He staggered out of the bar. He swayed down the corridor, passing by the pet shop where reptiles, birds, and insects gurgled and cawed in cages. A few aliens bumped into Bay. They grumbled. One shoved him.
"Mucking pest!" A living plant walked by him, shedding leaves.
A liquid alien rolled by inside a mobile aquarium. "Who let a pest aboard?"
A man-sized snail slithered on the wall. "First pests in the washroom vents, now this!"
Bay ignored them all. He was used to stares, shoves, insults. He was human. To these aliens, it was like seeing a cockroach.
Once we were masters of a planet. The thought emerged through the groggy haze. Once we had fleets, power, respect. My father believes we can have that again. That we can find Earth, that we can—
But Seohyun had died.
And Bay wanted nothing of that war. That dream was dead. Dead like everything else Bay had ever had.
He found his way to a virtual reality chamber, the kind you hoped they steam cleaned after each use. He paid with a fistful of scryls, spilling them, and the tiny skulls clattered across the floor. He barely remembered making his way into a VR chamber, but soon he was lying on a mattress that reeked of disinfectants. The walls were bare except for some graffiti. Somebody had drawn rude spirals tipped with circles. Alien dicks always reminded Bay of springs.
He picked up the sensors from the floor, wiped them off, and strapped them on. He pulled on his 3D glasses.
"Yo, um, interface?" he said. "Activate."
A hologram appeared before him, featuring the interface. Bay reached out with his good hand. The left hand was curled up against his chest, throbbing and useless. He had paid for only one vemale tonight. Two chicks at the same time cost a pretty penny.
The interface offered him many species, everything from slimy slugs to living plants. Bay scrolled until he found the option for human. He then scrolled through possible bodies, ranging from petite to cartoonishly curvy. Bay chose his woman a body—short and slender. From the next menu, he picked long black hair, almond-shaped eyes, and a kind smile. With each selection, his hologram took shape.
I'm a girl of the earth.
And she materialized before him. Seohyun—risen again. Smiling sweetly. She nestled against him, and with his sensors, he could actually feel her.
"Hey, handsome," she cooed. "Can I suck your—"
"Hush," Bay whispered. His eyes watered. It was too painful to hear her speak like this. It was too painful to shatter the illusion.
"Just hold me," he whispered. "Hold me and sleep."
The virtual girl closed her eyes, smiling softly. She curled up in his arms, warm and soft. The illusion was complete—her breath against him, her hair flowing between his fingers. And Bay wept.
A small, choked sound sounded above him.
He frowned and looked at the ceiling.
There was an air conditioning vent directly above. And a face was peering through it.
Bay gasped. He made eye contact.
She was a teenage girl. She had short, messy brown hair and large brown eyes. The girl gasped, covered her mouth, and her face vanished. Bay heard her crawling through the duct above, fleeing.
That had been no virtual girl.
A human.
She was human.
It had been years since Bay had met another human.
"Yo, wait up!" Bay said, rising to his feet. "Girl!"
He yanked off the VR sensors, and the virtual Seohyun vanished. Bay leaped toward the ceiling, tried to grab the vent, but couldn't reach. He cursed his modest height, wishing he were as tall as his father.
"Yo, girl!" he cried.
Fists pounded on the wall, coming from the room next door. A deep voice grumbled. "Keep it down in there! I'm trying to fertilize some holographic eggs in here."
Bay sat down, head reeling. A girl in the ducts. A human. Another human. Around her neck—a crystal amulet. She was so familiar. Bay knew her face. He had seen her before, seen that jewel . . .
His head spun. Too much grog filled him, too much pain. He fell back onto the mattress. His eyes rolled back, and Bay slept. He dreamed of rolling grasslands and spreading fire.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Commodore Leona Ben-Ari stood in the desert canyon, sword raised, as a hundred thousand aliens howled for her death.
Why does this damn thing keep happening to me?
Leona brushed back her mane of curly brown hair, then charged forward, roaring and brandishing her blade.
The beast stood before her, twice her size. Tarmarins had evolved here on the desert world of Til Shiran, and their scales were the same brownish-gold as the sand, the canyon, the sky, and almost everything on this sweltering planet. The sun blinded Leona, and the heat drenched her with sweat, but the scaly monster facing her probably felt quite comfortable. He snorted as she charged, claws glinting.
"I will teach you the meaning of pain, pest," the Tarmarin said.
Leona vaulted off a boulder, soared into the air, then swooped, her blade pointing toward him.
Like an armadillo, the Tarmarin curled up into a ball.
At least, if armadillos were built like a Ra damn tank, Leona thought.
Her blade slammed into the hard scales, nearly snapping. It didn't even leave a dent. Pain reverberated up Leona's arm.
She fell back and hit the dirt, legs sprawled out. She held her shield in one hand, sword in the other, and the sandy wind blew across her.
The Tarmarin unfurled, limbs and spiny head emerging from the ball of scales. It swung down its claws. Leona rolled, but a claw still scraped across her thigh, reopening her old wound, and she yowled.
The crowd cheered.
Aliens from across the planet had come to watch the fight. It was not every day, after all, that a human battled in Broken Bone Canyon. Most of these aliens had never seen a human, but they had all heard the tales. Heard that humans were demons. That they drank the blood of baby aliens. That they could turn into cockroaches, withered crops, and spread disease. Whenever a starship crashed, they blamed human saboteurs. Whenever a child got fever and perished, they blamed humans for poisoning the wells. Whenever a stock market tanked, they spoke of humans hoarding the wealth.
Yet to actually see one of these villains? To see a human killed in real life? And to see no less than Leona Ben-Ari herself, the daughter of Admiral Emet, the human warlord feared across the galaxy?
Yes, this fight had attracted a crowd. Tiers of seats had been carved into the canyon cliffs, forming an amphitheater. Thousands of aliens had come to see the spectacle.
Most were Tarmarins, the native species, aliens with sharp claws, long teeth, and a natural coat of tawny scales. But Til Shiran was an important planet along trading routes. No fewer than three wormholes shone in its sky just beyond the planetary rings. And so this desert world, cracked and dry as it was, attracted aliens from a thousand Concord worlds. Many other species had come to watch Leona killed.
Sluggers—mollusks the size of men—sat in the amphitheater, sipping from buckets of fermented intestines. A few Esporians clung to their seats—sentient mushrooms—experiencing the fight through vibrations in the canyon. Trillians sat on a balcony—living musical instruments who communicated by plucking their own strings. The sunlight reflected in Silicades, a race of sentient crystals. These living minerals had no eyes, but they could see images in reflected light. Not every alien was solid. There were liquid aliens who sat in bulbs of water, gaseous aliens confined to atmosuits, and aliens formed of intelligent electromagnetic pulses that moved between hovering balls. There were even a handful of Aelonians—tall, glowing humanoids with transparent skin, the most powerful race in the Concord.