Warp World (42 page)

“Alright.” Shan tugged another panel loose from the rider, spilling wires and parts to the ground. “Lesson one: clean up.”

Ama wiped her hands on one of the many rags she and Shan kept close by as they worked, then armed sweat from her brow. She was exhausted but invigorated. For the past four days, they had worked nearly around the clock, sleeping only when their eyes could no longer focus—often dropping off right on the spot where they were working.

Progress was slow but Shan’s constant complaining and cursing showed signs of ebbing, and Ama was beginning to understand the guts of the rider almost as well as she had known the parts of her boat.

She spotted Shan climbing out from the belly of the rider and hurried into a ready position.

“Okay, next ques—” Shan jumped and let out a cry of surprise as she spun and found herself inches from Ama. “Damn it, stop doing that! I don’t need you at my elbow all the time. Remember what we talked about? Lay off the caj stuff when we’re alone here.”

Ama resisted the urge to drop into the retyel and backed away to give Shan some space.

“Better.” Shan pulled the rag from Ama’s hand and wiped her own. “As I was asking, what are the three flight dynamic parameters?”

“Roll, pitch, and yaw,” Ama said.

“Torque gauge?”

Ama found the tool and slapped it into her hand. Shan crawled back into the rider.

“Did you always want to be a pilot?” Ama asked as she returned to arranging wire trusses.

“Always.” Shan’s voice echoed from inside the rider, accompanied by the clanks of the tool against the hull.

“And your family didn’t try to stop you?”

“Because?”

“Because you’re a woman.”

“You say some dumb things but
that
might be the dumbest. How many times do I have to tell you? Our World’s not like your world.”

“So there’s nothing you can’t be or do on this world, even though you’re a woman?” Ama said.

“Why would there be?” Shan tossed out a thick hose with a frayed end. “Fix that up and tell me the name of the object detection system.”

Ama snatched a fresh blade from the jumble of tools on their work table, fitted the blade over the line cutter, and began to saw through the damaged end of the hose. She opened her mouth to reply to Shan’s question just as the stiff material gave way with a snap.

She was back in the training room. Flurianne’s blood coated her hands. She dropped the knife, waiting for Gressam, waiting for the pain from her collar. Sweat ran down her back.

“Hello out there, I asked you the name of the object detection system
?”

Shan appeared from the interior of the craft, once more, hair jutting like the chop on water on a windy day, grease streaked across her face. Ama wiped her hands on her overalls and passed her the severed part without looking at it.

There had only been a few of these incidents since she and Shan had started their work, but they were difficult to hide in such close quarters.

“D-Scan,” Ama answered.

“Gonna have to do better than that. Middle of a firefight, you have to know the answers before you even get the questions,” Shan said. “How’re the trusses coming?”

Ama held one up for inspection.

Shan let out long whistle. “Not bad for a water-worshipping savage. I might make a proper skyrider out of you yet.”

A chime from Shan’s comm stopped her as she prepared to climb back into the rider. A string of curses accompanied a frantic search among the piles of parts and tools.

“Here.” Ama pulled the comm out from under a spare hydraulic line and tossed it to Shan.

“New parts are here. ’Bout time.” She smiled and threw the comm back to Ama. “You go get ’em, I’ll keep working. Service caj is waiting out front. You’ll just have to show the comm and give a thumb impression. Easy.”

Ama nodded and turned on her heel.

“Straight there and straight back. No wandering off, I mean it. And stick on the blue line. Too easy to get hurt in here.” Shan called after her.

Ama headed off to receive the parts from the caj waiting at the hangar doors. Dutifully following the blue stripe on the ground that marked her path, she stretched her arms over her head then rolled her shoulders as she walked—movement felt good after being hunched in one position for so long.

“KARG!” A loud curse echoed through the hangar.

Ama turned to see a chunk of machinery swing free from a mechanic’s grasp. The heavy weight rotated along its axis. He looked around the hangar, his eyes falling on her.

“You! Caj! Come over here and hold this so I can bolt it in.”

Ama stopped mid-stride. Her muscles locked, her breathing slowed, and combatting emotions flooded in. Shan had been specific—get the parts and return, no sidetracking. But her training, the processing, Gressam’s words and punishments demanded she obey. Unable either to respond or keep moving, she froze in place.

“Get over here!” He rubbed his knuckles. “Now, or it’s the pain for you!”

Ama’s breathing slowed further at the mention of
pain
. Her chest tightened and sweat rose on her palms. Even so, she couldn’t move.

He released the part, strode over to her, and thrust out his hand. “Controller. Now.”

Ama’s mouth opened and closed but only air escaped. It was getting harder to breathe, she felt dizzy. The man in front of her had gone out of focus, an angry blur. All she saw was a hand torch on the blur’s hip. A tool. A weapon.

“Please don’t—”

He raised his hand toward her. Ama’s eyes narrowed to shaved points, focused on the torch.

“HOLD!” Shan barreled toward the mechanic, brandishing a line cutter. “Don’t you put one kargin’ finger on her or I’ll lay you out.”

The mechanic turned and glowered. “I needed a lift for my work. It was just walking by.”

“She was getting my parts and she’s the property of a karging Theorist, you moron.” Shan waved the line cutter for punctuation. “You touch her and first I’ll put you down, then I’ll have you grafted, hear me?”

