Lina shoved her chair back, standing in one quick movement, slapping her palms down in front of her. “What are you not telling me? I’ve listened to your story. I’ve entertained the idea that there’s more going on here than I’ve been told, and you’re still not telling me everything? How am I supposed to convince Bain that this war shouldn’t be happening if you’re still holding onto secrets?” Her heart raced, her blood pumping hot. She couldn’t say why she was so fired up about this, or why her voice was shaking. Something in the back of her mind had been telling her something was missing, there was a piece of the puzzle still obscured, but she kept shoving it away, telling herself it would all come in due time.
But this… Clearly the Captain felt she should have already been told whatever it was and the clear disagreement in their ranks didn’t inspire much confidence.
The woman gaped at her, eyes wide and unblinking, and Lina was prepared to turn and storm out and test her apparent freedom, when Goblak’s slime-covered hand settled on her forearm. It was warm and heavy — and a little gross, to be perfectly honest — but his eyes spoke to her.
“Please, sit down,” the translator regurgitated his garbles.
“It’s time to tell her the truth Vessa. All of it,” the Captain said.
“Of course,” she said with a resigned sigh, her whole body slumping forward until she looked only half her size.
“When I was captured… I wasn’t alone. My husband and I shared a line of work. We fell in love during an archaeological expedition and our romance was nothing short of a whirlwind. He seemed like someone I’d known my whole life. Like a part of me I hadn’t known was missing.”
Lina slowly sank back into her seat, her hands still trembling. She didn’t know what this had to do with anything, but she didn’t like where it was going. It sounded too familiar. Too much like her and Bain. And hearing the woman — Vessa — speak about it in the past-tense only made Lina uneasier. She knew this story didn’t have a happy ending and the desire to run from the room was stronger than ever.
“Yunna was my other half,” she said, “and we both had this thirst for adventure. A longing to see more than the world we were brought up in. But we were told the same stories I’m sure your friend has heard his whole life: the outside is too dangerous, the enemies are waiting, you’ll never be able to come home. Of course,” she said with a wide smile thrown Lina’s way, “we too were young and foolish. We didn’t heed the warnings. We wanted to pursue the mysteries of the cosmos.”
Under the table, Lina twisted her hands together, her knuckles cracking under the pressure as she tried to stop finding parallels with her and Bain. It was almost eerie how similar the stories were.
“We talked to our ruling council and convinced them to give us a ship. We acknowledged the risks, but there hadn’t been a sighting of the Fibbuns in over a generation and it seemed safe enough.”
“Until you were captured,” Lina said, filling in the blanks.
“Yes, until we were captured,” Vessa said. “This ship had, unbeknownst to us, been searching for a new homeworld for a century. And it just so happened that the planet they were scouting was the same one we were studying. As you can imagine, there was a… misunderstanding.”
Now, it seemed almost impossible that this was a story of other people in another time. “Was Yunna shot?” she asked, incredulous.
Vessa’s eyes went wide and she shook her head. “No, oh no, not at all. But… He lacked my open-mindedness. While I was still trying to communicate with our captors and trying to get to the bottom of this incongruous story, Yunna was finding a way to escape. He’s the one that warned my people I was brainwashed, because I wouldn’t leave with him.”
Lina could hardly breathe now, thinking of Bain back in the cell, probably scheming up escape plans at this very moment. Was there any hope of their relationship avoiding the same fate?
Still, as terrifying as the possibility was, she couldn’t see how it was at all relevant to the question at hand. Namely, why they were shot down and captured.
“That’s awful,” she said carefully. “But I still don’t see how it led to my ship being shot down.”
“Right,” Vessa said with a curt nod. “I’m getting to that. You see, Yunna left me here and refused to speak to me anymore. Not even when I found out I was carrying his child.”
Now, Lina’s hands were damp, clammy, and cold at the fingertips. Her throat was dry, her head throbbing with the deluge of information. This woman’s story was sad, yes, but was it necessary? She couldn’t stop listening though she wanted to, and she needed to know the ending, even if she failed to see why it mattered.
“Well, I knew it would be irresponsible try to raise a child on my own here, in a foreign culture, without a real understanding of it myself. I hoped that if I sent her home, they would at least not turn their backs on a helpless infant. I hoped that she’d be raised in a loving home, surrounded by her own kind. And I hoped when the time was right, she too would feel the pull to the stars and come looking for me. With the help of my friends here, I managed to set up an auto-detection system using my own DNA. Of course, it was meant to capture the ship without force, but it doesn’t seem to have responded well to resistance…” She trailed off, looking thoughtful as her eyes wandered to the ceiling.
