Chapter Text
2528
Nueva Lima, Madrigal, 23 Librae System
“I think I’m gonna be friends with an alien someday.”
The child lay on her back, stretched out on a threadbare blanket. Stared up at the stars. Her older sister scoffed and leaned back in the lawn chair, tilted her hat to the back of her head, and followed the kid’s gaze up at where she was peering into the clear night sky.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The younger girl wondered what it must have been like back in old times. Before Faster Than Light travel. Before humans seeded the galaxy and discovered the abundance of living things strewn across their little part of the Orion arm: billions of new species of bacteria, fungi, plants, animals. What it must have been like to feel so utterly alone in the universe; believing Earth to be the only planet which harbored life. Back then, people thought all life was confined on one lonely, dying planet. Humans had convinced themselves that the expanse of existence was sterile. Something about it made her shudder. It must have felt like being trapped on a derelict ship, locked in orbit, no promise of rescue, resources dwindling. She tried to imagine what those first explorers felt like as they terraformed across Sol system, then stuck a tentative toe out beyond the protective blanket of the Oort cloud- only to find a galaxy rich in living things.
The girl glanced at her sister, and grinned. “Maybe I’ll marry one, even.” She liked to antagonize, and knew that this would do the trick.
“What, an alien?”
“Yeah!”
She scoffed. “As long as you don’t marry into the military. I shouldn’t even ask this. But… why an alien?” She looked at the girl and after a beat, added, “Weirdo.”
The younger girl shrugged, now fixated on the idea of having an alien friend. “I dunno. They’re neat. I mean. The idea of them is neat, at least. I imagine they’d have a completely different outlook on life, on… everything. It’d be cool to see the universe through someone else’s eyes.” She furrowed her brow. “There must be some pretty ones out there.”
“Just any old alien will do? As long as they’re hot?”
“No, he’s gotta be nice, too. I bet there are intelligent species out there who’ll actually like humans. Not try to kill us.”
“But also be hot.”
“Duh. I’m not gonna date an ugly alien.” The girl rolled over onto her stomach to look at her sister.
“Gonna level with you, Ida. I don’t think there’s gonna be anybody smart out there. We woulda run into them by now. I think it’s just, you know. Plants and animals and crap. And the aliens that want to kill us. Which I’m guessing you don’t want to date.”
Armida wrinkled her nose at the thought. “Nah. There’s way more out there to see and find. I mean, we just now found the Covenant guys like three years ago. There’s gotta be other smart aliens. Ones that are- what’s the word for it. Ones that are like us. Sah-something.”
“Sapient? Sentient? What’s the difference between those two anyway. You’re the smart one here with all your books and smart kid classes and shit. Tell me.”
“I thought they meant the same thing.” Armida dug her data pad out of her bag and made a frustrated noise as it attempted to connect to the Madrigal global network. “Uh. Sapient has emotional depth. Sentient is just aware of itself. So like. A cat is sentient. I’m sapient.”
“Debatable.”
She stuck her tongue out at her big sister. “Fuck off, Agnes.”
“Hey! Language!” Her sister laughed and kicked at her. “I told you. Call me Quispe.”
“No. I’m gonna call you Agnes because you’re Agnes. Agnes.”
Quispe leaned forward. “You’re still a kid, Ida. You don’t need to be thinking about boys, even if he’s a super cute, super smart alien boy. You need to be thinking about keeping your grades up and getting into a good college.”
“I am getting good grades. Anyway, who are you to lecture me about grades, Miss Dropout.”
Quispe shot a look at her as she used one of their mother’s old lighters to pry open another bottle of beer. She tipped it back and belched while pulling a funny face, earning a peal of laughter from Armida. She looked back at her kid sister and pointed at her emphatically. “I graduated. I did distance classes and got my diploma. And I got a ship repair cert. What have mom and dad been telling you about me, anyway?”
She made a pfft sound. “They think you make the sun rise and that you’ll single-handedly save the resistance. That’s all they talk about. The shit you’re off doing. That you own your own ship now. They don’t really care if I go to school or not. I think they want me go join the rebels. Fight. Along with you and the other separatists.”
“School’s not for me, which is why I do what I do. But you’re the smart one in the family, and you should go to college. Get a degree in smart-people shit. Leave the fighting to the beautiful, dumb meatsacks like me.”
“So why does that mean I gotta go to school. Can’t I just be smart and like… not? I wanna come fight. With you. You’re always off having fun.”
