Shades Within Us

Inkskinned-1

INKSKINNED

Jeremy SzalThe humans’ scanner warbled as it swept over me, as if it could detect the banned words I’d carved onto on my flesh. Words of my language that, since the Hacking War ended, were not permitted to exist on Khronos.

I stood perfectly still on the podium, hands held behind my back in a way that humans believe to be reassuring. I had to tilt my head to fit my crown of truncated horns inside this bizarrely uncomfortable box. A human once showed me an imagelog of a creature from Earth that had horns similar to us male Kichi. An elk, they called it. It had a beautiful brown coat and eyes the colour of space. If I managed to bring my sisters here, I’d show it to them.

“Hey, hey, Spiky, arms where we can see ‘em.” A human with skin as brown as mine scowled as he rapped on the chainglass.

I obeyed and tried not to twitch my fingers. I had never been good at concealing nerves.

“Can these pisshead Kichi even understand us?” the new guard murmured to his colleagues. Even through the chainglass I could smell the agitation in their acidic sweat. Most of it wafted off the man who’d spoken to me.

“Yeah,” said another, twirling a stylus, “otherwise Khronos wouldn’t let him in. Gotta speak an Earth-based language, or it’s back home.”

“A decade of declaring war on us.” The dark-skinned human shook his head and snorted a derisive laugh. “Not too smart. Persistent, but not too smart.” He inhaled a vaper and exhaled at the scanner. Berry-scented air curled upwards. “Sodding savages.”

The stylus-twirling human looked as if he might respond to that, but said nothing. It did not bother me; I’d survived worse than them. I rolled my shoulders, my skin-hugging suit stretching against my body. They’d probably imprison, beat, maybe kill me if they knew about the words hiding underneath it. Kichi tongue did not exist on Khronos. Carrying it here with the intent of preserving it, I could feel the weight of the words, their significance, shiver against my flesh.

“Name?” the stylus-twirling human asked. He cracked his knuckles, as if impatient for me to be off.

“Atlas,” I said in English that was better than it had been six months ago. Like my language, I’d had to abandon my birth name for a Common-sounding one when I moved here. But I’d been allowed to keep my facial tattoos—crimson slashes along my cheeks signifying my clan.

Holologs rattled off. Statistics. A silhouette of a typical male Kichi was highlighted to match with me. Powerful digitigrade legs, three-fingered hands, angular shoulders and torso, spine almost jutting out a broad back, curved mandibles, and a crown of full, proud antlers, rather than my mangled ones. The scanner chimed. No errors. Thank the old voids. Sweat slithering down my chest, down the forbidden words of my people, I started to exit.

The dark-skinned human blocked my path. “Why in such a rush, big guy? Where’d you get all those scars on your face?” His own face was that of a predator that spied a helpless creature in the field.

I tried to read his small, cruel eyes. Did he have family my people had killed? Mothers, fathers, sisters? His chest was almost touching mine. Back home, this declaration of dominance would get his head torn off.

“You know what they called this spiky runt in the war?” he asked the other as he glanced at his palmerlog. “The Marksman. Born with a sniper rifle. Never missed a shot.”

I tried to turn away, but he seized one of my horns. Twisted my head back. Tightened an arm around my neck, drew me close. We hate physical contact, and this man’s flesh was like a branding iron on mine. His rancid smell was overpowering. Nauseating.

“Enough.” In the periphery of my vision, the stylus-twirling human was standing up. “He’s all clear. Just let him go.”

My assailant ignored his fellow human, drew his face close to mine. “How about it, big guy? You get those scars killing humans?”

The fibres in my flesh tightened as I flexed my claws. I could almost hear the words of Chieftain Krung, my former Commander: kill him. Snap this arrogant wimp’s puny neck. Do it for the honour of your clan. It’s what any Kichi would have done. But no. I was not here for that. The humans had opened their gates to their former enemies, and I would not be the one to betray that trust. I lowered my fist. But I wasn’t done.

“No,” I said, my throat tight. “I got these scars when humans captured and tortured me.”

Surprise replaced the anger in his eyes and I wrenched away. The other guard could not meet my eye as I crossed the checkpoint I’d passed every day for six months.

When we first heard that the humans managed to build a metropolis city inside a hollowed-out asteroid, I did not believe it. I couldn’t. Not until I arrived and saw the colossal place myself.

Artificial heat pressed on my shoulders as I strode along the boardwalk of one of the busiest floors. Vehicles and adlogs roared around buildings, apartments and sprawling bridges reaching for the artificially built ceiling that marked the asteroid’s level. Flexiscreens had set it to a blue midday sky. They’d drilled into the primordial rock, creating a gargantuan open space, which they further divided up into two dozen floors, like levels of a building, each one the size of a small city, then given gravity through centrifugal force. How much time would it take to make such a thing?

Meats, perfumes, minerals, human body odours, a million alien sensations hammered into my senses like bullets. If I wanted any hope of integrating into the Common I needed to overcome that unfamiliarity. But it wasn’t totally up to me. Even now folks were tossing glances at me. Probably remembering when they’d first seen us on their newslogs after our sovereign declared war on them. Heavy in armour brandished with clan glyphs and wielding blood-stained weapons, we must have looked like creatures born from a nightmare. Our language became synonymous with fear and violence, which led to its ban.

