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heliads · 7 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Four: Friends in Dangerous Places

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Oh, Risa is never going to let herself forget this. As long as she may live, which could be until she’s one hundred standard years old or just fifteen, depending on if she’s actually able to make this work or not, Risa will remember how it felt to strain her valuable lungs laughing so hard she thinks she might die.

And yeah, she’s been arguing with Connor almost nonstop since the moment they met, but looking over at him now, she can practically feel the line being drawn in the Terran sand. They’re a team now, even if they may not like it all the time. It’s them against the worlds. Team Risa and Connor. Honestly, maybe the Juvey-cops should be right to worry about ferals like them.

Juveys. See, now that’s got Risa thinking. They were only able to temporarily borrow this tithe because his little chariot of death thought this ship belonged to a Juvey-cop, which makes no sense. Well, there’s something up about Connor, obviously, something bad, but she hadn’t counted on, like, killing a Juvey-cop bad. She can only assume he killed the cop. How else would he get the ship, by asking politely?

And yeah, Risa does believe that there’s no point in playing by the Collective’s rule book now that she’s officially groundsless, but there’s a difference between sneaking off a StaHo shuttle destined for a harvest colony and actually killing someone. Or maybe she can just say that because she’s Risa and he’s Connor, and Risa knows exactly why she’s done what she’s done but she has no idea what’s going on in his head.

At times, she’s not even certain that Connor knows that. He gets this look in his eyes sometimes, the fuck-it impulse if she were to give it a name, and whenever he gets like that she has no clue what he’s going to do next. He could steal a ship or kidnap a tithe. He could run away from whatever’s keeping him and even convince her to join him in his next plans.

It’s thoughts like that which make Risa’s laughter finally dry up. It’s time to face the truth, which is that Risa Ward is shooting through hyperspace on a potentially stolen ship with one boy who would definitely turn her in to get back to his divine destiny and another who might just do that anyway, even if it gets himself caught too. All they have tying themselves together right now is the tenuous thread of survival, and Risa has already seen how quickly that can unwind.

She straightens up, and the tithe must sense that doubt is starting to creep in because he takes his chance the second he gets it. “Look,” he interjects, blithe and irritating, “You really ought to just let me go. There has to be a planet close by, we can all go our separate ways there. You don’t even know who this guy is. Do you really want to leave everything up to him?”

Risa casts a wary glance towards Connor, who looks genuinely affronted that she’s not immediately backing him up. “She knows me better than she knows you,” Connor points out, “and besides, why do you care when we let you go? You’re just going to throw yourself into your own distribution the second our backs are turned. You couldn’t be happier if we all die.”

“It’s not death,” the tithe says primly. “It’s all about life, in fact. I’m making sure that the universe carries on. Without me, yes, but carries on. Isn’t it more important to honor our promise to the worlds than tear down everything around us just so we can keep going?”

“I didn’t promise anything to anyone,” Connor grits out. “Just because your parents have deluded you into thinking that this is normal doesn’t mean that you can kill the rest of us. You deserve a life, kid.”

“Don’t call me that,” the tithe scowls. “I have a name.”

“You haven’t told us yet,” Risa remarks dryly.

The tithe pauses in his relentless staring contest with Connor to toss a stray glare her way. “I didn’t get a chance what with you two kidnapping me. If you must know, I’m Lev.”

Risa nods. She hadn’t yet put together a plan of what to say to whom, but when Connor immediately blurts out that he’s Connor and she’s Risa, she knows that, at least, is wrong. They can’t afford to go shouting out their names to anyone in earshot. She’s an AWOL, and most likely he is too, if not worse. Neither of them can afford a slipup like that.

The tithe– Lev– catches the hesitation in her glance again. For such a small kid, he’s surprisingly good at reading people. Maybe growing up in a big family like that, within a community where he’s constantly watching people to see if they’re going to accept his tithing or try and fail to convince him otherwise, made him need to learn when someone’s his friend or not. It’s a useful skill; she can’t blame him for wanting to learn it.

“Neither of you can get far by yourselves,” Lev tells her. “You might as well just leave me to my own devices. We’re close to the harvest colony anyway. It won’t even take you that much time to drop me off.”

Risa scoffs. “Yeah, and let you call the guards on us while we’re there? No thanks.”

Lev arches a brow. “You’d have no reason to fear the guards unless you’re a distribute on the loose.”

Risa scowls. She hadn’t meant to give that away thus far, but it’s pretty obvious at this point. “So what if I am? Still doesn’t mean I want to go to the place of my impending doom.”

