The Vela: Salvation

The Vela

Salvation

Ashley Poston, Maura Milan, Sangu Mandanna & Nicole Givens Kurtz

Table of Contents

The Vela Salvation

Table of Contents

1. The Guilty

2. Faraway Star

3. Orbit

4. Stranger in a Strange Land

5. A Modest Proposal

6. Demons

7. Deliverance

8. Things Fall Apart

9. A Great Escape

10. Onward

11. The Last Light in the Sky

12. Another Way

1. The Guilty

Ashley Poston

Leave the guilty behind.

That was the initiative Niko had believed in. Their rallying cry, their purpose for all the shit they pulled themself through to find the stardrive. To get to the other side of that wormhole. To find a new life.

But then the guilty were left behind.

Niko—and everyone else in this galaxy—were left behind.

And as the wormholes closed, they looked on with the certain resignation of someone staring into the vast, black void and seeing nothingness staring back. Hope was gone.

The Vela was gone.

As was their solar system’s last chance at survival. The sun was dying and its planets slowly freezing over, succumbing to that ineffable darkness. And soon, all of the people that called Hypatia and Gan-De and Khayyam and Khwarizmi and even Camp Ghala, suspended in a forever rotation around Gan-De, home would succumb to that darkness, too.

It had been six months since the Evac—since the wormhole closed and all hope was lost. Six months since the guilty were left behind.

Niko hadn’t understood why Asala didn’t get their reasoning, but now they knew all too well. Because only fools judge someone else’s worthiness. Who were they to decide who deserved to live and who deserved to die?

Niko wanted to die.

Back pressed against a cold and rigid crate of warm sy-wool coats and blankets bound for Gan-De, the sound of pulse pistols echoing in the cargo hull, Niko wanted to die. The marauder-class freighter—the Marooned, as it was ironically named—had been safe for three weeks, two days, and nineteen hours.

Six. Six shots.

There were six shots in a pulse rifle before the clip had to reload. Six shots bore into the other side of the crate. Niko held tight to the pistol, squeezed their eyes shut, and dove out from behind the crate.

A Gan-De soldier shouted, There they are!

Capture them! We’ve orders not to kill, another reminded.

Niko ducked behind another crate and cursed. Orders not to kill—their ass. If these soldiers didn’t want to kill them, then they should’ve used sleep darts or a tranq gun or anything besides live ammunition. Nanosplints could heal wounds, not gaping holes in someone’s chest.

Niko checked the ship’s blueprints on their personal datapad. The engine room should be down the corridor to their left, and that meant . . . the lab was straight ahead. Niko had spent the better part of two months looking for this damned ship, two months scouring through data trails and docking manifests, to find something—anything—that the scientist Uzochi Ryouta left behind. Blueprints for the stardrive. Anything.

Literally anything would do.

Niko prayed to the gods and darted for the door just ahead of the soldiers. A bullet whizzed past their ear, so close they felt the burn scorch their cheek. Ten feet. Five—

Stop them! Don’t let them get aw—

Niko slammed their hand against the panel to close the door, and it slid shut with a hiss. They then ripped the panel off the wall, hoping that stalled the Gan-De soldiers for at least a few minutes. They doubled over to catch their breath, and finally turned into the room.

It was a lab, dust-covered and derelict, but a lab nonetheless. Tears almost came to Niko’s eyes; their information had been right. They had tracked the ship to a port in the Gan-De region of Zaroa in the southern hemisphere. The scientist Uzochi had taken up residence here when she first came to Gan-De, and only stayed for a few weeks—long enough to set up a small lab and do some work, before relocating. Niko had been to almost every forsaken Inner Ring planet looking for this very ship.

Most of the lab equipment seemed to have been packed up in a hurry, and any computer left had been scrubbed. But they took out a small thumb drive from their inner pocket and pressed it into one of the ports. A data worm spread through the scrubbed computer, digging into every hole, every module, every program, searching for any trace of history or backlogs—though with every second Niko’s heart felt heavier and heavier.