The mechanic backed away. “It didn’t respond to orders.”

“She— It had orders, not yours!” Shan said, half-shouting. “Caj, go get the parts I sent you for. Move it!”

The order snapped Ama out of the daze. She lowered her eyes and jogged away, the sour smell of her own fear thick in her nose.

Her hands shook as she pressed her thumb to the digipad offered by the service caj with the goods. Once the transfer was complete she grasped the handle of the tow-cart, hands slippery with sweat, and tugged the crate back toward the rider.

She didn’t look up as she passed Shan, who was still chewing out the mechanic. She didn’t raise her eyes once, until she arrived at the rider. She focused on her work—unloading the crate—though her hands continued to shake.

In the pocket of her flight suit, she felt the weight of the collar’s controller she was required to carry. The urge to pull it out and smash it was almost overwhelming.

“He won’t do that again,” Shan said, finished with the mechanic and back to sorting out the parts. “Word’ll get around that you’re for the Theorist, and they’ll stay clear. If he wanted to, it’s a good chance that the boss could get him grafted just for trying to hijack you.”

Ama moved mechanically, lifting and organizing the equipment. Shan was talking to her from a thousand miles away; her heart beat painfully inside her chest. She swore she could smell Gressam hovering nearby—the sharp, chemical odor of his shoes, the sound of Flurianne’s screams.

Mid-turn, the box she was lifting slipped from her grip. She dropped to her knees, clutching her stomach as if she might be sick. “What am I going to do?”

“Ah, crap. Look, I shouldn’t have sent you out there. Take a break,” Shan said. “Get something to eat or get a nap if you need one. Storm knows, we’re both tired. Don’t let that idiot get to you.”

Ama shook her head. When she raised her face to Shan’s, the tears she thought she’d finished with were flowing again. Fear and anger battled for control.

“Nen’s blood!” She slapped her palms on the ground. “He’s coming to get me in three days. Fismar told me. Seg says I have to—” She took a moment to catch her breath. She had worked so hard to keep herself together but now she was unraveling. “I have to go to the Haffset victory party. I have to be his caj. It’s going to be full of your People. Shan, what if that happens to me there? I can’t go back to that place. What if—” She threw a hand over her mouth, as if just speaking the possibilities would make them real.

“Hey, you’re properly marked now.” She gestured to the collar around Ama’s neck. “Kinda off from normal, but you’re under a control and he won’t let anyone else have the controller. Just do what you were trained to do in processing and let Eraranat handle it, okay?”

Ama stared at Shan, the closest thing she had to a friend on this world. The gulf between them stretched out to infinity. How could she know? How could any of them know? Ama wiped her eyes, sat up, then rocked back onto her haunches. Alone. She was alone.

“You know how you think there’s some things you would never do? No matter what?” Ama asked, her voice flat as she stared through the floor.

Shan nodded and put the rag aside. “Yeah.”

Ama shook her head. “You do them. In processing, you do all those things and then you thank the processor. They kill you in there. They kill you and leave just a body.”

Shan looked around the hangar.

“Karg it.” She crouched down and placed her hands on Ama’s knees. “I know it was bad in there. I’m sorry for what they did to you.”

“Not just me.” Ama raised her face and let her eyes roam to the other caj scattered throughout the hangar.

Shan was quiet for a long moment.

“Ama, you got to understand, we have to do it like that. I mean, you? You’re okay. Came through of your own free will and all, right? Sending you to that place was a mistake. But you should see the karging animals that come through. I mean, if we let them run loose they’d tear up everything. This is how it’s got to be, y’know? One World, one People, and we got to survive.”

Do you?
Ama wondered.

“Hey, another few days and you’ll be up there, where no one can touch you.” Shan pointed skyward. She rose to her feet, and offered Ama a hand up, despite the fact that all the eyes in the hangar were now on them. “Copie?”

Ama looked at Shan’s hand for a second, then placed hers in it, and let the woman help her stand. In this world, she would have to take friendship for what it was and where she could find it.

What she didn’t tell Shan, what she could barely admit to herself, was that she had been seconds away from losing control of herself with the mechanic. What if Shan had not intervened?

I would have killed him. I might have killed her, too.

Even now, the feeling had not passed completely. Every Person was an enemy. Survival? Shan had no idea.

Jarin rushed through the doors to his office with a round of hasty apologies to his fellow bloc members for his tardiness.

“You are not the only latecomer.” Ansin nodded to Shyl’s empty seat. “She
also
did not extend the courtesy of sending a comm.”

Jarin repressed the urge to roll his eyes at Ansin’s impatience. The man had many gifts; tolerance was not among them. “I am certain she—”

“My apologies, everyone.” Shyl burst into the room, hair and uniform even more askew than usual. “There was something of a riot near my home.”

“More displacement troubles?” Maryel asked.

“The Wardens had to be called this time.
The Building Authority expected my previous neighbors to gracefully accept that their dwellings had been bid up, and they were to move to the undercity prior to the arrival of the newcomers. They disagreed rather vehemently. I felt compelled to step in.”

“Displacements are a fact of life; we have larger concerns to deal with,” Ansin said. “Not to mention, if you would take advantage of Guild housing you would not have to deal with such unpleasantness.”

“I see Theorists all day at work,” Shyl said. “Why would I want to spend my evenings around them as well?”