It was all too much for Lina to take in. The whole story seemed… disconnected.
“Wait a minute… Are you saying—”
“Yes!” Vessa said brightly, clapping her hands together. “You’re my daughter.”
Lina frowned, her mouth twisting as she shook her head. “No… I already have a mother who didn’t send me away, even though she had no idea how to take care of me.”
Vessa’s expression fell. She seemed surprised that Lina wasn’t leaping across the table to embrace her. “Please understand, dear, I only did what I thought was best for you.”
“By sending me to a planet full of giants where I never knew another like me?”
Vessa’s brow furrowed and her lips thinned. “What do you mean? I sent you back to our home. Back to Olinda.”
Lina shook her head, rage bubbling over now. “No. You sent me to Earth. I fit comfortably in my mother’s palm. That’s the kind of world you sent me to. I wasn’t allowed outside, to experience fresh air or sunshine because it was too dangerous.”
“You wouldn’t have had those things here, either,” Vessa snapped, sounding defensive. “And if you never met another of your kind, how do you explain your precious prince?”
Lina rolled her eyes. “It’s really none of your business. You lost the right to know those details of my life when you gave me up.” She stood again, and this time Goblak’s hand didn’t shoot out to stop her.
“Daughter, please,” Vessa said, and Lina realized the woman didn’t even know her name.
She shook her head, barely able to stop herself from breaking down. The only thing keeping her voice level was pure rage. “No, you don’t get to call me that.” She began to storm out of the room, not even sparing a thought for the fact that she had no idea how to find her way back to Bain. Before she reached the door, Vessa called out.
“I’ve worked too hard to build this peace and your boyfriend could ruin it all. Please see reason.”
Her whole body trembling, Lina turned and addressed the Captain. “I’ll do everything in my power to convince Bain you’re not the enemy, but in exchange, I’d like a working ship that can get me the hell out of here.” She wasn’t offering much, and she knew the ship could still use her help, but there was no way she was going to stick around any longer than expressly necessary.
She left without waiting for an answer. They could negotiate later, but right now, she couldn’t be around… that woman. She wouldn’t call her mother. She already had a mother. One who’d taken her in, who’d raised her, who did the very best she could for the tiny baby she had no idea how to take care of. Her mother who saved her from the vacuum and gave her a light so she’d never have to be scared of the dark again.
Not some woman who put her in a spaceship and sent her off into the unknown, just… what? Hoping for the best? What kind of plan was that? She never made contact with her home world to verify that her baby had arrived safely? She never even knew that Lina ended up in the wrong place.
She stormed down the hallways, not sure how to find her way back to Bain, but not in any great hurry to do so, either. She needed time to think, to decompress, to get her head together before she tried to relay all of this information to Bain. She needed to figure out how to approach it. How to word everything in a way that he’d actually listen to her and not give up on her like Vessa’s mate had.
A chill swept through her and Lina wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her body tight. Vessa and Yunna’s story was so similar to her and Bain’s. Too similar. But would Bain stick by her? Or would he think her a lost cause?
She couldn’t bear to find out. It hurt too much to think about. She felt she already knew the answer and it wasn’t one she liked.
So, instead of actually trying to find Bain, Lina found things to keep her busy, to keep her mind occupied. It wasn’t a challenge to find things that needed fixing; finding the proper tools proved to be more of a challenge, but she managed. Though she’d encountered many doors with locks, it seemed that supply closets weren’t worth the hassle.
The hallways in this part of the ship seemed mostly deserted, but even when she did encounter a Fibbun, they hardly paid her any attention. Some grunted a word or two at her, but she never said anything back and just kept working.
She couldn’t have said how much time had passed before her stomach grumbled and her mind finally felt clear enough to face Bain. She’d worked through the conversation a thousand times and hoped that she’d be able to remember the most important points when it came time to talk to him. Assuming she could find her way back to him.
Hoping that someone would come by who could give her directions, Lina kept her head down, focused on fixing what she could before the time to leave came. At least this should earn her some goodwill. They hadn’t agreed to give her a ship yet, but maybe this would sway them. She could only hope.
A garbled grunt came from a neighboring hallway before she ever heard the footsteps, but in moments, Goblak was upon her, practically frothing mad.