“And impending doom isn’t found with the boy who killed a Juvey-cop?” Lev asks. The thought briefly flashes across Risa’s mind that he would have made a fantastic interrogator had he allowed himself to live past thirteen. Perhaps even a decent therapist. He’s uncannily good at knowing things.

Connor doesn’t seem to like the shift in conversation. “Hey,” he argues, “I never killed a Juvey. I just took his ship. He wanted to take my internal organs, I’d say that’s a fair trade.”

Risa has to cough to smother a laugh. “So you didn’t kill anyone to get this?”

“That’s what I said,” Connor frowns, and this time Risa can’t disguise the rush of relief that cascades around her. He’s not a murderer, at least. He’s just like her. She can’t explain why that makes her feel so, so much better. It just does.

Lev, sensing that the argument isn’t going his way, presses on further. “Look, you don’t have to like me being a tithe. But can you at least trust that my way is better than whatever dangerous nonsense Connor’s going to try?”

Risa looks at Connor, who’s growing more nervous by the second as he shuffles back and forth in scuffed shoes, and she marvels at the fact that he’d even been able to fool them this long. He’s falling apart at the seams. Still, Risa reasons, better Connor’s haywire guidance than their distribution at Lev’s choice of harvest camps.

She steps forward. “I’ll stick with Connor, thanks. We’ll go where he chooses.”

Lev stares at her indignantly. “You can’t make that decision. I want to go to the harvest colony.”

Connor, on the other hand, is smiling. Faintly, sure, but smiling. “Too bad, man. You’ve been outvoted.”

Lev has plenty to say about that, but neither of them are listening. Walking back to the cockpit, Connor nudges her shoulder with his. “You sided with me.”

“Don’t take it personally,” she warns him.

He grins. “Too late. I already have.”

Risa rolls her eyes, but if anything it only seems to make Connor’s smile broaden. In the interest of deflecting from his pride, Risa hastily adds, “So where are we going, Magnificent Captain?”

Connor makes a face at the title. “Wherever you set the hyperspace jump, Capable Navigator.”

Risa grimaces. She had forgotten that part. In all the chaos, she’d just blindly picked the first location option that came up. She had no dream vacation destination in mind, after all. Anywhere away from here was good.

Odds are, that’s good enough for Connor as well. She studies the instrument panel carefully, pretending there’s something that needs her attention. “When we get wherever we’re going, I– it’s going to be difficult. Getting anywhere or doing anything, I mean. I don’t have a grounds license.”

The words seem to reverberate in the air. “Neither do I,” Connor admits, then, “Why are you smiling?”

“I’ve never said that aloud before. That I was groundsless. Not while I was free like this,” Risa tells him.

It’s a strange sort of feeling, being on the run from the law. She had tried not to talk about it with anyone at the State Home back on XXIII, but of course a couple of the kids had broached the subject anyway. Now, it’s almost freeing to admit it. She doesn’t exist in the eyes of the law. Risa Ward has no anchors anywhere. In revoking her grounds license, the Collective has accidentally made Risa more powerful than she’s ever been before.

Connor chuckles to himself. “See, now you’re getting it. It’s exciting to be against the law. In a month or two, you could be a smuggler or something.”

Risa scoffs. “I would never. That’s ridiculous.”

Connor raises a dubious brow. “You’re enjoying all this right now, aren’t you? Trust me, sweetheart, give it a couple of weeks and you’ll be a feral through and through.”

Risa laughs disbelievingly. “Yeah? And what sort of terrible things do you think I’d get up to?”

Connor taps his chin, pretending to think. “Oh, all sorts of awful crimes. The kind that would make all the kids back home tell ghost stories about you. You might exceed the speed limit near an agri-colony by five whole units, or take a synth-apple from a store without paying for it. Maybe you’d even disturb the peace by playing bad music too loudly at night.”

Risa clutches a dramatic hand to her heart. “Now you’ve gone too far. I would only blare good music. My neighbors would appreciate it.”

Connor shakes his head sorrowfully. “See, that’s how they get you. I once knew a guy who said the same things you did. Next thing you know, he was blasting glam hyperdisco.”

Risa pretends to shudder. “Say it isn’t so. I would never forgive myself for something like that.”

Connor wiggles his eyebrows. “You don’t have to forgive yourself forever. Your ears will be someone else’s in just a short amount of time if you give yourself up, you could forget all about it.”

She stares at him, somewhat bewildered. “You’re fascinatingly morbid for someone who wants to live so much, Connor.”

He leans back in his pilot’s seat, smiling quite happily upon hearing what Risa wasn’t entirely sure was a compliment. “You’re wonderfully pessimistic for someone who thinks she’s so much better than me, Risa.”

