Nophek Gloss Read online

  A whimper leaked from Caiden. More overseers? He scrambled to his feet and hefted one of the dead overseers’ weapons, holding it as they had, pressed along one arm through loops. It didn’t light up. Caiden swore and ran his fingers over it, willing it to come to life as the ship had. He snatched a knife from one of the overseers too, and held it ready just in case. Knives didn’t need power.

  The five figures drew near, all human-shaped.

  Caiden backed up to the cockpit. He bit the inside of his cheek, straining to focus. He’d defended himself and Leta against larger boys, and could maneuver around the bovines, but adult fighters were altogether different from bullies and animals. Especially if all that worked was the blade, and the bubble didn’t kill all five.

  The console behind him caught his eye: a blinking symbol with a series of eroding rings. Power draining.

  “Oh no, no, don’t fail now— Shit!” Adrenaline stabbed his exhausted body and soured his tongue. He swiveled to the door.

  The bubble shrank, sizzling back up to the crystal in the cockpit ceiling. The edge’s contact threw Caiden flat on his back. Dizziness melted the walls, but this time, his stomach didn’t turn. He gasped what was now scratchy air and crawled to his feet, heavier than before.

  The weapon he held lit up.

  Five silhouettes approached the bay opening. They didn’t look like overseers. Instead, they wore strangely cut garments, draped portions over tight-fitted, and a mix of masks, veils, and hoods.

  Caiden ducked behind the pilot’s seat. The rail of his weapon shook in his grip and chattered against the knife blade. He itched his fingers around for some kind of trigger. When he grasped a handle near the front, the weapon’s spine beamed with symbols.

  The group halted in the middle of the bay. A tall man with a sharply muscular frame strode forward. He dropped his hood and unwound the scarf from his long, bearded face. He looked to be Caiden’s father’s age, but with features more wrinkled and scarred. He swiped back a shock of wavy hair marbled between gray and white. His expression grew rigid, brows drawn and eyes sharp.

  He called out in a language Caiden didn’t understand. Every syllable stopped in abrupt, hard-edged clicks.

  A long pause stretched, while Caiden kept his heavy weapon raised. The knife wiggled in his sweaty grip.

  The man tried a new language that rolled like water off his tongue, words buoyant and cadence soothing.

  Caiden shook his head.

  “How about this one, boy?” the man called.

  Caiden straightened. “Are you an overseer?”

  The man lowered his weapon. “So you speak slaver tongue.”

  “Slaver?”

  Caiden had heard the word and the idea once before, in the Stricture. The livestock had been described like slaves. Were he and his people just animals to the overseers?

  The man waved to his crew. They slung back or sheathed their implements. Then he held out his hands, palms open. “I’m not one of the … overseers.” He glanced at the two crumpled bodies as he approached. “And you don’t know how to use that. So, boy, let’s not have an accident.”

  Caiden still held the knife, which he knew how to use. Overseers or not, he wasn’t ready to trust, but he was smart enough to listen.

  The cockpit lights illuminated the man’s severe face. His right brow sloped over the corner of his eye and pinched toward a circular scar in his temple, matching an identical circle on the other side. Odd chevron staples ringed his dark-gray irises, more visible as he peered around the cockpit with an unblinking, too-sharp stare.

  He asked, “Is this your ship?”

  “It’s mine.” Caiden’s voice cracked, throat still rough from acid.

  “Well, let’s get it working again.” The man looked around, his gaze razor keen. “Then we can leave before this raid gets out of hand.”

  “More out of hand,” one of the others corrected.

  Caiden squeezed the knife and assessed the crew’s casual stances. If these people knew what was going on, he could learn from them, understand this nightmare, maybe escape it. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Laythan. I’m no slaver. Quite the opposite. What’s your name, boy?”

  Caiden laid down his weapon but gripped the knife tighter. Deep inside, he ached for someone to trust and let it all make sense, but if he was just an animal to them, too, he needed sharp fangs and claws.

  “I’m …” No one who knew him was alive to speak his name. It seemed distant, left wherever he’d come from and bundled with all the lies. His gaze dropped to the floor, roaming to a painted square that read WI90NN-1238 among cheerful glyphs. “Winn,” he finished.

