Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) Page 3

  With good reason. She'd done all she could, and her daughters were safe.

  The memory of the hope felt so real that Mira began considering her future. She'd wandered into the desert because she had no options: she couldn't remain at the Station, not for Bruno's price, and she couldn't go home lest the peacekeepers capture her for thievery. Those had been the only two options available.

  But now there was another place, another option. They spoke of the Melisao in a vile tone, here. No matter the color of Spider's eyes he hated them. It was easy to see. Were they fighters, or just trying to survive away from the empire's grip?

  And if they have ships...

  Mira fell asleep with new hope.

  *

  Mira woke to new fear.

  The screeching door jolted her awake, twisting her head to face the entrance. Spider strode inside with the speed of anger, grabbing her by the hair and pulling her head back to expose her neck. The laser pressed close to the skin, the heat coming off like a stove top. Mira moaned, powerless to give way.

  "How much do they know of this place?" he asked.

  "I don't know anything! Please, I only--"

  "What strength did you claim we have? Did you tell them of the Station? How did they know about the electroids there?"

  Something had happened. That was immediately clear. Spider wanted to blame someone, and Mira proved an easy target. "I don't know what has happened," she whispered, "I don't know anything. I was only wandering the desert, waiting to die."

  He leaned forward until his face almost touched hers. His braids brushed against her skin. The heat from the prod rose, made her skin itch. She could see the bags around Spider's eyes, the white streaked with mostly red. He shook as his rage reached a crescendo.

  Abruptly he pulled the prod away and tossed her down. With his other hand he punched the metal wall with a fist and screamed at the top of his lungs, "AHHHHHHH."

  He whirled and punched the opposite wall, still screaming. He seemed to have forgotten her. Tears began to flow as Mira huddled in the corner like a terrified animal, watching him rage.

  Spider picked up the bucket and threw it against the wall, spraying its contents. It bounced around the room hollowly, and he kicked it once, twice, denting the thin metal and pummeling it and finally caving it in underneath a boot. He crouched down and put his head in his hands, squeezing the braids until his knuckles turned white. His body shook with rapid breaths.

  When he finally raised his head, his face was a mask of calmness.

  "Are you a shade?" he asked quietly.

  The sudden shift in temperament terrified Mira more than his anger. She said nothing.

  "Are you a shade?" he repeated, rising. "Were you trained in Luccar? On Melis?"

  "I don't know what that is," she whispered.

  He moved to her, kneeling on the cot and reaching for her. He gripped her jaw with his free hand, and used the other to grab at her eyes. "Hold still," he muttered as she began to whimper. "Hold still."

  Mira held still, except for her trembling.

  Spider used his thumb and pointer finger to open her eyelid, still holding the laser prod in the remaining fingers. He moved one finger and prodded her exposed eye. His gentle touch surprised her. Scared her.

  "Please," she said, "I don't know anything."

  "Do not move," he warned.

  He let go of her jaw and switched the prod to his free hand, aiming toward her left eye. The light filled her vision until it was all she could see. "Please, please, don't..." she muttered. Spider didn't hear, or didn't care, or both. The crackling laser drew closer until she could no longer focus on it. Spider squinted at her in concentration.

  Mira's lips moved in silent pleas as the edge of the laser touched the skin inside her eye socket, making a soft hiss.

  With the precision of a surgeon Spider flicked the laser to the side.

  Nothing happened for a long moment. And then darkness filled her eye.

  She screamed at the sensation, the blindness and the pain, and rolled back against the wall as if somehow she could get farther away from the man. She rubbed her eye against her shoulder and it left a wet smear, black and red. My eye is bleeding. She rolled and screamed and pleaded for what felt like an eternity.

  She heard another voice, growing in intensity, shouting at her. "Mother blind me, shut up. Barely a scratch. Wanted to see if your eye was synthetic."

  Mira rolled and clutched her face against her shoulder in some semblance of protection.

