The Defiant
Chapter Thirty Two

I dashed down the hallway of Deck Six, bare feet slapping on the metal floor. I reached the door to the prison cell.

“Computer, open door!” I said, foot tapping impatiently as the door slid open, too slowly. I entered, the lights turning on automatically.

The cell was a smallish room, eight by eight feet, with a shelf for sleeping on one wall and a plain metal chair in a corner. A small slat in the wall no doubt allowed access for meals to be pushed through.

The passenger had been laying on the shelf, but sat up at my abrupt entrance.

“Ah. One, what a pleasant surprise. What brings you here at this time of night?” he asked, calm and pleasant like always.

“Iea air-ee-es fuh-was,” I said, attempting to imitate his words from back on Cebos.

“Pardon?”

“You said it on Cebos. It’s in Sedhan, right?”

“Iea aeruyes feoise. Yes. Why do you wish to know?”

“What does ieaheia mean? That’s Sedhan too, right?”

He smiled widely and said nothing.

“Come on. You must know,” I needled, irritated. Why was this guy so damned calm all the time?

“I do apologize, my impatient One, but I will answer no questions at this time,” he replied blandly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to get some rest.” He laid back down.

I grit my teeth and turned on my heel, leaving the room. This guy was absolutely infuriating. He had the answers, but I couldn’t get them out of him.

Dejected, I returned to my room.

It wasn’t until nearly an hour later, when I was on the edge of sleep, that I realized that he’d used my name.

The next morning, an unofficial meeting took place in the med bay. We hadn’t been called together, but the seven of us drew to the med bay at approximately the same time, presumably to check on Two.

I was proud of my crew. Even Four and Three were behaving appropriately, in that they weren’t arguing with anyone for once.

Two was awake and talking, although still a little out of it. He had a tendency to trail off in the middle of sentences and forget what he’d been saying. At one point, Seven was leaning forward to talk to him, and he reached out to stroke her hair, saying,

“Shinyyy-nyyy.”

Seven snorted and extricated her hair from his grasp. She re-bandaged all our wounds, her hands once again steady as opposed to the exhausted shaking of the previous night.

After Seven checked her cuts, Three sat up straight and cleared her throat.

“I have something to share with you all,” she said, shutting her mouth tight after biting off the words. I wondered if this was about the piece of paper I’d seen last night.

I was right. She pulled a crumpled bit of paper out of her pocket and spread it out on her thigh.

“This is…contact information that was given to me by Cassian. I met him at the ball. He has contacts in the Sorhnan government, in the department aimed at finding and arresting the Aerzhu.”

“You told someone else about our mission?” I asked incredulously. “What if he’d arrested us for being imposters?”

“He guessed we weren’t who we said we were, and he told me all about how the Aerzhu were evil, so I told him what we were doing.” she said the last bit quietly, almost whispering, as if we couldn’t hear we wouldn’t get mad.

“But the Aerzhu are on the right side,” Eight said. “They’re trying to correct the unfair treatment of the Sedha in human society.”

“Yes. They are. But the Sorhnan government created the Oliane department to catch the Aerzhu because they aren’t using humane methods to get their points across.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, though I already knew. The same things Five and Rathborne had already said.

“They’re essentially terrorists. There have been peaceful organizations who have been trying for decades to give the Sedha equality. The Aerzhu emerged recently, and they use absolutely no diplomatic methods to advertise their message. They use bombs and guns instead of words. There was a bomb dropped last month on Eramai, a major Sorhnan city, that killed or injured over a million people; both human and Sedha civilians. They might have the right idea about equality, but they’re going about it wrong, and people are dying.

“This contact information is for the leader of the Oliane, the government agency. Cassian thinks, and I agree, that we should turn our passenger over to them instead of taking him to the Aerzhu. If we do so, we may never get our memories back, it’s true. But this is bigger than us now. It’s a matter of life and death for countless people. Just… Think about it, okay?” Three finished quietly, slipping off the end of her bed and limping out of the med bay before anyone could say anything.

“Wh—Three!” Five hollered, but she didn’t respond or return.

I turned to face everyone.

“Well? What do you think?” I asked.

“Are you crazy? Are you actually considering turning him over to the authorities? We have to do this mission! We need our memories back, and how are we even supposed to be sure this Cassian isn’t just lying to Three? The Aerzhu could be the good guys, and I’m not turning around,” Eight argued.

“But what if Three’s right? I don’t want the deaths of thousands of people on our heads,” Seven said.

“I say we wait until we reach Byth. We spend a day there, gather as much information as we can about the Aerzhu from the people there, and then we make an informed decision about where to go next; Sorhna or Earth,” I compromised.

“People lie. How are we to be sure the Bythians would tell us the truth? Maybe the Oliane are the true villains. How would we know?” Eight spat.

“It’s our best option. We have no other way of getting information on the subject,” I said placatingly.

“Why don’t we just ask the ship’s computer?” Two asked sleepily.

“The Aerzhu gave us this ship. Do you really think they would give the computer access to potentially incriminating files?” Four snapped.

“I think we go with One’s plan,” Seven said, placing a calming hand on Four’s shoulder. “All in favor?”

I raised my hand along with Five, Six, and Seven. Four put hers up reluctantly, followed by Two, who was half asleep and may not even been aware of what he was voting for. Eight scowled.

“Sorry, Eight, that’s a majority,” Seven said jauntily, dropping her hand into her lap.

“Whatever. It’s your funeral,” Eight said grouchily, and left.

I rose to follow her, but Seven stopped me.

“Just give her a little while to cool off. Why don’t you go tell Three what we decided?”

I obeyed her grudgingly, and went off in search of Three.

Three wasn’t in her room, or at least if she was, she was ignoring me, so I searched the ship from top to bottom and eventually found her in one of the shuttles in the shuttle bay.

I clambered up the ramp and sat in one of the passenger seats behind her.

“Thinking of running away?” I joked.

She snorted, not turning to face me.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

She sighed, a long, rattling exhale. “We’ve spent too long out here. We’ve forgotten our morality, along with everything else. It worries me that we can’t set aside our own interests in order to save millions of people. No one thought we should question our mission when we first left Earth, either. It worries me too that we so readily believe everything we’re told and don’t question whether it’s right or wrong.”

“I think we deserve more credit than that. After you left, we decided almost unanimously to get information on Byth. If you’re right, we’ll set course for Sorhna. But if most of the people there think the Aerzhu are the good guys, we’ll go to Earth like we’d planned.”

“So you don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that. You might have been given false information, or lied to, or something. We just want to be sure. Like you said, these are people’s lives we’re dealing with here. And if our passenger being returned to Earth is better for people, then we need to give that option consideration as well.”

“Sure. I get it. Just—actually give it consideration, okay? Don’t write it off immediately.”

I agreed that I wouldn’t and we sat in the shuttle for a while, listening to the quiet sounds of our own breathing.

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