Beyond the Rim

I lay on a slab, Ranior and Ed holding me down, their faces as blank as masks of bots. Navarre threw questions at me while Kaza and Vane’s sawblade hands cut through skin and bone. Then Navarre shot me in the head, and I screamed as fire consumed me—

I sat up in a cold sweat. The room still rang with my scream. Good thing the rooms aboard the Phoenix were soundproof.

After slipping out of bed, I paced the room, trying to push away the fear that was pulsing through me. Even if I thought I could go back to sleep, I wasn’t going to try.

I stopped in front of the picture I’d started painting yesterday. A crew member had let me borrow her paints and canvas, and I’d painted an abstract scene that had begun to look more and more like a fiery hand, reaching out of the darkness. It gave me a creepy feeling as I looked at it, and I ripped it off of the easel and stomped on it before I even knew what I was doing.

I sat down on the bed, breathing hard. How would I be able to go back to sleep with them waiting for me, Ranior and Ed and Vane as real in death as they were in life? Holding me down, their fingers burning into me—

I jumped up and grabbed the other canvas sitting against the wall. I set it on the easel and began to paint, trying to feel anything that wasn’t terror.

The dark, sweeping background of deep purples and blacks threatened to overtake the light, but then, out of the darkness, a pair of bright wings formed. Every color complementing the other in a brilliant pattern of light.

The butterfly I’d seen in the darkness, that day I’d escaped.

The door opened. I jumped up, reaching for the gun at my hip. But it was only Rock, his face weary as if he’d walked a thousand miles without resting.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Yeah. You?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me either.”

“So you started to paint?” He attempted a smile. Then he stepped toward my picture. He stood there for a moment, not moving. “What’s this?”

I sat down on the bed, gathering the strength to speak. “It’s what I saw at Navarre’s. They were torturing me, even worse than Ed did. I’d given in and I was about to give them more. Not just information, but myself. I would be her slave, if only she’d stop the pain—” Tears threatened to flood my eyes.

“But then I saw it. It was like it was made of the last bit of hope that I had. It gave me enough strength to resist them, just a little bit longer.”

“It was a vision?” Rock sat down next to me.

“No—it was more like beauty, life—I don’t know. All I know is that it helped give me the strength I needed to hold on, to not give in, no matter what they did.”

“You don’t think you would’ve given in completely?” Bitterness cut through Rock’s voice.

“Well, I would have told them everything with the truthteller. But I was lucky, I guess. Navarre was called away…and then Stace came….and the rest you know.”

He nodded. “Without that, without you, I would have still been working for them.” He leaned back, taking a breath. “I saw one of the slaves in the hall last night.”

It turned out there had been other slaves on the planet besides Rock. At the base of the waterfall, there had been a brief firefight, during which Ranior’s lieutenant Vane had been killed. The military had rounded up the others, including Kaza, and confined them in the brig. There had been about twelve slaves, something I hadn’t even considered when rescuing Rock. I felt a little guilty about not trying to rescue them, but that was nothing compared to what Rock must have felt.

Rock continued, “It’s kind of hazy, what I did when I was with them. But after I’d brought him in to the base, I saw them torturing him, and he looked at me like it was my fault. I didn’t feel much guilt then. But now—

“In my dream last night, I was running from two people on skimmers, shadowy faces bearing down on me. Then, me and Ranior were chasing that man—We caught him and stuffed him into a pod and locked it, and we laughed as he screamed—

“At least you never gave in. You never worked for them.”

We talked over the next hour. He told me more about how they’d used that memory drug over and over to force him into submission, and I realized he’d probably held on longer than anyone else could have.

I also learned what had made him remember who he was. It had started when he’d first seen me, but he had resisted the memories. I’d been right to hit him with something from his deep past—under the memory drug, he’d relived being trapped by his father so many times that something in him had snapped, and my bringing it up had helped jar him back to reality.

A few hours later, we ate breakfast together. Stace joined us. A little while later, we touched down on Mars, Corps headquarters. After that, we took a pod to Center to meet Vega. Stace said goodbye to me in the podbay; she said she was going to take some time on her own.

Before I could settle down, I had to do several press conferences under the guidance of Jovanna. After our successful mission, Dagan insisted on staying in the shadows. Choy did not step into the spotlight either; as a soldier, it was all in a day’s work for him, his duty for the Confederation. Because Zodiak had “rescued” me, and he was now an ally of the radicals led by Senator Kinsy, I was expected to be a representative of the radicals, who were on the ascendancy.

“It’s good for everyone,” Dagan told me. “The radicals are against slavery, against corruption, for getting the Confederation back into shape, at a time when most people don’t even realize anything’s wrong. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do much after this dies down. They’ll just market your image as the slave they rescued, who turned into the hero of the Battle of the Blue M.”

There were so many things wrong with the new situation, especially that they saw me as a “hero”, but, despite this silly marketing campaign, it looked like it would turn out for good in the long run. The radicals sounded like they would whip things into shape and keep Zodiak in line.

Dagan told me not to provide the names of the others I’d seen at Navarre’s banquet, because there was no proof they were involved with slavery beyond my eyewitness account, whereas he’d gathered actual evidence from Zodiak Prime of Navarre’s involvement. Dagan assured me that a witch hunt right now would do more harm than good; it would make it look like Center was falling apart at the seams. It was best to focus on the worst offenders, like Navarre, who’d already fallen. Her trial would bring more things to light later on.

“I don’t like it either,” said Dagan. “But it’s the reality of things, and we have to do our best with what we have.”

After the press conferences, I met my sister and Rock, and we went out for dinner. Rock had never been to Center, Vega just twice, and so they were rather enamored with it. I’d seen its worst, the grime hidden beneath its glittery veneer.