  "Shut the fuck up." He grabbed her by the hair and pulling her up against the wall. Something touched her eye and she shrieked anew, until he slapped her across the cheek.

  That had the desired effect, immediately shocking her to silence.

  Other voices filled the air, and Spider let go of her to argue with them. Mira clenched her eyes shut so tight her mind seemed to hum and vibrate. Pain like searing fire covered her face. Oh stars, it hurts! She heard the sound of rusty hinges miles away.

  Mira flinched as someone touched her chest. The person made a shushing sound with their mouth, trying to sooth her. She opened her good eye and saw the last thing she expected to see.

  A young girl crouched on the cot, frowning, looking down into her face. "Hold still," the girl said in a voice like a high-pitched whistle. "This won't hurt."

  He's gouged my eye, Mira wanted to shout, but she was so surprised that she did as she was told.

  The girl had long eyelashes and couldn't have been more than twelve. She held a bunched-up washcloth in her fist, and reached toward the wounded eye. Mira flinched, but then realized that the girl's touch did not hurt. The pain had somehow gone away.

  "There's a lot of blood for not much damage," the girl piped.

  "He cut me," Mira whispered. "With the laser."

  "Just a nick," the girl said. "On the edge. I have better view than you. It's not bad, I promise."

  Mira was just about to tell the girl that she was wrong when she removed the cloth. "Okay then, give us a blink. Go on, now." Mira blinked the eye a few times--which did sting--but after a moment her vision began to return, hazy and blurred. "See? Not too bad! Seen much worse what comes back from the city after a fight."

  Tentatively, Mira squinted her eye open and closed, feeling the sting on the lower eyelid. It no longer bled freely, as best as she could tell.

  "Who are you?" Mira asked.

  The girl leaned back and put a proud hand on her chest. "I am the doctor here," she said haughtily.

  "The doctor?"

  "Sure as the stars shine! The best one what we have, at least. There's no one else but me."

  It felt like a strange juxtaposition having a little girl take care of her. Mira had a thousand questions. "What's your name?" was the first.

  "Binny. Like the binnytoad what hops down at the shoreline."

  "Nice to meet you, Binny. My name's Mira."

  Binny nodded solemnly. "I know. We all know. You're all anyone talks about."

  "What's a shade?" Mira asked. "Spider asked if I was a shade."

  Binny's eyes grew wide. "Shades are the spies bred by the Melisao." She said the word shade quieter than the rest, as if by mere mention one might appear. "Shades sneak and spook and become whatever they want, with knives and whispers and lies."

  Mira forced herself to smile. "Well I'm definitely not a shade then."

  "You might be!" Binny said, poking her in the chest with her cloth, suddenly angry and afraid. "Farrow says we don't know. That's why Spider has to check. We have to know."

  She hopped off the cot and disappeared out of the room, the door grinding closed behind her.

  Mira laid back down and stared at the wall, not sure what to feel.

  *

  Hours later the screaming of the door hinges caused Mira to leap to her feet in fright, but it was a hefty woman who slipped inside the door instead of Spider. She held a small yellow bread roll and a metal jug.

  "I thought you were Spider," M
ira confided, trying to sound friendly. "Don't like him much at all."

  The woman said nothing. She placed the metal container on the ground and ripped the bread in half, then into fourths, then held one piece out to the prisoner. Since her hands remained bound, Mira took it with her mouth. She forced herself to chew slowly, savoring the bite, despite her ravenous hunger. It felt like she'd been wandering the desert without food for weeks.

  "I saw a spaceship," Mira said after swallowing. "It rose out of the sand like mist, and shot across the desert."

  The large woman stared blankly.

  "If you have spaceships," she added, "then does that mean you can leave the planet? Fly away, wherever you wanted?"

  "If we were fools," she spat. "Melisao don't much like us leaving."

  She shoved the next piece of bread into Mira's mouth as if to shut her up. Mira chewed in silence. The woman had the strangest scent, like precious soil, or spices.

  "You all can't be bad," Mira eventually said.