“It’s not all fun,” Quispe looked at her, now serious. “People die. Things go wrong. No. If you’re smart you go to college and get a degree in fancy learning. Them’s the rules.”
“Mario said that the UEG is gonna stop allowing Outer Colony people into college. That we’re gonna be drafted when we’re 18. He said he heard that all the refugees were being rounded up and forced to join the military. Because, you know.” She dropped her voice. “The Covenant.”
“Mario smells like canned soup and has never read a book without pictures. I can’t believe mom and dad let you hang out with him.”
“God, why are you such a dick.”
“It’s true, though, right?”
She laughed. “Yeah. But you’re still a dick.”
“Also true. But don’t listen to Mario, that boy has rocks for brains. I don’t give a shit if he is our cousin, he's dumb as fuck. You’re going to college and that’s that.”
A quiet passed between them. The echo of sirens in the distance. A low grumble of thunder foretold the approach of an early summer storm.
Quispe had moved out of the house when Armida was six and she was sixteen. She would disappear for months at a time, then show up at the front door with gifts from other worlds, and wild stories about the other people in her separatist cell. Sometimes sporting fresh scars and new tattoos. Innies is what she saw them referred to as in the media. Ungrateful outer colony insurrectionists.
When Harvest had gone dark three years ago, most of Madrigal had been convinced that it was some United Earth Government stunt. Shut down comms, punish the separatists for daring to fight for their independence. The UEG had blamed Innie terrorists for the blackout.
Then Second Base and Green Hills had gone silent, and the government had no choice but to admit the reality. That humanity had been swept into a war with a hegemony of aliens called the Covenant who only wanted the complete annihilation of the human species. Theories on why varied, but one thing was clear: the only thing that they wanted was our extinction. Now the other nearby colony worlds were waiting, dreading, making tentative plans for an uncertain future, as the Covenant advanced into the out-most reaches of human space.
“We’re gonna be fine,” Quispe said. “You’re going to finish middle school, graduate high school, and get sent off to Miridem or wherever you end up wanting to go to college.”
“I don’t wanna go there.”
“Why?”
“There’s no aliens on Miridem.” She said, grinning.
“You’re fucking crazy.” Quispe laughed, and drank. “Humanity is terrified of the Covenant. And my little sister is out here saying-” she raised her voice dramatically and waved her free hand around in a flourish- “I can’t go somewhere there’s no cute alien boys!”
“Like you said, we’re a family of rebels, right? Anyway. They’re not all gonna be jerks.”
“The galaxy is full of jerks. The jerk to not-jerk ratio is… really skewed.”
Armida sighed and reached for one of the beers, only to have her hand swatted away. “No. This shit is bad for you. Wait until you’re done with college. Then you can drink and kill all your brain cells.”
“God.”
She continued to watch the sky. Picked a single point to fix her eyes on so that her periphery vision would pick up anything moving in that great dark expanse. Every once in a while a piece of space debris would fall from orbit, streaking the sky with a bright arch before it burnt up in the atmosphere.
Armida flopped onto her back, and sighed.
-
2532
Mubarak townships, Mitribah, Souk System
The doctor wasn’t sure what to make of the caged, injured creature. Whatever it was, she suspected it was self-aware. Maybe it was the way it huddled in the corner, holding its legs and arms close to its almost-human body, its head low and cowed. Or its wide gold eyes, skittish with mistrust and fear, assessing everything around it. It was as large as a teenage human, but seemed child-like. The poor thing was terrified, naked. Abnormally thin- its bones showed through its pale slate-blue skin. Its mouth- two pairs of mandibles lined with sharp teeth- was pressed together and trembling. Translucent, armored plates grew from just behind its skull and hung around its long, slender neck. As she knelt before the cage, she realized the full extent of its injuries.
“You know what that is?” The man who owned the shop came to stand beside her. He kicked the cage and the animal whimpered and tried to push itself further away from the humans. “That’s a hinge-head.”
“Hinge head?” She stood, and continued to watch it. The name seemed familiar, but she was new to Mitribah and was still working on recognizing wildlife here. Where Mitribah was mostly dry and hot and sandy, a huge portion of her former home- Komoya- was swamps and rain forests. This creature definitely looked like more of a desert-dweller.
“Yep.”
“Is it a baby? Or young?”
“Yeah, I think so. Know what a hinge head is, don’t you, doc?”