  Laythan laughed, and Caiden flinched. Could the man tell a lie? “And where are you from, Winn? A passager ship?”

  Passager? Caiden’s brows drew together.

  Laythan frowned, surveying Caiden from head to toe. He turned to his crew. “Get the bodies out and scavenge a patch for the door iris.” They surged into motion. The scars around the man’s eyes whitened as he squinted at the round protrusion in Caiden’s pocket. The gem. “Found something? Let’s see.”

  Caiden wasn’t about to let fear or fatigue sell his trust so fast. Laythan acted kind, but so had the overseers when they loaded everyone up to be slaughtered.

  “I won’t take it.” Laythan shoved his hands in his pockets.

  These people could have killed me and done what they wanted. Maybe they need a slave. Caiden thrust his tumbling thoughts aside. At the core of it he needed help, and these people could offer it. He pulled out the gem.

  Laythan exhaled a slow whistle. His hands stayed in his pockets. “Nophek gloss. Boy, you’re holding the most valuable substance in the multiverse. No wonder everyone’s heading this way.”

  Valuable enough to slaughter us all. Caiden squeezed the gorgeous, useless object, and fought the sting of tears. If he was worth nothing, he had only one option. “If you can get me to safety with what I need to survive, it’s yours. Try to take it, and this blade’ll find your neck.”

  Laythan’s hearty laugh crashed through Caiden’s defenses. “I admire your spirit. I can tell you’ve been through something you don’t wish to remember. I’ve been through many.” He tapped the white scar on his temple. “My crew and I, we’re part of a people who call ourselves passagers, and we live by a fair code. Right now, you have a ship I need to get off this planet, and I have the crew you need to do the same. So, young pilot, have you ever flown your starship?”

  Star? Caiden’s grip slackened around the knife. “Flown?”

  Laythan’s forehead wrinkled. He softened his tone. “How did you end up here?”

  “I was dumped.” Caiden’s throat itched. He swallowed. “Like years of livestock. We raised animals for the overseers … slavers. To feed the beasts. A disease wiped the bovine out, so we were all loaded up and dumped here. To be … To—” He couldn’t finish. He scratched a fingernail frantically against the knife hilt, cutting off that thought with motion.

  Laythan raked a hand through his stormy hair, then shook his head. Around the ship, a couple of the crew paused their work to exchange glances. “Winn, I have a lot to tell you, and you have a lot to hear. Put the knife away. Let’s talk.”

  “How do I know you’ll tell me the truth?” Caiden was too exhausted to be anything but straightforward. “Why wouldn’t you just kill me, take the gloss and the ship?”

  “Smart kid,” a dark-haired woman muttered as she strolled by. “Can we keep him?”

  Laythan grunted, but his lips crinkled in a smile. To Caiden he said, “Passagers do and believe whatever suits them, looking out only for themselves. I believe every being has a right to find their own place in the multiverse. I can’t take that from you, no matter your origin. Many worlds means many riches. There’s more than enough profit for all. As far as I’m concerned, you have claim to this ship and your own life. I’ll take your deal: the gloss for your safety. My honor will hold me to that. If you believe
me to be an honorable man, feel safe.”

  Laythan extended his hand. Tanned, wrinkled, and ripped by tiny scars. A hand with history. One that had worked, felt soil and metal, knew pain.

  Caiden dithered, knife held awkwardly, as he fumbled with Laythan’s foreign words. If he didn’t trust someone, he would never escape this place, and he would drown in the sea of the things he didn’t know.

  He clasped Laythan’s hand.

  CHAPTER 5

  PASSAGERS

  Power filled the control pads and cockpit. A delicate hum spread inside the vessel’s shell, pulsing like bloodstream. Two of the crew— one masked and the other wearing a tight-wrapped veil— fit a new panel to the damaged bay doors. Laythan talked to a heavily armed woman with slippery black hair of mixed lengths that she struggled to contain in a tie.

  The adults’ activity in the bay banished Caiden’s loneliness, yet he felt ignorant and insignificant amidst their knowledgeable movements. He reminded himself that he was using these people, and he needed them to like him so they didn’t change their mind about the deal. They could keep him safe and help him learn. Maybe Leta had stayed hidden and was found by kindly passagers too.

