“The problem is the fuel rods,” Kybit explained as we all sat on the bridge. “To put it in simple terms, the ship’s reactor is running on fumes, and it won’t last for much longer.”

  “Those rods were supposed to last another ten years.” Amon crossed his arms, indigent at this new problem for showing up at the worst possible time.

  “They were,” Kybit admitted somewhat shamefully. “But the reactor sustained some damage during the Xurak attack. The repairs we did patched it back together with a loss of efficiency. I didn’t realize the extent until I noticed a Xenon spike the other day. When I inspected the rods, they were far more degraded than I anticipated. I apologize.”

  I realize that was another one of the many misunderstandings between the Nekomata and the old man. Kybit always assumed Amon would be mad at her, because for the Nekomata, there was nothing else except the shame of the moment. In reality, I can’t recall a single time that Amon was ever mad at Kybit. It was something he never allowed for himself, knowing that she would take it to heart in the way a human never could. However, that didn’t stop him from slamming his fist on the console and cursing.

  “I don’t understand why this is a big deal,” I spoke up. “Why can’t we just buy new ones?”

  “Because the Aphelion is a human ship,” Rykar answered as he poked at a control panel. “It’s not a problem of money. The design uses a specific antimatter mixture. Can last up to two hundred years under optimal conditions. But no one builds ship reactors to last that long. Generally because no one expects a vessel to survive two centuries.”

  “We install secondary generators in one of the cargo bays,” Amon suggested, rubbing his forehead and trying to come up with ideas.

  Kybit sadly shook her head. “I cross referenced all the available components in the sector. They’re all either too small to meet our power demands or take too long to retrofit. Minimum we would need to ground the Aphelion for several months. I’ve already run all the conventional possibilities. We have to abandon ship and purchase a new one,” she said, wringing her hands for an answer she knew she wasn’t going to get.

  Amon had a peculiar way of doing things. He would honor his agreement to give the Aphelion to Rykar—that was one thing. It shocked me, but I knew why it was different. But ditching the Aphelion for a better ship? That would be cowardice in his eyes, and I knew he wasn’t going to hear of it.

  However, instead of protesting Kybit’s suggestion, Amon’s shoulders fell in the most defeated manner. He glanced down to his gauntlet screen and began typing some buttons. Rykar was the one who scoffed at the Nekomata, dismissing the idea out of hand, and strangely, he seemed completely unworried about the situation.

  “Why can’t we just buy a bigger ship and take the Aphelion with us?” I asked Amon, exhausted. “Isn’t this serious enough for Cargo Bay 13?”

  Amon didn’t bother to answer, scrolling through some star map.

  Rykar sighed, plucking a dead feather from his neck and pointing it at me. “You’re thinking about the wrong problem, kid. You make a purchase like that, a super freighter out of the blue? It sends a flare. It gets eyes on you. People talk. People follow you. People think about taking their shot. It’s not just about getting us to the Voynich Nebulae. It’s about getting us there without half the galaxy tailing behind.”

  The old bird casted a sideways glance to Amon and jammed his thumb talon in his direction. “And you know… it’s Amon. You really think he’s going to let the Aphelion ride crippled?”

  “Then what?” I was almost ready to explode. “What’s the plan? What are our options? How can you just sit there, boredly picking at your talons. How can you be so sure!?”

  I guess I had always believed in Amon, that he was up to the challenge. He was always so in control, always knew what to do next. The Xurak situation was one thing, but for the years I had known Amon, he may as well have been an immoveable object in the face of an unstoppable universe. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him after seeing the old man waver. It was that I believed Kybit more.

  And frankly, I suppose I was just afraid at heart. I didn’t have faith like Rykar. I saw my home torn apart, and it seemed that this was the catastrophe that would do us in. And not because we were out of options, but because Amon was simply that stubborn. I wanted to believe in his philosophy of breaking the rules to win, but I had yet to see it in practice.

  It was this fear that finally brought Amon back to the conversation. It was one of those subtle things that you only realized decades later. Rykar could wait, but the panicking son couldn’t. Amon glanced up from the screen. “The answer is the easy part. We find more rods.”

  “Where!?” I asked.

  Amon looked at me. “You still think you know everything. That’s the problem. I haven’t survived four centuries after The Fifth Aberrant War without knowing how to handle these situations.” Amon swiped at the gauntlet screen, and the ship’s holometrics activated, depicting a star cluster only a small detour away.