What if the only blueprints were with Uzochi? On the other side of the wormhole? What if there weren’t any traces? What if everyone here was stuck, fated to starve to death or freeze or—

A window popped up on the screen, and Niko couldn’t enter the command to open the files quick enough.

Please, please, please, they prayed to whatever gods were out there. If the gods were listening. If the gods were real. They weren’t going to just surrender now.

A bloom of data flowered across the screen.

Coordinates. 

Coordinates to a distant star. A distant solar system. Not what Niko was looking for, but for the first time in six dark months, since they stared out into the nothingness, they felt . . . a spark.

It wasn’t quite hope—it tasted bitter. But it was there, and it was growing.

They were quickly queuing up the program to download every last code and scrap of data the worm could find when a laser-cutter punctured the door. They whirled around, startled. No—they couldn’t download the coordinates. If they did, then the Gan-De soldiers would capture them, find it, and do . . . who knew what.

No, this information was best left lost—to everyone else.

Niko turned back toward the screen and, with renewed concentration, committed the coordinates to memory. They weren’t very good at fighting. They were shit at mechanics. But code—numbers and signs, all neatly filed in a row—they knew those quite well. So they stored the information in the back part of their brain where they usually shoved the grief for their dead father, and then deleted the coordinates. Wiped the entire memory. And then—for good measure—they took the pulse pistol out of its holster and shot the hard drive dead.

The soldiers had cut through the door by then, and kicked it in. The door fell with a heavy thump, and the sound of footsteps rushed in, the click of fingers on the triggers of pistols, the heavy breaths of drones who had chased Niko across the stars.

All the way here.

And they had finally caught up.

Surrender! one of the soldiers, the one in charge, Niko presumed, commanded. Surrender and we’ll let you live.

Aren’t your orders to bring me in alive? Niko asked, quite unable to stop themself. They turned around and, as they did, the butt of a rifle slammed down against their face, knocking them out cold.

• • •

There was coldness. In the distance, screaming. The whirl of spaceships. Chatter through their headset. Niko knew this dream, this memory of the Evac. They had it often.

It was home in the same way that loneliness was home now, too.

Watching the wormholes spread wide against the vast darkness, yawning open like giant mouths into the great unknown. They had had a chance to go, they remembered. They had a chance to board a ship and make it through the line of imposing Khayyami starships and Gan-De marauders, into that great unknown.

But people had needed them in the control room on Camp Ghala as the space station fell apart around them. Asala had needed them. And they were foolish enough to want to earn back her trust. So they stayed.

Never mind that it didn’t matter.

In that control room panel they watched the lights of the starships blink, blink, blink––and then one went out.

Their father’s starship.

They had stared at the screen, waiting for the light to come back, for the ship to just have lost contact for a moment. For—for something else beside the inevitable. But there was only Asala’s light swirling away from where their father’s ship had been, and they knew.

Asala had killed their father.

And then she left into the closing wormhole. Without a word. Without a reason. Without Niko.

Leaving Niko without anyone at all.

• • •

Niko woke with a start.

Their head was spinning. The smell of the command station in Camp Ghala, acidic steel and rust, filled their nose––the ghost of a smell, the memory of a refugee camp that was no longer there. It had been disbanded a few days after the Evac. Gan-De forces stormed what was left of the camp, took the refugees prisoner, and brought everyone planet-side. The refugees were branded criminals for having housed Uzochi Ryouta, who had escaped into the wormhole with countless people. No one had an accurate record. A hundred people could have gone through the wormhole, or a hundred thousand, and there was no telling.

They shook their head and sat up on the hard bed, getting their bearings. It wasn’t a prison cell, at least, but it wasn’t exactly a five-star resort, either. The bed was bare, and there was a bathroom and sink––but that was all. It must have been a room on one of Gan-De’s larger warships. The only one they had seen was the Thorn, General Cynwrig’s own gargantuan warship, but the last Niko had heard that had gone toward the wormhole as well.