  Maybe not everything was lost.

  He paced a little corner, back and forth, and scratched at the leathery sleeve of his coat.

  Suddenly, an explosion burrowed into the dune, tossing sand across the hull. Caiden ducked. The dark-haired woman dashed outside brandishing chunky weapons in each hand. “Two groups inbound!”

  “Everyone else, gather up!” Laythan yelled. Another explosion rocked the ship. Darting whines peppered the air outside. “Various passager ships and that black armada are still roving the planet, snatching up gloss. The slavers must have gloss detectors. We need the iris fixed, engine refueled, and flight controls up. If this heap isn’t going to fly, I want to know soon. Our ship’s scrap, and no wrecks around are worth trying.” He paused. “Winn.”

  It took Caiden a beat to register the name— his name. “Yes.” He puffed his chest, ready for his task.

  “Keep out of the way until we’re off-planet.”

  Air punched out of Caiden’s lungs. “I can— I can help, I’m a mechanic.”

  The affirmation came out meek and squeaky, his throat still sore from screams. He used to be familiar with every machine, useful and capable to his world. How swiftly he was reduced to worthless.

  A gentle hand landed on Caiden’s shoulder from behind. He swiveled, looking up into a man’s brutish face, a trimmed beard framing his smile.

  “A mechanic?” the man said with genuine surprise. His deep, soft voice didn’t match his fighter’s features. “That’s no easy skill.”

  Caiden shrugged and pulled the too-big pilot’s coat tighter around his shoulders.

  The man wore a jacket similar in cut, but it was a deep, dark emerald like a blackbird’s sheen, cinched to the throat with cross-shaped snaps. His hair was short and dark, his eyes the color of dull blued steel, and he wasn’t young or old— somewhere in those middle years Caiden found hard to place. “Maybe you can help me with the console. My name’s Taitn. I’m the pilot.”

  A pilot. Caiden absorbed Taitn’s warming smile. He struggled to separate all their names, each spoken with an accent of original language, sticking out among the slaver speech. Even their names didn’t belong in the world he knew. Taitn … tighten …

  Laythan made an annoyed nasal sound. “Fine, short introductions. This is Ksiñe.” He indicated the masked person, whose predatory posture didn’t shift an inch. “Prefers ‘he.’ Ksiñe is Andalvian, and our scientist and medic.”

  Ksiñe’s mask was metallic filigree over scarlet cloth or membrane, with tiny tubes threaded at the edges. The exposed skin at his neck was gel-like and matte, patterned with speckles and stripes, as if a layer of congealed water covered his pale skin with patterns. A furred sort of scarf looped his shoulders and collarbones, rippling indigo, black, and white as it … breathed.

  Caiden simply nodded, crushing his curiosity at the word “Andalvian” in the pit where all his questions still lay. The name pronunciation slipped away at once.

  “Panca is our mechanic. Like you. She’s saisn.” Laythan indicated the slender woman. Veils swathed her face and neck except the center of her forehead, baring a black, glistening circle the size of the gloss. The cloth was translucent enough that Caiden decided he wasn’t ready to see what a saisn was. She touched two fingers to her forehead.

  The blasts outside had ceased, and the final member of the group strode back in. Caiden blinked at their tall, muscular frame and squared face, different from the woman he’d seen march out earlier. Their tan skin was unusually smooth, with tiny black lines running along contours. They mussed the tie holding their black hair, which— Caiden was sure— had been even longer before.

  “I can snipe, but we’ve got twenty arcminutes at most.” They looked Caiden up and down, then up again. “I’m En, he for now. Dealer, negotiator.”

  “Gambler,” Taitn added.

  “Chiseler,” Ksiñe hissed.

  En grinned. “Guilty.”

  Caiden opened his mouth but hesitated to speak. The five of them— capable and seasoned— fit together like engine parts perfectly tuned.

  Caiden was the misplaced part that didn’t fit.

  Laythan glanced among them. “Panca, Ksiñe, keep your masks on. And En, for now don’t—”

  “I won’t.” En winked at Caiden.

