Chapter Text
The curtain parted, and Kanna fell silent, staring down at the tablet. While she spoke, she had sketched her small cell with its single palette and low desk. Two by 1.5 metres defining her life. The electric and plumbing schematics ran through the walls, connecting her to Yva’s.
“Do you work on plumbing, then?”
She jumped. She hadn’t noticed it was Scotty standing in the space. He gestured awkwardly to her tablet. “Is that how you draw your plans?”
“I created my own notation,” Kanna said, suddenly shy. “The standard doesn’t account for potential risk points between electric and water.”
“It’s very fine,” Scotty said. “Nice and clear even for an alien like me.”
McCoy cleared his throat. “Did you need something?”
“Aye, sorry. I’ve found a spare tablet. I thought maybe Kanna could use it for the library – not have to borrow yours Bones. You, uh, do you read?”
Kanna nodded, her eyes wide with a smile. “Yes, I read.”
“Got records to issue you an access number and all, and I’ve loaded some things I thought you’d like.”
“Don’t you have a job?” McCoy grouched.
“Ah, pardon me then for trying to mould young minds.” Scotty vanished with a wink.
Kanna pressed the new tablet to her chest. “Why did he do that?”
McCoy raised his eyebrows. “He’s being kind. And, between you and me, he doesn’t meet many people on his level. You can play with it later. I think you were telling me about Dryd.”
Kanna’s hands dropped, and her face fell. “Yes. Dryd.” In her voice, his name split into two inharmonious tones. “It’s hard to translate and use other languages’ insults.”
“You want to try?”
“An ox-fucking wetblanket of a Control-gleaning imbecile.”
McCoy bit back his laughter. “And he propositioned you.”
Kanna fiddled with her stylus. “Physical intimacy isn’t allowed for hubs. We are inseminated and carry until the foetus can be transplanted in an automatic uterus. But sometimes, as a reward or a punishment, it’s sanctioned.”
“His reward was your body?”
“In hopes his influence would steady me.”
The doctor took a moment. “That’s…How did that make you feel?”
The bright eyes peered over at him almost mischievously. “Like for the first time in my life, I hated what they were telling me to do more than they made me hate myself.”
0450 – Enterprise Time
Her hems were wet with dew as she crept into Yva’s room. Her mind buzzed with everything that had happened: the kindness of the engineer and the soft touch of the scientist. For a few hours, she had forgotten everything that had occurred after the lights went down. Dryd had given her a look as Control came to carry her off to see Hyada, and she shuddered to think of the promise it held. But there could be hope.
“Yva,” Kanna hissed, prodding her friend with her toe. “Wake up.”
The sleeping lump wriggled deeper into her pallet. “No.”
Kanna plopped to the ground and pulled her scarf off her head. “I saw the aliens again.”
Yva bolted up, curls in a haze around her head. “No!”
Kanna nodded and related the story in hushed whispers. The walls were thin, and there was never a guarantee that no one was listening to their minds.
“You let him touch you?” Yva demanded. “You were undressed?”
“He touched my electroreceptors.”
Yva gave a silent, scandalized squeal.
“And the engineer! You cannot believe the things he knows. I think…Do you ever think maybe we don’t have to live like this?”
“Like a better assignment?”
Kanna took the transporter from her pocket and began to break it apart again. The schematic for the larger transport was still fresh in her mind. “I’ve been working on this,” she admitted. “It was mostly a joke – you could calibrate it so if Hyada was coming towards you, you would transport across the compound. But the engineer had another idea.”
Yva nibbled at her nail. “Kanna…I know that you are nervous about Dryd, but really it could be good. Control likes him. If he vouches for you...”
“I can’t think about that now.” Her voice felt uncharacteristically harsh. She pulled and resoldered wires, amplifying the trace’s effect. “There’s more important things to do.” With a tiny sonic saw, she cut the dampener in half, slipping the scrap back into her pocket where the sharp edge dug into her leg.
“Do you not think its time you start at least trying? You could be working in the university!” Yva’s nose wrinkled. “If I had half your skill – the sucking up I’d do!”
Kanna wasn’t listening. The screen was back on, and code was running across it almost faster than she could edit it. She held the image of the spaceship’s transporter in her mind.
“Kanna. Kanna!” Yva poked her knee. “I have to get dressed and go.”
“Hmm? I’ll see you later?”
If Yva made a face, Kanna didn’t look up to see it. “Of course.”
“You think she said something?” McCoy prodded. Kanna had drifted off again. Her storytelling was disjointed and sparse, jumping from matter to matter and interspersed with long silences as she tried to wrangle her mind back to the people involved.
“If I never see her again, does it matter?” She stopped drawing and stared desolately down. “Either your captain allows me to remain here, or I die. Why don’t I just pretend? Why would she do that? She wanted stories and affection, and I gave them to her.”
“You loved her?”
Kanna turned her head. “Love?”
“You don’t know ‘love’?”
“I can see how you use it. I can put it into a grammatical structure, but I don’t know it.”