  The old man clasped his hands and bent down in his seat, and I knew I was about to receive yet another lesson. Amon struggled to find the words before he began. “There are only three places in the galaxy where you can reliably find human technology anywhere you travel,” Amon told me. “The first is a tomb world. The second is a war.”

  “And the third?” I asked, already knowing it was going to be the worst answer.

  “A museum,” Amon answered darkly.

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” I snorted nervously, unsure of myself.

  Amon looked as if he was going to murder someone—and for this mission—he was. As many, many aliens he could get his hands on. And then I suddenly understood why Kybit, in her wildest calculations, had rejected this possibility altogether.

  Amon looked at me with eyes that had known worse horrors than the Xurak. “You don’t know the kind of aliens who like to make trophies of us.”

  …

  “They’re called the Rakasa,” I told Ingrish as we sat on cushions in her room full of tapestries. “They’re flesh-weavers. We’re going to be entering their territory, all the way to their homeworld. If we’re caught, they’ll…” My lip trembled.

  Amon showed me images of other… likeminded species to warn me of what we were getting into, and what I saw was… indescribable. It was enough to push me back into the waiting arms of my mother, even though she was the last reminder I wanted of how fragile we really were. I couldn’t stop thinking of it. How easily we were twisted into something else. How we can’t ever keep anything that is good in our lives. It just slips from our fingers. Everything passes.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Amon isn’t going to let anything happen to you,” Ingrish assured me.

  “You can’t know that,” I protested. “Kybit calculated the odds, she—”

  Ingrish nodded. “Which do you think is stronger? Amon’s love for you? Or the Rakasa?”

  “He didn’t protect me the first time.” I said, and I felt guilty for saying it, but it was true.

  “But he still fought for you. He set himself alone against the whole of the Xurak fleets for you. He went into the Carapace Suit for you.”

  “It wasn’t enough.” I quietly muttered under my breath, feeling once again the pain of the scalpel against my eyes.

  I suppose there was nothing that Amon could ever do that was enough. And it wasn’t for the failures of the man. There were just a few facts. Amon was only one person. He was set against the whole universe to protect me. There was no one who could win against those kind of odds, especially when Amon only had a few more centuries to live. Meanwhile I still had a thousand.

  Maybe we would beat the Rakasa. Maybe we would get away with it, as we always seemed to do. But there was always next time. I suppose I just wished I had something else to cling to, something that wasn’t just another hope that would disappoint me in the end. I just wanted to know that everything was going to be all right. And that was one thing no person in the galaxy could ever give me.

  Looking back, I realized this fear was beyond the Rakasa. It was that there was nothing else. Pain and death and shame, those were my only true companions. And I knew them well because they were written on every wrinkle on Ingrish’s face.

  “Teach me how to survive a mind poison,” I suddenly asked, putting to words of a thought I had had for a long time. “Please, I don’t want to be a burden on Amon’s shoulders.”

  Ingrish hesitated and sucked in a deep breath. “You don’t understand what a mind poison is. It’s not a bad thought. It’s a spiral of thoughts that only lead further and further down, until you break or your body does. It’s a loop, leading to the same destination, a room with no way out. If I tried to train you, expose you, then there would be no escape. Don’t ask me to do that.” Ingrish’s voice broke at the end, and I noticed her blindfold became the slightest bit damp.

  But it didn’t matter. Just from the pain it caused her, she told me the answer anyway. She would’ve shown me the same thing Orotek showed Amon—the rest of our lives as they honestly knew it. It is only bearable to us now because don’t understand it. What I felt was a kind of blunt trauma, moments of darkness, moments of loneliness, these pass with a meal or sleep until they arrive again. We are not constantly tormented by every second, with every waking hour. But the right needle, a carefully placed thought, leading the mind to only misery in every direction, that is how the mind poisons kill.

  These whispers aren’t lies. They are truth, distorted in a way that kills the soul. And because it is true, it does not matter how much you try to deny it. You either do the unbearable of accepting that truth, or you die.

  “Teach me how to defend myself from telepaths,” I pleaded. “I want to be like Amon. Surely there’s a way.”

  Again, Ingrish hesitated, but for a different reason. “We telepaths feel much more viscerally than normal aliens. If you recall a cut, it’s just a memory. But for us, it’s as if a scratch has been made on our own bodies. Your past is weaker than what we feel. It’s necessary that way, otherwise our abilities would not be sensitive enough to function. If you sense a mind intruding…”

  She attempted to put it delicately, but I suddenly realized what she was trying to say. I already had the power to kill any telepath—should I notice their presence. I wasn’t infected with a mind poison, but I already endured something that was beyond enduring. Any time I wished, I could bring the full horror of the Xurak and the whispers below.