I’d never wanted to fight in the Hacking War. I’d wanted to design ships. But it’s in Kichi blood to fight, and it was impossible not to get swept up in the grandness of joining my blood brothers to conquer entire planets. Kichi culture tells us to act on instinct, consequences be damned. In battle, our armoured suits pumped our bodies full of nutrients and stimulants and narcotics that kept us locked in the perpetual glory of conquest. As if most Kichi weren’t blood thirsty enough.

But there was nothing glorious about the deaths of millions. Which was why I didn’t blame the humans for the way they looked at me, wondering if my hand had killed someone they’d loved.

Wind blew from an artificial beach they’d built into Khronos, the salty air cooling my skin. It swept me back to the grasslands back home I’d played in when I was a boy. Two of my sisters would sit with me in the evenings, tying ribbons and trinkets and wind-chimes to my antlers despite my half-hearted protests. They laughed at me afterwards, said I looked sweet. I was the youngest of eight, and the only male. My sisters who were still alive were stuck back on Ruste, unable to get their migration papers approved. Kichi clans stick together no matter what, but I had to break that tradition if I wanted a better life. Someday I was going to purchase their papers and bring them here, show them this artificial beach these humans had the nerve to build inside an asteroid.

Kichi shops and community centres popped up the closer I got to home. The familiarity eased the pressure in my chest. One sold fibre silks and vacuum-sealed meats and spices that smelled like the ingredients my mother used when cooking. It had been a human pastry shop, before Kichi had bought the owners out.

I strode past the collage of political posters, protesting the incursion of Kichi shops along a former human street, entering our angular-shaped tenement block. Natakus, my cousin, waffled on in the plaza, antlers painted a dark crimson he thought would attract a mate. He was puffing away at rheda, the mind-numbing drug that grew on Ruste. It would get us both sent back home if Khronos security found his stash. I’d wanted to kill him when I found out. Then I remembered what I was carrying.

“Our appointment was almost an hour ago?” Julia Sapokiwi, my migration officer, leaned by my door flicking through her palmerlog. She smelt agitated and tense. Half her job was tracking my adjustment to Khronos life, the other half making sure I didn’t get up to mischief. Or kill anyone.

“I was caught up at the checkpoint again.” I unlocked the door. She strode into my room without verbal consent. I tried not to twist my mandibles at that. Clan feuds have been started over less.

“I’ll see about getting you a fast track pass.” Julia wrinkled her nose as she swept blonde hair out of her eyes. I realized my smell was as alien to her as humans’ was to me. “But whatever you do, please don’t retaliate. It’s a dirty trick. No matter how much they deserve it.”

My furniture mainly consisted of a bed and chairs built for human bodies. Scant possessions littered the room like discarded weapons on a battlefield. Julia ran her fingers along a stack of yellowing books I’d bought at a market. “I never knew you liked reading,” she said, voice softening.

“I read a lot when I was a child,” I said. Julia’s fingers were still lingering on the faded spines. “Human books help me learn English.”

“You must miss your own,” she said, completely unaware of the irony. Trust is important, she’d told me on our first day of meeting. But I’d never been able to bring myself to show her. You can tell me anything, she’d added. But did that promise extend to things banned Common-wide? Humans are as bad at keeping promises as we are. Not worth the risk.

She asked the usual questions. How I was adjusting to Khronos food, cultural attitudes, the languages. Her muscles relaxed and her scent became less aggressive as the questions and advice flowed along. I stretched out my answers, not wanting our time to end. I suspected she enjoyed my company, too. There was gentleness about the way she spoke, a deep calm as she interacted with the world. Not judging, just quietly observing, listening, learning as I talked. My sisters would have liked her.

“Do you think it’s bad to forget where I came from?” I asked.

“You never forget where you come from.” Julia was smiling, but there was a distance in her eyes deeper than Ruste’s northern oceans. “Why?”

“Even if it prevents you from truly settling?” I mimicked the way she folded her arms. If she noticed she said nothing of it. “They let us come here, but not our culture or language. It reminds of them of what we did and our reasons for doing it.” Once the humans discovered that our culture was one of military hierarchy and war mongering, the ban on it was almost instantaneous. It had taken years for them to consider opening their gates to us.

“Adjusting doesn’t mean you have to give it up completely.” Her hand reached out, as if to touch mine, but she seemed to think the better of it. She instead scratched at the flaking wood. “You just find your own way. And I’m sure you will, Atlas.”

I was going to respond when she slid a palmerlog my way. “You see that on the news? A lungship shareholder was killed this morning.” Her scent took on a more acidic smell as an image of the gutted human, sprawled out on bloody concrete, appeared. “They’re saying a Kichi did it.”

I managed a grunt. “Yes. Of course they are.” But sweat prickled along the nape of my neck because they were not wrong. A Kichi had done it. The raked claw gouges in his stomach, the fingers warped and broken like twisted metal, the hole in his head where a clan tattoo would be. We were told to kill humans exactly like this. Desecrating a clan tattoo is a good way to start a civil war.