Now that, McCoy thought, felt like a whole other can of worms. He rephrased, “Was there never a moment where you participated in the system where you were not a person?”
“All the time. Constantly. Every moment. Even when I thought otherwise, I pushed it down.”
McCoy rubbed his chin. He tried not to get caught up in the blandness of her tone. He was a human psychiatrist by training, and sure, he had professional development hours in Vulcans psychology and had fought with them during their annual psych evals, but he still found it difficult to approach emotions from an alien’s point of view – especially one who was so obviously in the early stages of deconstructing, watching his ever reaction with the intensity of a kicked dog. He couldn’t work out what was real, and what she was feeding him.
“Why don’t you keep going,” he suggested.
1730 – Enterprise Time
The pipe pressed in on every side. Kanna squeezed forward, her arms stretched above her head. The heavy scent of waste coated the inside of her mouth and nose, despite the protective gear. The waster manager had gestured an apology when they told her the pig was broken, but she knew it was an extension to her punishment: unfed, demoted, and wriggling through the sewage systems to clear manually clear blocks. She hadn’t even bothered to carry out the pig repairs. Tomorrow it would be miraculously back running through the pipes.
By the time she scrapped the last bit of congealed fat and hair away from the junction, it was well past her usual time off. Her legs and core ached from her awkward scramble, and not even the stench of sewage could keep her stomach from growling after a long day of hard manual labour. Maybe Yva was right – maybe it was better to toe the line and lie in a soft bed with a full belly with nothing more strenuous to do but amplify the thoughts of lab workers. Wasn’t there a rumour about a new ship depot in development to implement technological advances from the aliens? Maybe pairing with Dryd wouldn’t be so bad if she could have a hand in the stars, even if no one ever acknowledged it.
With one final shove, she extracted herself from the access hatch and landed in a heap on the floor of the antechamber. The sonic cleaner switched on, making her skin tingle as she stripped off the soiled coveralls and face mask. A further blast of ultraviolet light left her squinting as she exited into the workroom.
Two unfamiliar people were waiting. Even without touching their minds she knew they were Control. Their shoulders held a confidence that even the superior managers didn’t carry. She slipped on her outer robe and took a long drink from the cooler. Her hand shook. Stolen tools and illicit transporters bounced against her leg.
But when the officers turned to leave, she followed silently.
“Where are we going?” she asked, blushing at her own voice. The penalty for connecting with anyone from Control was harsh, and being forced to speak only intensified the discomfort of their presence.
No one responded. She put her hands casually in her pocket and wrapped her hand around the device. Someone in the universe thinks you are worth something, she told herself. No matter what happens, there is an engineer who thought you were worth teaching. The thought buoyed her. She thought that maybe she could survive it. Maybe she could close her eyes and think of the scientist’s hands on her when Dryd made his grabbing approaches. If she buried these things deep enough, no one could use them against her.
It was the lack of smell that clued her in on their location. The air filters in medical ran continually, calibrated by the most trusted hubs.
“I don’t believe I’m ovulating,” she protested. The deferential pronouns soured in her mouth. The smaller of the Control officers pointed at the examination bed in the otherwise empty room. The presence of two others through the other door buzzed against her neck. She could feel Dryd, his signature heightened with excitement.
I should have had more time. Her throat tightened. I do not want this. I. Kanna. I. She repeated that single syllable, a suffix-less pronoun. Somewhere, thousands of miles above her head, was a place different from this. She warred with herself, as if Yva were speaking to her. She loved her work, forming the world into her specifications, but they weren’t really her specifications, were they? She’d never have a chance to fix things the way she knew they would work best. What was life worth without the ability to bring her schematics into the real world? Even the device in her pocket was just a silly dream, a design that would never come to fruition.
The officer pointed again, not even deigning to speak to her. The door to the other room creaked.
The Superior Engineer’s voice boomed in her head, You’ve got good instincts, lassie, you just have to trust yourself.
Her fingers brushed against the piece of dampener, its cut edge sharp.
“No.”
Pain had been a near constant part of her life, but it had been the wearing down of soft, constant aches. Nothing could prepare her for the fiery punch as she sank the metal into her lower abdomen. Maybe she screamed, but all she could focus on was the give as the metal parted the tough sinews of muscle and plunged into the abdominal cavity. She jerked sideways, the jagged edge mutilating as it went.
Vaguely, she was aware of someone grabbing her arm, tackling her to the ground, but she wanted to laugh. What could they do to her? Her gametes were shredded. They would let her bleed out and shuffle her body away. Stars danced in front of her eyes. She wouldn’t go Beyond – she hadn’t said her devotionals or acted with servitude, but maybe she’d go to the stars. People were yelling. Somewhere, space waited, silent and black and shining with promise.
I’m a person too, she thought, gasping to breathe. Only a person can choose their way. Her pocket was hard to find. She groped through her blood-soaked robes, feeling for the button of the device the engineer helped her made. She wanted to touch the proof of her life again. She wanted to see the stars.
The last thing she saw was Dryd’s face, and then the world dissolved in golden light.