  Everyone rushed to work while Laythan beckoned Caiden to follow him outside to the ramp. “We’ve got time before they get everything up and running. Let’s talk. Come and sit.”

  En marched ahead of them, up to the highest bulge of the dune, where he lay and propped a long weapon lengthwise, then cuddled up to its scope. The tip of the rail flowered open, with translucent membrane stretching between the tines. A shrill blast pierced Caiden’s ears and made him jump. Smoke and sparkles wheezed from En’s weapon while a fat line of distorted air streaked across the desert at incredible speed.

  “Over here.” Laythan’s eyes were sharp as ever, trained on the distance.

  Caiden sat on the ramp edge and shoved at the sand with his boots.

  “Until today,” Laythan said, “there were only five known specimens of nophek in all the multiverse, but here … these slavers have cultivated hundreds, outside of regulations and observation. No one else knew about this world until recently, and now they’re all after the gloss, prized for its energy potential.”

  Caiden pulled the gloss from his pocket and rolled it against his palm with a thumb, unwittingly recalling the nophek’s sundered skull, pink brains, and iridescent fluid. He looked away and worried at it with his thumbnail.

  “Small thing,” he said, “to be worth thousands of lives.” Worth more than all of him and everything he knew. His jaw stung with the threat of tears, but iron exhaustion held him together. He squeezed and scratched the gem, willing it to crack first.

  En fired again, up on the dune. The blast kicked breath from Caiden’s chest. Shooting slavers. I want to shoot slavers.

  Laythan said, “We need to learn more about what happened with your people and this planet before we judge. Let the shock settle and shape you. You survived, and might find some good through it one day, with distance and understanding.”

  Laythan’s words were a sour wind that rocked Caiden like a leaf on a twig.

  Good … He kicked sand from his boots. Tan workers’ boots, the same as every slave had worn. Laythan’s boots were black and layered. Taitn’s were leathery with steel toes and jangling laces. The attire of real people. “Nothing about any of this is good.”

  His left fist clutched the nophek gloss: the most valuable thing anywhere. With his right hand, he massaged the nape of his neck where the branding scar raised the skin, marking him as the least valuable thing anywhere. He had grown up believing the mark made him a valuable part of something large and important. But his parental unit, his friends, Let
a— fodder. Ignorant, dispensable.

  He scratched the brand’s circle and six rays until his neck stung and bled. The stone of sorrow in his stomach heated into rage.

  Another piercing blast cut the air.

  “I should have died with everyone else.” Tears brimmed, and Caiden shot to his feet to chuck the gloss into the desert.

  Laythan caught his wrist mid-throw. “Easy! Its value might anger you, but that value is what will buy you a new life.” His grip, too forceful, radiated up Caiden’s arm. “Boy, everything you lose in this life is going to burr in until you let it go and move on. Even if it’s your old self you have to let go. The sooner you do, the stronger you’ll be to fight for the next thing someone tries to take from you. Settle down.”

  Caiden ripped his wrist away. “Leave me alone.” He marched off the ramp onto the dune.

  Behind him, Laythan groaned, pulled a flask from his coat, and took a swig.

  En shot again, then deftly shouldered his weapon and slid down to the ramp. He tucked disheveled hair behind an ear. “I see you haven’t improved at this stuff, Laythan. I mean, crimes, you can’t leave him with that news.”

  The captain’s gaze speared En. “You’re the negotiator.”

  Taitn sidled up. “Let me talk to him?”

  Laythan said, “Don’t you have a console to get working?”

  “Ksiñe’s rebooting it first.”

  En snorted. “Well. Have at it, gallant.”

  Caiden ignored them and pushed his finger through the sand, drawing a word in the only language he knew. Slaver tongue.

  His word was “home.” He stood and kicked it.

  Taitn joined him, approaching slow and indirect, the way Caiden had learned to approach skittish animals.

  “I was like you once,” the pilot said. “Plucked from what I knew and shown how big the multiverse really was … I felt smaller than ever.” He pointed up to the sky. “Each of those spots are called stars. Some of them are worlds as big as this one.”

  Caiden craned his neck, taking in the twinkling white grains. “Impossible. They’d have to be really far away to still be as big as this one.”