Accepting Refuge Read online

  Table of Contents

  Accepting Refuge | A Place of Refuge: 2

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  MORE BOOKS BY KALIKOI

  Accepting Refuge

  A Place of Refuge: 2

  Victoria Janssen

  For L.A. Hall. “Our first regard must be to assure a maximum of felicity.”

  One

  Miki woke early, from a nasty dream of living in the humid, congested Gamma Habitat back in the Federated Colonies. She’d been searching for Jon Churchill, who needed her, pushing her way through crowds of people who ignored and blocked her at every turn. The places she searched grew steadily more absurd. She’d even crawled inside the works of some kind of gear-based horological device, squeezing through at the size of a gnat.

  The habitat was noisy with booming speaker announcements and harsh commands and agitated conversations in corners. When her eyes shot open, the cool quiet of the house on Refuge both surprised and soothed her, at least until she remembered the crushing news she’d learned in the wee hours of the morning.

  The bed beside her was empty. Where was Talia?

  After a moment’s panic, Miki thrashed free of her blanket cocoon and grabbed a robe. She found Talia sleeping in the central living area, on the long and squishy blue couch.

  Miki sat on the edge of an equally squishy armchair, lighter blue than the couch. She curled her legs beneath her, waiting for Talia to wake. She knew better than to jostle sleeping fighters, especially ones on the mend from a year’s imprisonment.

  They’d been here on Refuge for close to two weeks. She’d only known Talia was still alive for six weeks or so. Really, she should be satisfied with knowing nothing except Talia was alive, instead of cremated to ash, chemically disintegrated, or moldering in an unmarked grave. Most mornings when she woke, she was surprised by joy when she remembered. Talia was alive. Alive.

  Talia cracked one eye open and made a questioning noise.

  “We’re safe. We’re in the new house, on Refuge. Do you want breakfast?” Miki asked.

  Talia sat up slowly and scrubbed her face with thin hands, squinting into the warm yellow light streaming in the front windows. Miki was still getting used to natural light after years in habitats, then living in ships and orbital stations. The sun from the front windows glowed on Talia’s brown cheekbones; but outdoors in harsh daylight, she could still see gray undertones of exhaustion in Talia’s face, and her cheeks were hollow from thirteen months in a Federated Colonies prison. The short curly hair on her skull, once dark, glinted now with silver.

  “What is it?” Talia asked, her voice rough from sleep.

  Talia always knew when something was wrong, especially with Miki. Even though she swore she could not read Miki’s mind. Miki said, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Time to get up anyway.” Talia sat up straighter and took a deep breath, then looked expectant.

  “Last night and this morning, I was playing cards with Faigin. I’d forgotten what a good cheat she always was.”

  “Only you would use good and cheat in the same sentence.” One corner of Talia’s mouth quirked for an instant.

  Miki waited for her to say more, but she was obviously, by her silence, prompting her to continue. “Faigin said—she told me—” Miki sighed and started over. “She told me she thinks Jon Churchill is dead. And so do you.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” Talia’s eyes were steady, full of truth.

  Miki swallowed. “I guess that’s it, then. That’s all I needed to know.”

  They would never see Jon again, Jon who’d saved orphaned Miki from a life and death in Federated indenture, his first and very unlikely recruit. She’d been so desperate to escape and have a place in the world. Jon had given her that place, as “Churchill’s little genius.” He’d been her accidental savior, her absent-minded father figure, a tortured guerilla, an interstellar icon.

  Now all that was done, he was gone.

  “Miki, can I help?”

  She could handle this. It was just one more thing, a small thing, really, compared to losing their rebellion and fleeing the Federated Colonies for good. She’d already been fairly sure that if Jon was alive, she would have found some trace of him.

  Miki stood up. She hadn’t had much sleep, what with the nightmares, and she was due to look over the schematics of the Refuge security satellites, part of the promises she’d made when they’d come here for sanctuary.