  She glowered. "What's that supposed mean?"

  "You have children here. Any place that has children can't be bad."

  The woman snorted. "Fool. You think the Melisao have only adults? Or the pirates on the ice moons of Ouranos? There's children everywhere."

  "But you," Mira said around another bite of bread, "are not bad. Are you?"

  "Good and bad. Good and evil. Only words, subjective and incomplete." She bent to pick up the metal container, and lifted it to Mira's lips so she could drink. "A person is not a lamp, to be on or off, one thing or the other. I don't consider myself a bad person, no, but there are plenty who would. And plenty I've done to deserve their scorn." She got a faraway look in her eyes, as though looking through Mira.

  "And Spider? He has good in him?" Mira asked.

  The woman laughed, pulling back the water and holding up another piece of bread. "Maybe some. Deep down, under all the sand."

  Mira mustered what pitifulness she could and said, "He has a look in his eyes. He wants to... do things to me. With his laser."

  "He thinks you're a shade. He does that same thing as anyone would: whatever they can to protect themselves."

  Mira frowned up at the her. "I would never harm someone with a weapon."

  She shrugged. "You consider yourself innocent, then?"

  "I am innocent," Mira insisted. "I'm certainly not bad. I've committed crimes, stolen credits from my factory. But I did so for my daughters. A harmless crime."

  The woman fed her the last piece of bread and wiped her hands together. "So a bad deed is excused when performed by you, but not Spider? Do you always judge others based only on their actions, while judging yourself on your intentions?"

  Mira had nothing to say to that. The woman shook her head and left the room.

  She tries to confuse me with puzzles, Mira thought. I would never harm an innocent for my own gain. But she knew others would, and the thought left her trembling in the humid room.

  She tried picturing her daughters, crammed into their tiny metal crate on the freighter. The journey should have lasted only a few days. Had they already arrived at the Oasis station? Green plants and glass walls and light, so much light, the station always illuminated as it rotated around their star. She imagined her girls playing stealth and seek, Ami hiding under a bed--a real bed, with blankets and pillows--while Kaela searched all around. Laughing and play-wrestling with the carefree feeling of true safety.

  Crying stung her wounded eye, so Mira let her thoughts wander elsewhere.

  Although the woman hadn't directly answered her question, her response did imply that the spaceship was real. That Mira hadn't imagined it. If there are other ways off the planet...

  Her hope returned, a feeling she hadn't truly possessed since arriving at the Station with her pocket full of glass credits, ready to depart. That had been the only way off the planet, at least to her knowledge.

  No longer. I can leave, she allowed herself to think. There could be a way. I could see my girls again, keep my promise to meet them after all.

  And as the hope filled her, a memory of her desperation returned, how close she had been to death there in the desert. She had given up, laying down on the sand to accept her death. The realization that she nearly ended everything, a true abandonment of her daughters, filled her with anguish and shame. She wept again, accepting the string from her cut, the blood mixing with her tears as they ran down her face.

  Her body eventually ceased shaking. I need to focus. I can grieve later. Right then she needed to figure out a way to prove her innocence. To show she was telling the truth.

  She thought about the questions they had asked. What Farrow had said in the desert. Whatever this place was, they thought she had been seeking it out. Searching for it, for the Empire. They thought she was a spy, a shade.

  Obviously that was not true, but how to prove it? She went through the series of events that led her there. She'd visited Bruno at the Station, purchasing transportation for her daughters on a freighter along with dozens of other desperate Praetari. It wasn't the first time she'd been to the Station, either--she visited the doctor there when Ami had one of her coughing spells. Leo, that was his name. Would Leo remember me? she wondered. Or Bruno? The Lord of the Station had known that she worked at one of the electroid factories, so it was possible. He could tell them who she was. Just another helpless Praetari struggling to eat.

  But more importantly, would he vouch for her? The cruelty in his smile had chilled her. If asked, he might declare that she was a spy for the Empire simply to watch her squirm. He made a joke about bolting Ami to the outside of the freighter. Did her fate truly reside in the word of such a man?

