“For now.”
I never forgot that answer. For now.
It made me think of time and how it’s as relative as anything else in the universe.
“How long, exactly,” I asked, “is for now?”
He didn’t answer.
But he didn’t have to, I guess. Corla already told me how long for now was.
Twenty years.
Serpint turned eighteen first, then about a hundred spins later, so did Draden. And at the time I didn’t understand why ALCOR’s grand plan required them to both be eighteen, but I do now.
Eighteen is the galactic age of maturity. For Akeelians, it’s twenty-five, but that was just our species-specific age and since we are such a small part of the people who make up humanoid species in the galaxy, no one cared that we aged differently.
By fourteen we look like men on the outside, but inside we’re still children.
By sixteen we get aggressive and competitive.
At eighteen we’re downright dangerous. We call it the year of rage.
Hormones are out of whack, the urge to fight and fuck dictates pretty much every move. And believe me, that year I turned eighteen no one wanted to be around me. There were no girls to fuck. And even though Xyla offered to help me out, I said no. It wasn’t right. And the only boys to fight were my little brothers. Because that’s who they were by this time. Brothers.
So I just… stayed away from everyone. Just did the work ALCOR assigned me until things settled down inside my brain.
It was lonely as fuck.
Then Jimmy took his turn, then Valor, and Luck, and Tray.
It’s a small miracle we didn’t kill each other. But it passed over the course of half a year or so. And we had a nice two-year break between Tray and Serpint.
But Serpint was still raging pretty good when Draden took his turn and on the night of Draden’s eighteenth birthday ALCOR said it was time for them to leave.
By this time we had all built at least one ship with the help of the servo bots. Who, by the way, were more than servo bots. Xyla was right. Even the ones who just mopped the floor had distinct personalities and we all had our favorites. Each of us boys had a little army of servos who followed us around like minions.
There were more than a hundred ships inside ALCOR’s ring of docking bays when we arrived there, but they were all ancient. The parts were still good, and the tech was better than anything I’d ever seen or heard of. Which is a whole other story I won’t go into. Because who the fuck were these people ALCOR wiped out more than twenty thousand years ago again?
Anyway, we broke the ships down and put them back together in new ways using engineering plans ALCOR stole off the net.
“One day,” ALCOR told Serpint and Draden as we all stood in the airlock in front of the ship he’d assigned them, “you can tell people who you really are and where you come from. But that day is still a long way off. So…” His hologram put a finger up to his lips. “Shhhh.”
“Sure,” Serpint said, both annoyed with ALCOR’s instructions and eager to leave. “Whatever.”
ALCOR and I argued relentlessly about letting Serpint and Draden be the first to leave. But he didn’t give in. And in the end, I had no choice. Because I had no real power on the station. I was just the oldest refugee and nothing more.
“Now, boys,” ALCOR said. “Go forth and find me some princesses. I want all of them.”
“Why do we need them again?” I asked.
ALCOR had picked up many of our human expressions over the years so he shot me a look that was so clearly contempt, I almost let it drop.
“I’m just getting clarification,” I added, because I knew he wouldn’t answer me unless I pushed him.
“To lure outlaws.” He glared at me for a prolonged moment, then turned his attention back to Serpint and Draden. “The only ones you’ll find will be runaways. And most of them will already belong to someone else. So…” He smiled and folded his hands at his shimmering holographic waist. “Just take them. Even if they resist, you take them. You put them in the cryopods, and you bring them straight here. I’ll take care of everything once they arrive. Understand?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Serpint growled. “We got it, OK? Goodbye already.”
And then they both put on their helmets, walked into the airlock, cycled through it, and went out into the cold, hard vacuum to enter their ship.
We watched them leave. All of us, even their loyal servos who had to stay behind.
And when they were gone this place felt a million times emptier.
CHAPTER TEN
Serpint and Draden were not even gone thirty spins when ALCOR decided it was time for Jimmy and Xyla to go on their mission.