Celes’ chipped fingernails dig into her patchwork overalls, bunching the threadwork into small, starchy peaks.
‘Look at me.’
Her tired eyes rise.
Overseer Stry-C9 glowers back. From their throned console, the adept need not stand to appear imposing, yet they do so, and close distance with a machine’s swiftness.
‘I just need a little more,’ Celes explains, retreating a step towards the door. ‘Fi-Four hundred calories. That’s all!’
Stry-C9’s vox cuts across the ship’s dry, recycled air. ‘You already receive your allotment,’ they rasp, accusatory digits prodding the bondswoman’s sternum. ‘Optimise better. You cannot ask for more.’
‘I’ll put in extra,’ Celes persists, ‘– an hour here or there.’
‘You already push efficiency.’
Flustered, Celes shakes her head. ‘On the rations I receive, yes! But allow me a little more and you’ll see.’
Fabricated eyes shift between her own, sharp and calculating. Stry-C9 no longer had lips to purse, but Celes imagines them doing so. She prefers the vision to the reality of grinding, iron teeth.
‘Please, Rho,’ Celes begins, carefully enclosing the offending digits between her palms. ‘Four hundred.’
‘You and Bondsman 554-39A are trying again?’ Stry-C9’s appraising glance sears down her thin form. Instinctually, her hands drop to shield herself from the scrutiny.
But she nods.
‘Yeah…’
Stry-C9’s ventilation panels flare, and Celes holds her breath, fearing her lie is as apparent as the syrupy stench of coolant being released into the air.
‘Six hundred.’
Six hundred! The number rings like a bell. Of course it would not be enough. But it was more than she hoped.
‘I do not intend to authorise this increase again.’
‘Thank you, Rho, tru–!’
‘I expect compensation.’
Celes stiffens. ‘Of course…Overseer.’
‘But for now…’ Servos, webbed with cording, spider across Celes’ shoulders, flattening her apparel’s natural creases. ‘Go home.’
Home is four decks down and a kilometer away: an abscess in a corridor once used to retire fuel rods. Forced into step with other weary souls, getting there is a slow affair.
The pace would have been mundane were it not for the sounds of violence ahead.
Inspection.
Concealing her ration packets within her pockets, the bondswoman treads briskly yet cautiously down the contraband strewn passage, pretending to be blind to the units of prowling armsmen with calloused trigger fingers and deaf to the thudding behind closed doors. The security teams had not yet scoured her hab-unit, but they were fast approaching. With minutes to spare, she reaches Unit 45B, punches in her code and disappears inside.
But the lights within were already on, illuminating two monstrous obstructions armoured in black.
‘Welcome home,’ the nearest man calls, leveling his shotgun towards her core. ‘Come in. Make yourself comfortable.’
They had torn up the place. Cupboards hung from their hinges. Appliances lay overturned. Celes’ stomach drops. Fragments of metal and glass polluted her meticulously portioned nutrient powders.
The second man disappears into the second room. Celes’ heart leaps.
‘Got a lot of neat things here,’ the first calls, sweeping up a tincture from a drawer. He shakes it, and looks towards her.
‘Sleep aid,’ she answers, throat knotting. ‘Got troubles slee–’
‘I know what it does,’ he snaps. ‘Problem is you’ve got enough stashed here to kill a man.’
‘No! Officer, that’s not –’
‘To kill yourself.’
Celes’ fingernails press into her sides. ‘I wouldn’t.’
The armsman tilts his head downwards. ‘Good,’ he sneers, showing teeth. ‘That would be a sin.’
Celes’ eyes flutter; her gaze finally breaks. She forms the Aquila across her chest. ‘I know.’
But he keeps talking. ‘Aye. And you‘ve got too much of a debt on your head for it,’ he warns, taking slow steps forward, poisoning her peripheral with his shadow. ‘We’d drag you right back, Celes Aldrich, 554-45B. Snap your corpse into a machine. Work you ‘til the flesh tears off.’
‘What is this?’
Celes startles. The other man reemerges holding a scattered sketch of vague geometry.
‘I-It’s me,’ she breathes.
‘Come again?’
‘The circle…triangle. It’s me. My daughter’s.’ Her eyes return to the nearest man. ‘She didn’t make it through the last warp jump…I haven’t slept well since…’
The officer’s stare pierces her as glass would.
‘Aquilisa Aldrich, 956-54B?’
Celes pales. ‘Yes.’
‘Smart little thing, drawing at two days.’
‘…She was two years.’
‘Records say she was retired at two days. Mutant.’
Celes’s jaw sets. Her hands clench. Above her, the man’s brow furrows, and his levity dims, yet she remains unflinching despite the rhythms he taps upon his firearm’s trigger.
‘I did not birth a mutant,’ she states without waver.
Silence. The din outside draws on like a memory the longer the two remain suspended in stance and story.
Heaving a sigh, the other armsman tosses the sketch and pushes past them. ‘Another junkie. Do what you want, Laurentus. I’ll be outside.’
The door clicks.
So does the gun.
‘Last jump, hmm? Lingering nightmares?’ His teeth appear again. But with a grunt and a vicious shove, the officer steps beyond her. ‘We’ll be visiting, Celes Aldrich,’ his voice resonates. ‘A wellness check, let’s call it. Best pray everything is set right by then.’ Before leaving, he pauses, and pockets another hypnotic.
Celes sprints into the back room. On hands and knees she scrambles, feeling around the walls and floors. ‘Baby? Baby?!’
She need not look long. A mottled body, with a head far too unbalanced to support, peels from a shaded crevice. Its thin, malformed arms unfurl and reach the best they could.
‘I hided, mama,’ the child slurs, lethargically worming against her mother’s warmth.
Quaking, Celes pulls the toddler into her lap and presses her cheek into her patchwork, downy hair. ‘Always, my baby. They’re not ready for you.’
They’ll never be. I’m sorry.
‘Hungry, mama,’ Aquilisa whimpers, tiny hands already reaching into her overall’s starchy pockets.
Pushing back tears, Celes sets aside her worries, and shares what she has left to give.
