to. If she did, she’d never get up.

Nud, Xorris, and Esseh were in the Crew Quarters when Rosamma ran inside. They were standing in front of a sleeping node with its flap folded aside.

“Trash,”

Nud muttered, but his tone lacked its usual bluster.

“She smells.”

Xorris shuffled backwards.

“I ain’t touching that.”

Esseh decided for them.

“Get the defender. Let him deal with the remains.”

Xorris bolted, pushing Rosamma aside.

She barely winced from the collision with his hard shoulder.

She approached the sleeping node, halting at the edge of what she could bear to see.

Daphne lay on the cot, its padding soaked with blood.

She was a pretty girl, Daphne, with a fine bone structure and soft brown hair that curled at the ends. In repose, her vacant expression softened by her unfocused eyes, she looked young and peaceful and serene, like an angel.

The bloody mess of her torso, split wide open, ruined the angelic image. It made her look… settled in death. Irrevocably gone. More so, somehow, than Father Zha-Ikkel.

Rosamma hugged herself, staring.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. The scene in front of her eyes was too odd, too unnatural. To violate a living being so—it was incomprehensible. Sick with a capital S.

Xorris returned with Phex.

“Rosamma!”

He was surprised to see her, in a good way.

Understandably, since the last time they talked, she’d been ready to receive her last rites.

But Rosamma’s joy at being alive wasn’t felt keenly right now.

She raised her eyes to Phex in silent supplication.

Help, she wanted to scream at him.

But he couldn’t. It was unfair to expect miracles from him.

All of it was unfair.

Phex stopped abruptly when he saw Daphne. His jaw tensed, like he was biting his tongue to keep from cursing.

“She was already dead when we found her,”

Esseh said, belligerent.

“Get her off. I’ll open the trash chute.”

After a small hesitation, Phex stepped inside the blood-soaked sleeping node, careful to pick his way through the tight, messy space.

He shuddered as he picked Daphne up.

Her head lolled, so empty of life.

Without thinking, Rosamma grabbed a piece of cloth from the node that looked unsoiled and covered Daphne’s exposed internal organs.

Phex followed Esseh out of the Crew Quarters. In a daze, Rosamma trailed after them.

Tutti met them in the passageway, whirring and blinking, blabbering about protocol. It was all inane and meaningless in the face of the somber fact that Daphne was gone, killed in the most brutal fashion imaginable.

Rosamma wished she could do more than stand by, arms hanging at her sides, a silent vigil for the broken girl.

If Anske could come and say a prayer, maybe it wouldn’t seem so clinical. But Anske would get all upset and cry and preach about opening their minds.

And anyway, nothing would make it better.

“Who killed her?”

came a cold, raspy voice.

He approached so quietly she hadn’t heard a sound.

Her eyes searched his scarred face.

Now it was hard to imagine that this man had once held her in his arms, willing her to live.

He was a stranger. A pirate. A massive alien with inhuman black eyes.

“She was in Massar’s sleeping node,”

Esseh answered his question after a small pause.

Rosamma’s hands jerked reflexively, her bracelets chiming. She briefly felt the weight of Fincros’ attention settle on her.

Esseh faded out of sight, uninterested in the procedure and likely relieved that the Striker was here to take over.

Fincros advanced on Phex.

“You are a defender. It is your job to protect the females, is it not?”

Phex shifted on his feet, and Daphne’s arm slipped, hanging limply.

“You and your games, pirate scum,”

he spat.

“Don’t blame me when you’re just as guilty. You know you have a twisted screwball on your crew, and you allow him to run unchecked.”

Fincros cocked his head.

“How are your skills in handling the power matrix? Oxygen and pressure regulation?”

he asked, seemingly at random.

Phex’s voice was loaded with disdain.

“I’m a trained pilot. I know all basic systems. But you’re mad if you think I’ll work for you.”

“Then Massar stays alive.”

Phex’s expression remained cold and closed.

“Then it was your decision that split her in half.”