They wondered how many warmongering ships the Gandesians had. Probably hundreds. Enough to take the rest of the star system. They had already set up warships around Khayyam, the planet Niko’s father had been president of, and without a leader the planet had shuttered itself, reeling from the loss. Niko was simply waiting for the news that the Gan-De military had invaded.

It doesn’t matter, they thought. You aren’t a president’s child anymore.

Their father was dead, and his title along with it.

Pushing themself to sit up, their head began to throb, so they slumped back against the wall their bed was pushed up against. They could feel the nanosplints working on the gash on the side of their face, slowly knitting the skin back together. The nanosplints hurt more than they normally did—whoever had clocked them on the jaw really did a number. Then again, it was probably the same soldier who had followed them across the stars for the last three months, so Niko couldn’t really fault them.

Niko knew what the Gandesian Empire wanted. As the child of the late President Ekrem of Khayyam, Niko might have just been the only one who could negotiate peace between Khayyam and Gan-De. They had two brothers, but they highly doubted either Lukas or Ante would even consider negotiations. Neither of their brothers had ever been the sit-and-listen type. Niko had taken the reins on that one.

So it only made sense that Gan-De wanted to deal with Niko and not their act-first, listen-later brothers. Besides, Niko was at the Evac when it happened. If Khayyam had to choose which of President Ekrem’s children to listen to, it would be the one who was there. Who saw what happened.

Who watched Asala, assassin and friend, kill their father—

Don’t think about it, Niko told themself.

Instead, they summoned up the memory of the coordinates, repeating the numbers like a mantra, a story––a prayer. They kept the coordinates fresh in their head because, while it wasn’t blueprints to another stardrive, it was something.

It was more than what Niko had found in three months of searching.

And they wouldn’t, under any circumstances, let it pass them by.

A few hours later, a Gandesian soldier brought them what looked like dinner, and expressed surprise that they were awake already. Apparently, the doctor who looked at Niko had thought they would be out for a few more hours at least.

If nothing else, Niko surprised people.

The general will be pleased to know you’re alive, the soldier said with a distinct accent—Hypatian? Upper Crescent. Niko knew that tongue. Asala’s voice was tinged with it, too. Niko knew that after the Evac, most of the refugees left at Camp Ghala were conscripted into the military, but Niko hadn’t really paid much attention until now.

It had all been facts they had heard but never seen. It was different seeing it for themself.

Something in what the soldier said caught their attention. General? Who’s the new acting commander now that Cynwrig is gone?

There isn’t one, said a cold, crisp voice from the doorway.

Niko stared up at the shadowy figure in the entrance. Their skin prickled. At first, they tried to convince themself that their eyes deceived them. It couldn’t be. But then the woman stepped into the brightly lit room, her silvery-white hair pulled back into a tight bun, cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, in a simple black uniform and boots. But her eyes—her eyes Niko remembered the best. Dark, cold, and emotionless, like the nothingness that stared back from the emptiness of space.

It couldn’t be.

Niko had seen her warship—the Thorn—heading toward the gaping maw of the wormhole. They had seen it go.

But there was no denying that General Cynwrig stood in their room, very much real, and very much a problem. And that only meant one thing—the Thorn hadn’t been fast enough. The general’s warship hadn’t made it in time. And now this cruel woman and her military might were stuck here, on the back side of the rift, with every other guilty party.

Niko found themself smiling despite themself. Well, this is a surprise.

The general raised a single thin eyebrow. What is?

You, here. Last I saw you, you were fleeing into the wormhole— The general backhanded Niko so hard across the face, they felt the sting in their teeth. Blood came to their tongue. Guess it’s a sore subject.

You should hold your tongue before you spit lies, child.

Child. Niko was far from that. At twenty-six, they felt thirty years older than when they first left their home on Khayyam, bound for some greater purpose with the Order of Boreas. How laughable that was. They’d been through too much. They didn’t want to go through anything else. A small voice in their head said, Maybe if you push her, she’ll kill you.

The thought surprised Niko.