She glanced at the man and it dawned on her where she’d heard that before. “They’re… one of the Covenant species? We call them Elites, right?” Realization settled as she looked at the scared animal. It was one of the creatures that, when fully grown, were already responsible for millions of human deaths. More every month.
“Yep.”
“It is a male or female?”
The man shrugged. “I dunno, I couldn’t get close enough to check. If it’s male, it doesn’t have the, uh. Dangly bits.”
She contemplated taking the time to explain non-mammalian anatomy but decided against it as he began speaking again. “It’s missing a foot and part of its leg, though. Looks like someone hacked it off a while ago.”
“Why?”
He shrugged again. “Who knows. I got it from some guy who said he got it off a Jackal trader who had just come out from behind Covie lines. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. Tried feeding it and it just tried to bite me, then puked.”
“Did you give it water?”
“Yeah, I’m not a savage.”
She looked at the pitiful, caged creature. Covenant client species or not, it was inhumane to treat a living thing like this. Especially a child.
“Hey. You wanna buy it?”
“Do I want to buy it? They’re sapient, aren’t they?”
“I guess. I dunno. All I know is that if you don’t buy it I gotta figure out what the fuck I’m gonna do with it. I don’t think it’s doing too well. I might just have to put it down.” He sounded agitated. “I can’t believe that sonofabitch got me to actually trade for this goddamn thing.”
“No, it does not look like it is doing well,” she agreed, and knelt before it again. She put her hand on one of the bars of the cage and the Elite hissed at her. Its eyes looked like an alligator’s, but it was definitely aware. As aware as she was.
“I’d be frightened too, little guy,” she said in a soothing voice. Wondering if it would sound comforting to an alien, wondering what aliens would find comforting. Well, she thought. Everybody likes food, right? She pulled a piece of jerky from her pocket and stuck it through the bars.
The man laughed. “Little. It’s almost as tall as you, doc.”
The Elite eyed her suspiciously, then looked at the food in her hand. “What did you try feeding it?”
“I dunno. Couple slices of bread. Some vegetable scraps. Kana tossed a candy bar in there but it wouldn’t get near it. Dog kibbles. I threw some raw chicken at it last night and it didn’t touch it.”
“Did you try feeding it cooked meat? Or a meal?”
“No. Look at that mouth. They probably don’t cook anything. They’re just… feral. They’re just animals.”
As he spoke, the alien reached out tentatively and plucked the jerky from her fingers, then crammed the whole piece straight down into its throat with the assistance of a tongue. Its hands consisted of four long, dexterous digits- thumb, finger, finger, thumb.
“God, gross,” he said.
The doctor’s brow furrowed as she considered what kind of fate would befall this frightened creature. It was Covenant, but if it was a child, maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe it could have a choice. “May I take it?”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I dunno. I traded one of my favorite rifles for this stupid thing.”
She shook her head emphatically. “I am not paying money for a sapient life form. Anyway. Look at it. It’s in pain. It’s fighting an infection in that leg and it’s malnourished. It’ll probably die before I get it home.”
The man sighed, then looked away as she stood and stared at him.
“Nikolaj. Just give it to me.”
“I’m not going to -”
“Three weeks ago I left my home at two in the morning to come here and care for your daughter, who had the pox.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “You’re a doctor. That’s your job.”
“That’s right. It is. But I didn’t have to come out here in the middle of the night. I didn’t have to answer your comm. And Kana is okay now, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, she’s better.”
“Let me just take it.”
He groaned. “I bet the military would pay-”
“One, this little guy is going to die before an ONI prowler could get all the way out here, and two, the entirety of Mitribah would- pardon my English, but- flay you alive and skull fuck you if you invited ONI to this planet.”
He sighed, then flung his hands in the air. “Take the goddamn thing.”
“Thank you.”
She knelt back down in the dust to look at the Elite. Nik was right- it was nearly as big as she was, but it was weak and trembling and looked scared out of its mind. She had no doubt that it was a child. “How did you get all the way out here, little one?” She handed it another piece of jerky, and it again plucked it carefully from her fingers. She smiled and the creature pressed back away from her. Don’t smile at them, noted.
She pressed her hand to her chest. “My name is Madhavi.”
Its eyes studied hers, then looked at her hand.
“Madhavi,” she repeated, slowly, two more times. “You?” She gestured at him. “What is your name?”
It let out a shuddering sigh, and placed its hand on its thin, bare chest. Its voice was a raspy whisper, deeper than what she had expected. But she had no idea what they normally sounded like. “Veka,” it said.
“Veka. I will take care of you, Veka.”