  “Miki? Abikaas, let me help.”

  If she was to keep Talia safe, the security satellites needed to be in top condition at all times. The worst things about the Federated Colonies might be changing, but the galaxy was big and it was possible other, more dangerous enemies would have their eye on habitable planets like Refuge, however isolated. Interstellar politics would stabilize, perhaps, but not for a long time. Miki couldn’t control that, but she could control the efficiency of the satellites. She had plans to train them, using a method similar to how humans could learn new skills using games.

  “Miki, wait.”

  Without noticing, Miki had started to leave the room. She settled her facial expression before turning back. Talia was holding out her hand. Miki hesitated, then stepped over and took it, sitting at a corner of the couch. Talia burrowed into her side and laid her head on Miki’s thigh.

  “You should’ve told me before about Jon,” Miki said, suddenly close to tears. She toyed with her row of gold ear studs to distract herself. She did not want to cry in front of Talia, not right now. She could feel the bones of Talia’s fragile arm across her legs, feel her ribs as she breathed.

  Talia had been so formidable before her capture by the FC, her muscles like wire, her smile cocky and crooked from a single dimple in her rounded cheek. Miki remembered the first time she’d seen her, wrenching off a helmet to let her luxuriant dark hair spring free into a cloud around her serious face.

  Talia said, her voice muffled, “I should have, but the time never seemed right.”

  “When did you...how....”

  “One day, I just knew. I’m not sure when that was. It was difficult to tell how much time had passed, in that horrible place.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “I’m sorry he’s gone. He was always so sad, and so angry at himself. I hope he found peace, somehow.”

  Miki brushed her fingers over Talia’s stubbly curls, watching the silver flash in the light. She’d trimmed it for Talia, when Talia had decided she would not go back to the longer style she’d had in the old days. “Your hair’s growing out. I miss your long hair a little.”

  “I’m sorry, Miki.”

  “No, it’s your hair. And it looks all right. Anyway, you didn’t cut it all off.”

  “You know I meant about Jon.” Talia sat up. “I should have told you. Truly, I’m sorry,” she said, and cupped her palm against Miki’s cheek. “I know a little of what he meant to you.”

  They touched a lot, these days, but this morning, it was too much. After a moment of breathless silence, Miki drew away and stood up. “I think I already knew. I’m going out for a bit.”

  “No breakfast?”

  “Had some,” Miki said, lying with no effort. She’d always been terrific at lying, to anyone but Talia, at least.

  Miki kissed Talia quickly, grabbed her coat, and stepped outside, hearing the satisfying snick as the door closed.

  Once out in the brisk cold, her ambition died. She put on her coat and leaned against the mycelial bricks of their front wall. She crammed a knitted hat on, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked out over Port Limi
nal’s spacious center green, which at the moment was white with a thick layer of snow. The outdoors was very...large. It was reassuring, in a way, to feel small. She’d been a teenager before she’d been to a place where she could see the horizon; she still vividly remembered her first planet-side sunset.

  She’d been with Jon at the time, waiting long hours to rendezvous with a guerilla group outside the habitats. It was so long ago, she’d barely known how to fire the gun strapped to her leg. The sky had turned vividly orange as the sun went down, a color so rich she could almost taste it. She’d been...about fourteen, then, though Jon had thought her at least two years older; he’d never learned the truth. Maybe she would have told him, one day. Maybe she was wrong, maybe he’d known. Now she would never know for sure if he’d known that about her. If it had mattered to him.

  Probably he hadn’t known. Despite his easy charisma, the way he could sell his ideas to the most skeptical, Jon hadn’t been very observant about those closest to him. He’d grown up an elite, never having to worry what people thought of him, or how they could harm him. He didn’t even truly understand, Miki thought, that there were a lot of things he didn’t, couldn’t, know about people like her.