They’d never thought about suicide, but they felt numb to it now. The word had been a sharp knife in their mind before; now it was just a dull scratch. They wondered what their father would say about that. Probably condemn it. No, they knew he would condemn it.

But their father wasn’t here anymore.

Their father had no more words left to give Niko. Their last conversation with their father had been a confrontation. 

Niko had replayed the scene over and over in their head, what they said, what they could’ve said differently, what they could’ve changed to—to—to save him. Could they have saved him? If they had, maybe General Cynwrig wouldn’t have them held captive in an undisclosed location on some begotten fleet ship, left to her machinations.

The general took a chair from the desk on the other side of the room, pulled it up to the bed, and sat down. Now, are we going to talk like civilized adults?

You just called me a child, so I don’t have a lot of hope.

The old woman frowned. Perhaps if you quit acting like one, I wouldn’t refer to you as such.

Sorry if I don’t believe y—

Again, the general backhanded Niko across the face. The taste of blood flooded their mouth. The nanosplint that had been working on the gash on the back of their head was slowly but surely making its way to their tongue and bloody lip. Now, what were you doing on that derelict ship?

Niko ran their tongue across their bloodied lip. It stung. Looking, they ground out.

For what?

Things.

General Cynwrig raised her hand again and, despite themself, Niko winced, bracing for the slap. But the general stopped herself and leaned back in the chair. I’m a patient sort. If you won’t tell me now, you will soon. I always get what I want.

You didn’t get through that wormhole, did you?

Niko knew they shouldn’t have said it. They knew they were walking on thin ice. Six months ago, they would’ve held their tongue. Been polite—political. But what did it matter now? They’d been left behind to die.

The general grabbed them by their hair—it had grown out in the six months that they had been on the run, long and unkempt—and forced their head back so they had to look up into her wrinkled, pale face. It startled Niko to realize that she didn’t look angry, but petrified.

We will find a way, she said sharply. "And you will help us. Willingly or not, that will be your choice. What allegiance do you have to the rot on the other side of that wormhole? They left you, too. Don’t forget that."

Then she let go of Niko’s hair and left the room in four quick strides. The metal door clanged closed behind them, leaving Niko alone in the room once again, with a cold congealed plate of some sort of Gan-De porridge and a lot to think about.

• • •

For the next few days, no one came to visit Niko. They existed in the small, unassuming room, repeating the coordinates again and again. The only human contact they had was with the soldier who brought their food every morning, afternoon, and evening, and the soldier must’ve been given orders not to talk to Niko, because she never did.

She looked familiar, but Niko surmised that everyone in the same uniform looked familiar.

The Gandesian army couldn’t torture Niko, because that would go against Article Seven-Thirty-One of the Soldivar Trust, so there was no reason to keep them here. Niko should have been out finding the solar system the Vela disappeared to instead of sitting here in this ten-by-ten-foot room, but no. They were here.

Trapped.

On the fourth day, the door opened halfway into the afternoon, and Niko thought that maybe they were getting dessert, for once, but when they sat up they found it was General Cynwrig, and quickly lay back down again.

Your brothers have asked for your safe return, the general began, pulling up a chair again. She sat down, facing Niko’s bed, and crossed one leg over the other.

So they do care, Niko commented.

Of course they do. Family is family, whether Gandesian or Khayyami or Khwarizmian.

But not refugees.

The general didn’t have an answer for that. Of course she didn’t. Niko closed their eyes and waited for her to go. They wanted company, but not her company, and nothing she said was going to change their mind.

Forty-seven thirty-six four three-hundred and seventy-two nine ninety . . . They repeated the coordinates over and over again in their head, so lost in the numbers they didn’t feel the scurrying across their arm until it was almost at their throat. Then they opened their eyes.

A silvery spider sat on their chest.

Niko screamed and brushed away the mechanical spider, scrambling to sit up. They had forgotten about Cynwrig’s spiders. After everything that had happened, they had forgotten one of the worst parts about her.

The general held one in her hand, and it walked across her fingers, back and forth, back and forth. It’s a pity, really, she went on. "They even said they wanted to negotiate with us for your release. Isn’t that something?"