She furrows her brow. “I don’t think I’m so much better than you.”

“Fine,” Connor says with a seemingly unconcerned wave of his hand, “much more honorable, at least. No one would mistake you for murdering a Juvey-cop.”

He says it bitterly, and Risa can’t help but cringe at it. In her defense, she’d never met him before, and AWOLs with the shuttle of a Juvey-cop typically don’t get them legally, but she’d still made that assumption about him without any justification other than him not wanting her to be on his ship after she snuck on board. And who could blame him for that? Every AWOL is skittish. It’s in their nature.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. It’s barely audible over the hum of the machinery surrounding them, but Connor still reacts, looking over at her in surprise. For all his griping, he wasn’t actually expecting her to apologize.

“Yeah, well, it’s okay,” he says gruffly.

It’s awkward and quiet in the cockpit. She doesn’t think either of them have ever been more grateful to Lev for choosing that moment to try and access the shuttle’s token escape pod, giving them both the necessary out from the conversation so they can leap up from their seats and try to wrangle the tithe back from his misguided attempt to flee to his death. Once Lev has been properly chastised and the escape pod has been appropriately barred from future endeavors, the prior conversation has been all but forgotten. So they’ll pretend, at any rate.

Risa does remember to check their destination, at least. She pokes around the nav computer for a while until she can find the proper setting, then grimaces at what she sees. Connor, who has apparently been watching her like a hawk, shifts forward in his seat the second her expression shifts. “What is it?” He asks warily.

Risa’s eyes flicker to Lev. He appears to be devoting a lot of time and attention to perfecting his scowl in the back corner of the shuttle, but she can’t tell if he’s listening or not. Dropping her voice just to be safe, she continues, “The nav system has automatically rerouted us to a boundary checkpoint. We’ll have to pass through if we want to carry on. Best case scenario, we answer a few questions and they let us go.”

Connor’s face grows long and tired. “And what’s the worst case?”

Risa worries the edge of her shirtsleeve as she thinks about it. “Worst case, they find something suspicious and search the ship. While boarding, they figure out we’ve got a tithe on board who doesn’t want to be there. Lev’s parents have probably put up a notice by now calling for his return, and odds are the sec-ships from the spaceport have stills of our faces from security cameras, so we might have a few virtual wanted posters of our own. If they look for longer than a second, they’ll figure out who we are and then we’ll be right back where we started.”

Connor sucks in a breath through gritted teeth. “Okay, then we try to get the best case scenario to work. Is there any way we can go around the checkpoint?”

Risa shakes her head. “You can’t exit a star system without passing through one, I should have thought of it earlier. My goal was to leave OH-10. We can change that if we want, but–”

Connor waves a hand to dismiss that option. “Out of the question. The longer we stay in this system, the more we run the risk of getting caught. Flying out of here is our only choice. We’ll just have to play it cool while we’re there. With any luck, we’ll get someone hanging on past retirement age who won’t notice who we are.”

Risa presses her lips together in a thin line. “This isn’t going to work.”

“Not with that attitude,” Connor says with a slight touch of humor, although she can tell from the strain around his eyes that he’s thinking the same thing. “And certainly not with Lev’s attitude, either.”

Risa’s lips twitch into a half-smile. “He’s thirteen. They’re all like that. No one will bat an eye.”

Connor grins. “You’re wonderful at plotting. Maybe your life of crime really isn’t that far away.”

Risa rolls her eyes and leans over to swat him on the shoulder. “Give it up, Connor. It’s not going to happen.”

“Whatever you say,” Connor tells her, but he’s still flashing his teeth in that ridiculously proud grin of his, and Risa can’t find it within herself to fight a returning smile.

True to Connor’s hope, the officer at the boundary checkpoint in charge of checking their ship is on the older side, but unfortunately, that only seems to make her more suspicious instead of less. The representative appears on their comms channel once they dock, but only to request that they appear in person to assert their passage out of the OH-10 system.

Risa and Connor exchange tense, wary glances, but in the end the only thing they can do is file resolutely out of the shuttle and do their best not to look suspicious. They can’t linger inside for too long without drawing attention, but they do manage to at least come up with an alibi and beseech Lev not to blow it for all of them before traipsing out.

The checkpoint official for their designated landing slot is waiting for them when they arrive, impatiently tapping her fingers against the handle of her cane. Her gunmetal gray hair is pinned back severely, and the light from the open hololibrary in front of her gives the silver strands a bluish shadow. Risa watches her flick through several tabs of interstellar transport checklists and shipping documentation as they walk down the exit ramp of the shuttle.

