“Well that’s disturbing,” FM muttered beside me.
“At least he’s upfront about it,” Alanik added.
“Let us feast!” Goro shouted, and the kitsen all echoed these last words with their fists raised in the air.
I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a grave tactical error by dining with these creatures. I thought we were doing the right thing by being diplomatic and trying to prove we weren’t here to conquer them. But now I worried they would discover some weakness they might use against us.
“Juno,” I said as one of the kitsen brought me a small plate—it must have been an oversized serving platter to them—piled high with fish and nuts. “I know you don’t want to share your knowledge with us until the senate agrees to it, but may I ask if any of this food is poisonous to humans?”
“Certainly,” Juno said. “The photophores of the flatfish are mildly venomous, but those have been removed. Our records show that humans ate most of our foods, and indeed put a great strain on our resources, trying to export some of our most prized delicacies for their own gain. To answer your question, the only foods we eat that would be poisonous to you are a few varieties of berry and some of our summer shellfish, and none of those have been offered to you this day. Make no mistake, Goro means to kill you, but he will only do so with senate permission and in the way that is most advantageous to him.”
Over at Goro’s table, I heard him comparing his fish to a worthy foe slain in battle. That seemed like a stretch to me, but I’d once heard Spensa muttering something that sounded a lot like “fear the wrath of my very soft socks” on requisition day, so she probably would have approved. I wasn’t sure how fighting one of us with a sword could be advantageous to him, but clearly he had some kind of endgame in mind.
FM poked at her own fish, then took a bite. “This is delicious.”
“Eh,” Nedd said, settling down cross-legged on the sand by Kimmalyn. “It’s a little fishy.”
FM blinked at him. “It is literally fish.”
“Right,” Nedd said. “But…fishy fish.”
“Totally,” Catnip said. “I hate it when my food adjectives its own noun.”
“Exactly,” Nedd said.
“It’s like the Saint says,” Kimmalyn added. “You are what you eat.”
“Hey, look!” Sadie said. “There are boats out there!” She pointed out onto the water, beyond the waves. The noise from the ocean was fainter this far up on the beach. And out on the blue-green expanse that seemed to go on and on forever until it melded with the sky…scud, she was right. There were ships out there. Sailing vessels that couldn’t have been much longer than a meter or two, bobbing up and down in the waves.
“I understand the basics of how boats work,” I said. “But how do they do that? How do they sail out there on all that water, without worrying that it’s going to swallow them up?”
“Sometimes it does,” Juno said. “The water is dangerous, especially for sailors who are caught in a sudden storm. As for how they brave it—how do you fly into the blackness of space? It seems just as unknowable to me, and a great deal more vast.”
That…was a really good point.
“I don’t know,” Arturo said. “You can’t drown in space.”
“But you can asphyxiate,” Nedd said. “Which sounds just as unpleasant.”
The food suddenly felt heavy in my mouth. I set down my fork, which might have originally been some sort of gardening implement.
“Or freeze to death,” Catnip added. “It’s cold in space.”
“The ocean can be cold,” Juno said. “Depending on the currents and the time of year.”
“You don’t depressurize if you jump into the ocean though,” Nedd said. “That scud sounds nasty. Did you know it can make your saliva boil in your mouth?”
“Ew, Nedd,” FM said. “We’re eating.”
The Superiority ship exploded before my eyes. The bodies of my parents were flung into space, fluids voiding, their eyeballs boiling.
I shook my head and set down my plate. That hadn’t happened. They’d been torn apart by the mindblades first.
Hadn’t they?
“The ocean does the opposite,” Juno said. “The pressure in its depths is so great it can crush you.”
“Whoa,” Nedd said. “That’s awesome.”
Stars. Why did everything in the galaxy feel like it was trying to kill us? I had started this conversation, but now I had to get away from it. “Excuse me,” I said, and I got up, leaving my food behind. I moved away from the city, down the beach toward the water.
A projectile shot over the ocean, and I flinched. Was the water attacking us now?
But no, it was a bird—a whole flock of them, wings tucked against their bodies as they shot like bullets into the waves, and then flapping to give them lift again, carrying them into the air with fish in their mouths.
Stars. I’d seen pictures of birds, but watching them glide over the water like so many starfighters…
It was incredible, but it didn’t stop my hands from shaking.
I wiped cold sweat from my forehead. Scud, I’d walked away from the feast. Was I ruining our diplomatic relations? Offending the kitsen somehow? Would they perceive this as a threat?
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t breathe. As I stared out at the ocean, the whole of it pressed down on me, all the weight of what felt like millions of miles of water bearing down on my body.
It was too much.
“Jorgen?” FM said. I wheeled around to find her watching me with concern.
Scud, not concern. Anything but concern. I wished she’d look at me the way she had back on the platform on ReDawn, when she’d been pissed at me for telling her she shouldn’t have liberated the slugs from Detritus. She’d been so angry at me, when I’d simply pointed out the obvious—she’d broken the chain of command, violated our orders, and put our comrades in danger.
You are not my flightleader, she’d said.
That had gutted me then, but I found it infinitely preferable to what I knew she was going to say now.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Jorgen,” FM said. “You aren’t fine.”
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t be fine. Your parents—”