My brothers would never negotiate.

Unless it’s for you, apparently, Cynwrig mused. But you know I can’t negotiate until I get what I want.

Which you won’t get. Niko eyed the spider on her hand hesitantly. They had to remember that Cynwrig couldn’t torture them. It was against the Trust. This was just a scare tactic. One that wouldn’t work. Besides, what could her little spiders do, anyway?

A lot, the small voice in the back of Niko’s brain replied.

"I don’t have anything, anyway," Niko went on, just to sell it.

The woman cocked her head. I think you’re lying. After she subdued you, my lieutenant found that you had destroyed the lab’s hard drive. Now why would you do that if not to cover something up?

What would I cover up?

I don’t know. The thumb drive you used was empty, and we couldn’t repair the hard drive in the end. So you either found something too precious to copy—

Or I found nothing, and I destroyed it because I was angry, Niko snapped. "I think it’s the second one, General. There’s nothing. Uzochi left nothing. No blueprints, no instructions, no prototypes—nothing. We’re stranded, General, and we’re all going to die." The last part made Niko’s voice waver because, even with the coordinates, there was still a very good chance of that.

Cynwrig sat back in her chair. She was silent for a long moment, considering Niko’s words. The spider crawled up her arm and perched delicately on her shoulder. Its beady red-lens eyes watched Niko unblinkingly. And very faintly, Niko began to hear a sound—they didn’t understand what it was at first—but then they remembered. The click-click-click of tiny legs scrambling across a metal floor.

They stiffened, ready to bolt out of bed—

But it was too late.

General Cynwrig fixed them with her icy gaze. I don’t believe you.

Spiders poured out from the crack between the wall and the bed and rushed up their body, crawling, clicking, digging their sharp feet into their skin. Niko tried to brush them off, but as they did more came, grinding, biting, scratching, until they covered every inch of their skin. Niko fell over onto the bed, paralyzed, until the spiders swarmed over their eyes and blocked out the light, too. The last thing they saw was the general smirking over them, as if she had won.

And that was all there was—the click of metal and the chattering of tiny mandibles and darkness. They couldn’t move. They could barely breathe. And everything was dark, so dark. Dark like the nothingness of space, like the pinpoint of the universe where their father’s ship had been—and suddenly not. The kind of darkness that haunted their nightmares.

The spiders encased Niko in a cocoon of metal bodies, and there Niko existed.

For how long, they didn’t know.

But they felt warm lips press against their ear, and the hot breath of General Cynwrig hushed across their cheek— You will tell me what you know, but you will understand why you should fear me first.

Then nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing but the numbers in their head. Breathe. Think. Remember the numbers. In order. Forty-seven thirty-six four three-hundred and seventy-two nine ninety—and the rest, all hundred and twenty-three numbers, over and over again. In the dark.

But the thoughts began to creep into their head.

Why did Asala leave me?

Why did she kill my father?

Why didn’t she kill me, too?

And then—worst of all—Why am I always left behind?

Left behind by Asala, who disappeared through the wormhole, and left by their father, gone to some other place through a rift where they cannot follow. Left by everyone they ever cared about. Everyone they let into their lives. Left by their brothers, who went on to marry or join the Khayyami military.

Leave the guilty behind, Niko had once said to Asala.

And so they were.

The truth was, they had come to terms with dying on a frozen planet. They knew they would—either of the weather, or dehydration, or malnourishment. They would watch the sun blink out, and then that would be that. The cold would come.

The cold came for everyone in the end, anyway.

That wasn’t why Niko searched for the last six months to find some way through the wormhole after the Vela. They searched because they wanted an answer. They wanted to face Asala and ask: Why did you leave me behind?

And Niko knew, out of everyone who had left, Asala would be the only one who respected them enough to give them a true answer.

After Niko got their answer, they weren’t sure what they would do—maybe destroy that sun, too. Maybe make it so no one could be left behind again, because there wasn’t another way to go forward. You couldn’t be left behind if there was no future