  It is a strangely discomforting thing, to be sitting alive when you know you should be dead. And honestly, I should’ve been dead. If not for the years of Ingrish soothing me, taking me away from those dark places, I would’ve killed myself long ago. Left to my alone devices, I would’ve fixated on the Xurak and then nothing could’ve saved me. Ingrish was able to reach into those places few mothers can, not just loving her son, but holding my hand as she led me away from the portum and the whispers.

  Again, I noticed the growing dampness on Ingrish’s blindfold, and I jolted when I understood why. When Ingrish plunged into my memories, she felt everything of what had been done, the sharp scalpel on my eyes, the syringes, the instruments of torture. Everything. All so she could try to put me back together again. I had been stitched, sown, and mended, much by Ingrish’s careful needle.

  I winced, feeling a new ache in my chest. She never told me that, that she loved me enough to experience that hell with me.

  Ingrish summoned herself back. “I don’t ever want you to ever have to feel those memories again. Not even to defend yourself. I can teach you something even better..”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She carefully undid the blind cloth and opened her eyes. “It’s a secret that no telepath would tell anyone. But the bridge always works both ways. To read a mind is to influence your own. To imbibe someone’s thoughts is to bring that person into yourself. It’s an easy thing to conjure worlds of horror and poison the other. It’s much harder to bend that person to your will. It requires deduction, understanding the other, and then influencing them.”

  I squinted my eyes, confused. “You’re saying you’re going to teach me how to make any telepath my slave?”

  Ingrish shook her head. “No, that’s not quite it. They wouldn’t be slaves because slaves resent the chains that shackle them.”

  …

  I rested in my quarters, watching the passing clouds of dark space. I remember during those days after the Xurak invasion. At first, I was terrified of going into that stormy realm ever again. Every vague shape threatened to resolve into one of the warships, and I had so much trouble sleeping at night.

  I asked Amon, time and again, “What if?” What if they tracked us down again? What if they boarded us again? What if they took me again? Amon grew impatient with his assurances, until he finally unholstered his pistol and said he would murder every last Xurak if they ever showed their faces again. It didn’t put my doubts fully at ease, but the man made his impression, and the boy was able to sleep a little easier at night.

  The Rakasa though, they seemed just as bad. I had seen the items they sold on the market, the paintings, the outstretched faces in agony, and I wanted to get as far away from them as I could. I scarcely believed the horror, that any sentient species would stoop to such cruelty.

  It is one thing to understand the universe as indifferent. This is often the excuse we make to cope with our failings. But it is too little remarked upon, that the universe is not indifferent, for we are part of the universe, and we are certainly not indifferent. And it follows that the thinking parts of the universe, those unique parts of the world witnessing itself in self-reflection, those are quite evil indeed. And what does this say about our reality, that the thinking parts are driven to such vengeance and insanity?

  Amon would’ve kept me confined on the ship for the raid if not for the fact that the Aphelion’s crew were criminally spread thin. I once asked why he never hired more people, but Amon Russ only chose the best of the galaxy. Those were the only people he felt he could depend on, and he’d been betrayed far too many times to settle for anything less.

  I raised the data-slate and tapped at the screen in my bed. Amon asked Kybit to create a guesswork of the museum’s contents. The homeworld itself was kept private, the museum only accessible to the Rakasans and select visitors, but the financial transactions were not. And this museum was of such repute that it could not escape the notice of neighboring species, whose curiosity created a thin web of information in their digital networks.

  The collection was called The Flesh Menagerie. Amon told me to pick one thing from the museum that we were going to take back along with the fuel rods. And there was a very long list of items. This was his way of comforting me, I suppose, a small token given back after the horrors we would have to see.

  For many hours in that dark ship cabin, I scrolled through the hundreds of pages of inventory. My eyes felt like they were going to bleed, so long trying to choose. But just as I was about to put the data-slate down for the night, I saw something that entirely surprised me. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. There was an exhibit for the Aurora, a colony ship that had crashed on Ghiza VI.

  Amon had censored the people, leaving only for the items for me to discover. However, it was a simple matter of disabling the filters, and a minute later I had a crew manifest for every passenger on the ship. Those not recovered from the colony ship were greyed out.

  Curious, I searched for the name of Sarai. She was greyed out. My father was greyed out. I was greyed out.

  My sister wasn’t.