Connor attempts to be suave and/or polite and asks for her name. The checkpoint rep answers him tersely, “Sonia,” and ignores him when he attempts to clarify a last name. From that point on, they descend into a flurry of questions. Sonia asks them what they’re doing, where they came from, what their names are and how they know each other. They came up with a decent cover story while they were flying over to the boundary checkpoint, but Risa can still hear her heart hammering in her temples as she answers as calmly as she can.

Stars, they must look so suspicious. They’re trying to pass off the whole affair as a school project, but there’s no reason three teenagers would ever be trusted to take themselves out of their home star system for something as simple as that. Hell, Risa realizes belatedly, none of them are even old enough to qualify for a cosmic license. There is no reason any of them should be alone flying this thing.

Strangely enough, though, Sonia does not ask about that. In fact, the second either Connor or Risa starts losing track of their story, she abruptly changes the subject to ask about some other nonsensical detail like the date of their last captain’s log or where they intend on fuelling up their shuttle when they leave this system. Just useless info, really, but it looks like she’s really grilling them, and it dawns on Risa that this is all Sonia wants to do, put up an appearance of severity. Risa has no doubt that Sonia saw straight through them the second they landed, but for some reason, this old woman is not interested in damning them.

Not yet, at least. Risa waits with rising nerves for the other shoe to drop, and when Sonia reaches up to close her hololibrary and, stranger still, covers up the badge on her breast pocket with her hand, she’s certain they’re in for it.

Instead, Sonia fixes her with a steely look, and asks, “And how, exactly, do you plan on getting yourselves out of the mess you’re in?”

Risa blinks. “Sorry?”

Sonia sighs exasperatedly. “Both of you can’t keep a straight face for a second. The moment you try to enter any other system, you’re doomed. Two distributes can’t get that far without a good plan, and I’m not sure that you have one yet. Where do you intend to go, and how will you do it?”

Connor glances nervously at Risa, then back at Sonia again. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but–”

Sonia sighs again. She’s quite prone to it, Risa notes with some small amusement, and every time Connor or Risa gets on her nerves she exhales another gusty breath like she intends to blow them both away if she could manage it. “Don’t try to lie to me, boy. I could see straight through you in an instant. Where do you want to go?”

Risa lifts a shoulder. “Anywhere but here. We planned on one of the nearby systems. Metitov, maybe. Or Veon 7B.”

Sonia shakes her head decisively. “Too close. You’re better off finding another system on the outskirts of it all, one that’s much farther from here. You can try–” Risa leans forward a little, shifting onto the toes of her feet, waiting for a hint that might be able to save them, but instead of a clue towards their safety, all she hears is the sudden, ear-piercing wail of a klaxon.

Sonia swears far more copiously than Risa expected and hurriedly checks her left wrist. Circling her narrow bones like a bracelet is a continuous holographic loop displaying the nature of the latest threat to the checkpoint. Risa can just make out the words –ROGUE GROUNDLESS– in whitish blue capital letters hovering in the air before Sonia throws her arm back down to her side with another venomous sigh, this one at least not directed at them.

“We’re out of time,” she mutters, “The three of you will have to come with me, now, if you want to make it out.” Sonia pauses, then stares, displeased, at the space just past Risa. “Well, the two of you.”

Risa furrows her brow and is about to ask what Sonia means by that when she glances over her shoulder to see empty space. Empty space where Lev had just been standing, but the area is utterly devoid of blond tithes at the moment.

Connor’s eyes flash with anger. “That traitorous starspawn. He sold us out. Couldn’t wait to die, then, could he? Had to do us in, too.”

Risa quite agrees with all of that, but they don’t have the minutes to spare standing around complaining. Every second they waste is one that the sec-forces of this checkpoint station have to find them. “We can insult him later. Right now, we have to go.”

Sonia nods. “She’s right. Follow me.”

Connor freezes. “Can’t we just get back on our ship?”

Sonia scoffs. “What, so they can track you in a heartbeat? They know your ship. They know it’s stolen. You’re better off hitching a ride on one of the oversize shipping haulers they’ve got stationed out back. Those things take off all the time and they’re too big for anyone to notice a couple of stowaways.”

Connor still hesitates, but Risa won’t let his indecision screw them over, not more than they have been already. “We don’t have any other options, Connor. We have to go. Unless you want to give security an easier time distributing us?”

That, at least, gets through to him. Connor snaps to it and immediately starts following Sonia, who had already started moving without checking that they were behind her. Despite the cane, the woman walks pretty quickly, although Risa can’t help but wish they were going faster still. She’d sprint if she could, but that would give her away even more than her frantic heartbeat, the way she can’t stop looking around her to see if the sec-forces have caught up to her yet.