  He had aimed most of his considerable energy towards the people he still had to convince about his cause, leaving the rest of them to follow along in his dramatic wake. It could be maddening, at times, how much he had assumed about his place as a leader in the world. He’d had a powerful family growing up, and that family had powerful allies; he’d tried to understand people like Miki, but Miki was sure he hadn’t succeeded as well as he’d imagined. He’d just tried his best.

  Jon hadn’t been infallible, like the Dissenters had tried to pretend sometimes, but he’d been what she had. And he’d been kind to her, when he didn’t have to be.

  She stood staring into the distance, fingering the items in her pockets: a pack of cards, a little toolkit, a couple of protein bars, an assortment of small useful items like string and a couple of titanium marbles. The tiny murderous blade she carried, in case Talia ever felt the need for it, was safely encased in its cut-proof sheath; she moved it into an inner pocket of her coat, where she didn’t have to notice it so often.

  Boots crunched in the snow. Miki looked up; Faigin was approaching the front door, clad in black leggings, athletic boots, and a single thin shirt. Her short black hair spiked with sweat and her dark skin gleamed. “I hope you managed more sleep than I did,” Faigin said. Though the words were cranky, her expression was alight with the glow she always got from fierce exercise.

  Miki did not obtain a glow from fierce exercise. “Did you go running around in all that mess?”

  “The paths are cleared,” Faigin noted, “and these boots have excellent grip in the snow. Did you speak to Talia already?”

  “Yes.” Miki didn’t want to talk about it.

  Faigin’s ungloved hands glinted with golden interfaces, augments installed by the Federated military. She would have worn gloves in front of strangers. She laid one hand on Miki’s shoulder and squeezed, for her a rare and intimate gesture. “I apologize for not telling you as soon as I knew.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  “I know you—”

  “Let me get used to it, all right?”

  Faigin withdrew her hand. “You’re right, Mik. I’m sorry.” She crossed her arms across her chest; the clean lines of her biceps and triceps stood out beneath the snug black fabric of her athletic shirt. “I’m still getting used to the idea myself.”

  Faigin didn’t speak again, but stayed nearby, patiently stretching out her muscles. Miki stared at the snow until her eyes hurt. As Faigin passed on her way inside, she briefly clasped Miki’s arm, her grip strong enough to be felt through Miki’s coat sleeve. Faigin really was sorry, then, though she didn’t have any reason to apologize, not to Miki, not for speaking the truth.

  Miki started to walk, nosing around their new living situation. Two days ago, their Refuge welcome committee had encouraged them to choose one of four small houses that stood empty, not empty for sinister reasons but because the inhabitants, former refugees, had moved on to Axis, Refuge’s largest city. The chosen house would be theirs. They could stay there as long as they liked. Refugers had a complex relationship to notions like ownership, but so far as Miki could tell from limited experience, it worked out. It was a huge relief not having to worry about their food and shelter.

  This town, Port Liminal, was named for its spaceport, which also provided the primary jump-off point for the large areas where terraforming was still in progress. The inhabitants were a mixture of port staff, Damarae refugees, terraforming scientists, and assorted others, including such oddities as a weaver and a sculptor. Periodically, Miki heard a faint whooshing sound: trains went by frequently, carrying people all over the planet. Space-going ships left the spaceport more quietly than Miki was used to; sometimes she also saw the sort of air transport that never left atmosphere, airships and copters and the like.

  The spaceport and its environs had the tallest structures in the town, including a solid dark grey behemoth whose purpose eluded her. She wondered it if provided some sort of heavy-duty physical shielding, perhaps for backup control systems.

  Two houses down from theirs she saw an older couple, white-haired and thick-bodied, bundled to their ears in brightly patterned outdoor gear, watching as a small floating robot blew new snow from the path circling the Green. Miki recognized them: Hilary Birde and Linvila Sara had served as off-planet ambassadors for Damar, and thus survived the Federated invasion and subsequent colonization of their planet. Miki had met them because they were helping Talia with her...Miki didn’t know what to call it. Reintegration with the Damarae communion? Rejoining? And they had been very kind to Miki as well, when they met. They weren’t speaking audibly, but she could tell from their body language that they were conversing via telepathy.