I hugged Vega on the roof of the building, savoring her presence. After we sat down, we ordered egg rolls and pudding. I got the idea we upset that upscale restaurant with our rather raucous behavior.

We settled down, sipped some wine, and talked about Vega’s job and other normal things I was aching to hear about. Then we fell silent, and the past two months hung between us, each of us reliving our own private nightmare. Vega had had to live with believing I had died.

“Why can’t we just act like none of this ever happened?” I said. “All I want to do is forget.”

Vega twirled her pearl earring. “I don’t blame you. As your sister, Dev, and your friend, Rock, that’s what I want for you, more than anything. But remembering will help you keep the same thing from happening to you, or others.”

I thought about that, as I made crisscrossing patterns with my fork in my pudding.

Rock looked out the window at the glittering lights of the city. That would often happen; during the past few days on the ship he’d suddenly zone out, and it would take a lot to bring him back to earth.

“Rock,” I said.

He looked at me. “I was just thinking,” he said. “About that planet. On the Rim, where we…were captured.”

“I don’t ever want to go back there. Not even in my mind.”

“I don’t either, but sometimes I can’t help but think about it. What do you think Center’s going to do with it?”

“Who cares? Let them blow it up.”

“I think we should use it as a sanctuary. For other people who…went through things. We could turn it from a place that was evil into something good.”

Vega looked at him, chin leaning in her hand, stars reflecting in her eyes.

Just thinking about that planet made me feel sick. But maybe Rock had a point….

There were people that needed a place to rest from what they’d been through. Other former slaves. I probably did, though I was kind of running on adrenaline at the moment. Then there were people like Muriel….Pain ripped through my heart at the thought of her. I realized, then and there, that I had to find her. I couldn’t pretend she didn’t exist, just so I could smother the pain. The Blue M base might have been destroyed, its leaders killed, but there were other cells out there, and since it had been destroyed, its records had gone with it. There was no way of knowing where Muriel had ended up. But I was going to try. And maybe, just maybe, I would try to live up to my reputation as “hero” by rescuing other slaves as well. I did have powerful allies now….

And then there were Grimm and Summer. I’d learned that Grimm had been freed when Dagan had taken Zodiak Prime hostage, only to find out that Sari had died from her fever. He’d left with Summer, but I wanted to contact him again, tell him how sorry I was for what had happened, though nothing could ever bring little Sari back.

“I don’t have enough money to buy a planet,” I said.

Vega looked at me. “No, but I think you know someone who does.”

My stomach turned over. Zodiak.

I tried to back out of our plan, but Rock and Vega were determined. I met Zodiak a few days later and presented my proposal.

“I’ll have to think about it,” he said, looking out over the city, wine glass in his hand. He looked a little worn down, perhaps because his daughter had chosen the rest of the galaxy over him, but he treated me with barely concealed disdain.

“It’s not like you don’t have enough money and power,” I said, stepping toward him. What I really wanted to do was strangle him.

He turned to me, slowly, deliberately. Then he said, “It’s not up to me. I’m going to have to defer to my…proprietors.”

By that he meant the radicals. It was then I knew that he did not have much power now beyond their hold over him. That gave me no end of satisfaction as I walked out of his office without a backwards glance.

Senator Kinsy gave her stamp of approval, and soon I owned a planet I did not care to own.

I don’t have the heart to visit it. I know I’ll have to someday, if I want to follow through on our plans. Rock doesn’t seem in a hurry to go there either now.

Meanwhile, I’m recovering, staying out of the way of everything as much as I can. It’s been a month since we escaped, and I’ve just landed on Rimworld 1009 with Rock and Vega.

Last night, I stood on the deck of a tourist ship, sea spray misting into my face. We were out spotting sunwhales, the golden indigenous species to this planet. They are supposed to be very intelligent.

Rock stood beside me; Vega was somewhere on the upper deck.

The sun was a red giant, and we all had to slather lots of sunscreen on, even with the protective force field canopy. I breathed in the sea air, tinged with the scent of unfamiliar flowers.

“Look,” said Rock, pointing. Below us, a mat of flowers floated, blindingly white in the sun.

“They’re wavelillies,” I said, recalling what I’d learned from the tour guide. “Kind of a cross between plant and animal.” As we watched, the wavelillies turned of their own volition and floated around the side of the boat, as if curious about us.

“This is good,” said Rock after a moment. “I mean, doing things like this. I almost feel…like nothing happened.”

In ways it had been harder on him than on me. He had to live with actually having worked for them. I always had to remind him that he hadn’t been himself.

“The nightmares?” I ventured.

He nodded. “Every night.”

“Me too.” I usually forgot them as soon as I woke up, but sometimes, I still woke up screaming.

“Do you think we can ever, you know, just get back to normal?” I said.

“What’s normal now that we’re out of college? You could go to law school next semester.”

“I could. I don’t know if I want to.”

“You could always paint.” I painted nearly every day; it helped me like nothing else did, except some days it reminded me too much of Muriel.

“I think I will. But there’s something else I want to do—something I can’t define….It’s strange.”

He looked at me for a moment, his bronzed arms leaning on the railing. “I feel that too.”

“I can’t go to that planet yet; I’m not ready. I need to find Muriel, but that’s not quite it either. It’s something…I don’t know.”

“Maybe we can find out together.”

“That just might work.” I grasped his hand, as if it were a pact.

Just then, a huge gleaming body hefted out of the ocean in front of us, flashing golden in the sun. It sprayed a fountain of water into the air, and I spread out my arms as brilliant sparkles of water splashed onto my skin.

I closed my eyes, savoring the taste of freedom.