Sonia leads them down a few corridors and around several corners, enough that Risa is certain she couldn’t make it back to the shuttle by herself if she tried. Stopping by a control panel, Sonia types in a series of command codes and a door hisses open to reveal a large hangar bay.

They hurry inside without even waiting for the door to finish moving. Sonia’s eyes sweep the hangar bay until she finds the ship they’re looking for. “This one will take you far away from here,” she announces, “It’ll dock for the night in KAN-5A5. That’s about halfway there.”

Risa frowns. “Halfway where?”

For once, Sonia looks almost sympathetic. “It is going to be a long journey,” she tells them. “It will be difficult. You’ll want to leave. Once you get there, though, you’ll be glad I sent you.”

This time, it’s not just Risa who wants more answers. Connor steps forward, arms folded across his chest. “I’d like to know where we’re going, thank you very much.”

Sonia sighs again, but the frustration is missing this time. Risa is starting to think that the woman might genuinely feel bad for them. She’s been hiding it all along, Risa realizes, trying to push it away, but she cannot help it. Sonia sees two kids who want to live. This probably isn’t the first time she’s done something like this, is it? How many of those kids survived? How many of those deaths will Sonia blame herself for? She’s an old woman. There are plenty of years in which things could go wrong.

“I can’t tell you that,” Sonia admits, “I can’t risk the secret getting out. Just know that they’ll keep you safe. Get out of the frigate undetected in KAN-5A5. Find a man named Cleaver. I’ll signal him in advance so he knows you’re coming. After that, you’ll have to make it there with his guidance.”

Risa nods. “How many kids have done this?”

Sonia rocks back on her heels, and for a moment she is not with them at all but lost deep in memories. Decades of them, perhaps. “Hundreds. Not all at once, but over the years.”

Connor whistles under his breath. “So you’re, like, the guardian angel of the groundsless?”

Sonia’s eyes cut over to him in an instant, faster than a scalpel, and Risa can’t tell if she’s furious at Connor or Sonia herself. “Not in the slightest,” she says, and gestures towards the ship until their questions stop and they get moving again.

There’s a small hatch near the back. Connor climbs in first, then reappears to confirm that there’s enough space for them to hide. He helps Risa in, and they both crouch near the entrance, watching Sonia with wide eyes.

She looks up at them, fingers curled around her cane until her knuckles whiten like bone. “Be strong,” Sonia says at last, then turns and walks back out of the hangar bay. Risa watches until she’s long gone, until even the thud of the cane against the floor disappears like a dying heartbeat, until Connor flinches at a sudden sound somewhere across the hangar bay and hurriedly pulls the hatch closed behind them.

Once her eyes adjust, Risa looks around them. This is most likely a small storage compartment, where tools and cleaning supplies can be tossed and promptly forgotten about until something happens. It’ll do just fine for two AWOLs without a single thing to their names except each other.

Risa takes a careful seat on the ground in between rows of stacked virt-spanners and antimatter vises. After a moment, Connor follows suit. He stretches out his legs in front of them, leaning back against the wall of the ship.

“Think this place’ll be any good?” He asks.

Risa stares at the floor in front of her. “No idea,” she whispers softly. “It’s not like we have anywhere else to go, though, do we?”

She expects him to make a joke about her relentless optimism, but instead he just lets out a slow breath and agrees. “We’ll make it. We have to. And hey, if it ends up being a total nightmare, at least I know I’ve got one person on my side.”

She cocks her head to the side, regarding him cautiously. “We’re allies, then?”

“We’re friends,” Connor says. “I think we get a do-over after all of this. Let me go first. I’m Connor Lassiter, and I’m an AWOL.”

He holds out a hand, and after a moment of conspicuous staring, she reaches out and shakes it with her own. “Hi, Connor Lassiter,” she says, “I’m Risa Ward.”

Connor squeezes her hand once before letting go. “I have no idea how long we have until this thing takes off. We should probably try to get some sleep or something. I can take the first watch.”

Risa opens her mouth to protest this, but on second thought, the idea of getting some rest does sound rather good. She had to get up early when she left the State Home, although that feels years away, a distant memory rather than something that only happened earlier today. They spent hours in space, and seeing as Risa has no idea when they’ll get a break like this again, she might as well get a little shut-eye while she can.

So she lets her eyes close, and she curls up against the wall of the shuttle as best she can. Sleep comes faster than she thought, and her last conscious thought is that regardless of how this ends, regardless of when she gets caught, Risa can at least say that her life was interesting before it ended. She never thought she’d get an adventure like this. Even if it took her almost getting killed for her life to finally start, well, at least she gets it now. Some things are worth the risk.

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