  Regitze, Port Liminal’s administrator and a member of their welcoming committee, was also out early, her long white hair bundled on top of her head, her plump cheeks rosy with cold and exercise. She slowed her brisk walk to ask Miki about the current wellbeing of Talia and Faigin. It was a real question, requiring an honest answer. Miki managed to avoid appearing impatient with the interruption. She was relieved when the older woman continued on her way.

  Miki stayed outside, walking aimlessly and avoiding additional people, humming a pattersong about factory work, until her face and feet were numbed by the cold. Refuge’s yellow sun blazed down, sparkling off the snow. It felt good to be out in the sunshine, in a way she couldn’t describe. She’d barely been planet-side at all in almost two years. Being on the run allowed few opportunities to breathe real atmosphere.

  She needed to make an effort to appreciate the sun and the air and the cold. Once she’d learned Talia was still alive, Miki had decided she was going to have hope for the future, a future all three of them would share. Hope was a choice she had made and would continue making. This morning, though, it felt like a sad choice; sad because Jon wasn’t here to share it. It seemed desperately unfair that he would never know that Miki was going to be all right, that she had at least found them a safe place to land.

  Would he have been angry about that? Would he have felt like they were giving up his fight? It hurt that she would never be able to ask him.

  Miki had walked as far as the medical clinic without noticing. The toes of her boots bore small mounds of snow.

  “Miki!” Emery Peace, in their embellished chrome float chair, was stopped in front of a side entrance, close to the rear of the building. “Do you have any tools with you?”

  “Always.” Miki trudged through the snow to meet them, fishing her leather roll of tools from her coat pocket. “Is your chair giving you trouble?”

  Emery shook their head. They were a small and slender person, olive-skinned, with gray- streaked bobbed hair; it was held out of their face with a bright red knitted band that protected their e
ars from the brisk wind. “The door sensor is broken, I think. It’s too low for me to reach, and even if I could reach it, I have no idea how those things function. I could go around to the front or back entrances, but the next person would have the same problem.” They smiled. “It’s good you’re here, I’m told you have mechanical skills.”

  “I’ll fix it now,” Miki said, for this was a thing she could do, a thing right in front of her. “You can go on in, if you want. No need for both of us to get cold.”

  “I only came in to review records, and I confess I am enjoying the snow,” Emery said. “I usually live in Sojourn, which is much warmer. We haven’t had any snow since I’ve been living there; it’s been fifteen years now.”

  Miki did not mind an audience, particularly an audience that was not breathing down her neck and demanding to know when she would be done because the Federated military were just around the corner. After a critical look at the sliding door and the technology housings placed nearby, she knelt in the snow and began clearing more snow with her gloved hands. She had a comms link in her pocket, but she doubted she’d need to look anything up, not for what was likely a simple mechanical issue.

  “You’re up early,” Emery said. “Are you on your way back from the labs, or did you decide to come along for your appointment with me, at last?”

  Miki admitted, “I wasn’t thinking, at all. I just woke up early. Talia was gone.” She hadn’t meant to say that last. She yanked off her damp gloves and shoved them into her coat pocket. Using a screwdriver, she got the housing off the sensor that was the likely issue and bent close to it to have a thorough look. She didn’t need her magnifier.

  “You found her, though.”

  “I did. She was just sleeping on the couch. Bad dream, maybe.” Miki didn’t know because she hadn’t asked. She probably should have asked, instead of confronting Talia right off about Jon’s death. Talia didn’t need that sort of conversation right now, but...there was no one else Miki could have asked for confirmation. Her own searches over the last year, which had been comprehensive, had failed utterly in finding Jon. If Miki hadn’t been able to find him, then there hadn’t been much left to find. Wasn’t that a cheerful thought.