  Yet it was a chance, and a better plan than continuing to insist her innocence to Spider. I had more hope back in the desert.

  As if the thought had summoned him, the hinges creaked and Spider stood in the doorway. A new woman, young and dark, stood next to him.

  Mira stood and took a deep breath to bolster her courage. "I have a way to prove my innocence. Someone who knows me, and what I am. Bruno, the Lord of the Station. He is a terrible man, and cruel, but he knows the truth."

  The woman said, "Bruno is dead."

  All hope drained out of Mira's feet and into the floor. "No. I was just there. With my daughters, and people all around, and..."

  "Believe me or not," the woman shrugged, "I know what is true."

  "Shut up," Spider said. He seemed angrier than before. He turned to the woman and said, "Kari, is it her or not?"

  Kari entered the room. Her head was completely bald, and she squinted at Mira with suspicion. "Yep. Definitely her."

  Spider's face grew dark. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes," Kari said as she turned away. "Positive. She's the one alright." She strode out of the room and into the unseen hallway.

  Spider gritted his teeth in a snarl. He stepped toward Mira.

  "No..." Mira said. "No! She's lying. It's not me, I swear it..."

  Spider pulled the laser prod from his belt, the beam crackling to life.

  "Please, I'll tell you anything I can. I despise the Empire, I swear it." She backed away until her hands touched the wall. "I worked in the electroid factories. I can tell you their process. How many are produced per day. When the officers visit. They come every third day to inspect the robots. They only bring two guards, armed with..."

  "Shut the fuck up," Spider said, spittle flying. Eyes full of fire.

  Something rubbed against her back, between her shoulder blades and the wall. Of course. A new thought flashed in her mind. "The pocket! I have proof that I've stolen from the Empire. I sewed a pocket into my shirt, on the inside, just beneath my neck. That's where I stored the credits when I stole them from the factory foreman."

  He twisted her by the arm until she faced the wall. Her cheek pressed against the warm metal.

  "Please!" she cried. "Just look. All you have to do is look!"

  On the wall she saw the shadow of his ar
m bring the prod above his head. With a blur he brought it down.

  Chapter 4

  The laser made a soft hiss as it cut through something.

  Mira clenched her eyes shut, waiting. For the fire of pain, for the brutality that Spider was sure to unleash, for the cries she knew were just a breath away. She waited, forehead pressed against the metal of the wall, frozen in time like a grain of sand.

  Nothing happened.

  When confusion outpaced fear she turned. Spider was gone. He had cut the ropes binding her hands, she realized. Each half still dangled from her wrists, but at least she could now move. She stretched and bent her arms, sighing with the release of tension and wincing at the stiffness. She was alone in the room, the door wide open.

  "Hello?"

  Her voice echoed more than before. Light from the hallway beckoned her, brighter than her tiny cell. She approached and tilted her head out the door.

  The hall felt cramped, with a low ceiling that met the walls at diagonal angles, like the top half of an octagon. A row of pipes ran along one of those diagonal faces, each as thick as her thigh, connected at junction boxes every ten feet. Wires ran out of the junction boxes in all directions, including to the lights hanging in the center of the ceiling. The lights appeared like an afterthought, hastily screwed into the metal and connected. To the right were two more cell doors like hers, both open, unoccupied. Fifty feet in the other direction the hallway ended at a T-intersection.

  "Hello?" her voice echoed.

  She followed the corridor away from the cells. Sand particles scraped between her bare feet and the warm metal floor. The air contained the ever-present hum of machinery, like some sort of turbine or engine just on the other side of the wall.

  She chose a direction at random, wandering down two more corridors before coming to what looked like a blast door. It stood open. Voices spoke softly somewhere beyond. She stepped through the doorway into a cleaner hallway, with higher ceilings and fewer exposed pipes and wires. The hum of machinery slowly disappeared. She followed the sound of the voices on silent feet until reaching what appeared to be a large common room.