The barb struck home, and Fincros exhaled with a powerful whoosh.

“I don’t break females. It’s only fun to break you.”

He turned to the panel on the wall and activated the airlock.

The technology took its time, hissing and clicking, preparing the inner chamber to receive… trash.

“You can’t break a defender.”

Phex curled a lip at him, revealing his massive blue fangs.

“It’s an easy lie to hide behind,”

Fincros said, unimpressed by Phex’s display of teeth.

“And you’ve violated defender tenets, so you’re no longer one.”

Phex laughed, a rough, bitter sound.

“Since you seem to know about defender tenets, you must know it’s not a shirt you can put on and take off. We’re bred before we’re trained. Does it chafe you, Striker?”

There was a stillness about Fincros that was deep and emotional.

“Yes, it does chafe me, defender,”

he admitted quietly.

“More than you can ever know.”

The aperture of the airlock opened and gaped, waiting.

Snarling, Phex shoved Daphne’s body inside the chamber, folding her to make her fit. The cover slipped from her body, and her exposed insides shifted around.

It broke something inside Rosamma.

“No!”

She lurched forward, only to be snatched from behind.

“It’s so cold out there. She will be cold… Please…”

Phex backed away from the chute.

“Enjoy the funeral, Striker. You deserve every minute of it.”

Rosamma trembled with sorrow and anguish.

“Why is this happening?”

She twisted to look at Fincros’ indifferent, scarred face.

“Who needs all this dying? Do you?”

His hands fell from her waist.

He didn’t reply. Instead, he kicked the panel hard, activating the chute. It hissed and began to shrink the aperture.

Rosamma burst into uncontrollable sobs.

How many times had the trash chute performed its grisly duty? And how many more were still left to perform?

They were all doomed. This place was an open grave. The last one would stay here forever, for no one would be left to work the chute.

She spoke the words aloud, babbling and crying. She hated the pirates with a passion, and she hated this place. A warped, dark hole, that was what this station was. Cursed.

Grief-stricken, she slid to the floor, right underneath the chute.

“You won’t stay here forever,”

said a dry, quiet voice.

She started violently. Caught up in her grief, she thought he’d left.

Wiping the worst of her tears with a sleeve, she looked up.

His face was in the shadow.

“Promise me,”

she ground out, her voice low and intense, “that you will send me to the stars when I die.”

He went still.

“Say you’ll do it!”

she demanded, losing all reason.

“I won’t stay here, dead. The mere thought is unbearable.”

“I promise,”

he said quietly. The rounded vowels of his inflection washed over her like warm water.

When used like this, his distinct voice was soothing. It took the edge off, calming her frayed psyche.

She suddenly felt like a child, looking up at a strict, unemotional parent who never lost his temper.

He lowered into a crouch in front of her.

“Before we get to that…”

he said, extracting a device from his belt.

“I don’t have a stunner to give you. To use like your brother did.”

His stern mouth twisted, but he didn’t fully smile.

“This is a real laser gun. It can do a lot of damage, and I want you to remember that.”

“I don’t want it,”

Rosamma mumbled, sniffing.

He ignored her.

“Carry it around. If you’re ever in danger, shoot. Just put it on the lowest setting.”

He turned the device—the gun—sideways to show her a small slider that regulated the force of the beam.

“I don’t know how to shoot, Fincros.”

He took her limp hand and placed the gun in her palm.

It was heavier than it looked. The smooth casing was cold to the touch.

“Point and squeeze the handle,”

he said.

“Don’t overthink it. And be quick. You’ll have the element of surprise in your favor.”

She stared wordlessly at the gun. Then she slowly raised her eyes to his face.

I can shoot him now.

“Yes, you can shoot me now.”

He smirked, reading her mind.

She pointed the gun at him… but before she finished moving her wrist, he slapped it from her hand, sending it rolling across the floor.

“Told you. Be quick. Or lose your advantage.”

He rose and quietly walked away, kicking the weapon back toward her with his boot.