Planet Leviathan

^{Chapter 13} The Fine Art of Being an Unreliable Narrator

“Could someone please explain to me what exactly is going on?” Skin asked. “I’m feeling very confused at this point.”

“Yeah, I can’t say that I’m too clear on any of this either,” Stanton said.

Stacia took a good look at their surroundings and decided that this would be a good enough place to stop for a while, rest, and explain herself. She was actually surprised that neither of her companions had pressed her for details before this. They’d been moving at their best speed for hours, heading in a direction that only Stacia knew to a target that shouldn’t have existed on Leviathan. They’d kept their curiosity in check for this long. She figured it was finally time to come completely clean.

“We’ll set up camp here,” Stacia said. “Once we’re settled for the night, I’ll tell you both everything.”

“Is it really wise to stop?” Stanton asked. “They could still be following us.”

“Maybe,” Stacia said. “I would even say probably. But we’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow, so we all need to be rested. Especially me. Kendara was right. You two aren’t as light as you look.”

“Actually, I think she was referring to you,” Skin said.

“We’ll take turns keeping watch for several hours while the other two sleep,” Stacia said. “We’ll get going long before dawn.”

This particular camp was even more uncomfortable than the ones they’d been forced to make do with on the plains. The ground here was rocky and jagged with occasional quartz outcroppings jutting out like the planet itself was looking for an opportunity to stab someone. The landscape had turned into the most inhospitable one Stacia had seen on the planet yet, with nothing more than an occasional purple barbed plant growing from the cracks in the stone. On a couple of occasions, they had passed large crater-like structures that Stanton advised them to stay well away from. When Stacia asked him why, he replied that he had been told something carnivorous lived in the bottoms, although he hadn’t had a chance to see one himself. Given what Stacia had seen of Leviathan so far, she was inclined to believe the rumor.

These details also made it less likely that they would be followed here, although Stacia assumed she couldn’t count on that for too long. At this point, Lexton probably had her reputation riding on taking Stacia out. Stacia needed to be ready for any possibility.

Finally, they all sat down in a circle. Skin spoke first. “You lied to me.” Stacia was surprised at the hurt accusation in her voice. She was also surprised at how much of a heel it made her feel.

“Yes, I did. I’m sorry.”

“Why? Didn’t you trust me?”

“I’d barely met you. I still haven’t known you for more than three days.”

“So you don’t think I’m trustworthy?”

“It’s not that. I had no idea if you might somehow have been planted with me by Lexton, or if you had some belief or value that might cause you to turn on me. You have to remember, you’re an alien to me.”

“And you’re the mysterious alien invader to me. I thought I saw the chance in you to live differently, to not be certain that one day I would be skinned and draped over someone else. That’s why I followed you, why I’ve been trying to help you. I thought… I thought maybe I wouldn’t be so alone anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Skin. I’m so, so sorry. Even with only another two days of knowing you, if I had to do it all over again, I would have told you the truth about what I was doing here from the beginning.”

“You two are starting to lose me,” Stanton said. “Could you maybe start from the beginning? Wherever the hell the beginning is.”

Skin sat up straighter as a thought occurred to her. “All that stuff about your childhood. Was that all a lie, too?”

“No. It wasn’t a lie. Everything I told you about my family and when I was a little girl is all true.” Stacia paused, suddenly unable to make herself look Skin in the eye. “But there was one very important detail I changed.”

“General Borealis?” Skin asked.

Stacia nodded. “I told you about the destruction of my home, and the fact that it is believed by many that it was caused either by someone’s corruption or incompetence within the higher rankings of the Galactic Marines. But I know it wasn’t General Borealis who was responsible. I know, because she was having dinner with us when it happened.”

Stanton looked appraisingly at Stacia. “It’s tough to guess your age with the armor, but I’d say you look a good five to ten years older than me. Would this have been before I was born?”

“Yes. I don’t think your mother had even met your father yet. At the very least, he wasn’t at dinner with us. As I’d said, all three of my parents were more or less retired at that point. General Borealis wasn’t a general yet, but I remember my mothers jokingly calling her that, saying that she was trying to get their former positions. She was on a day’s leave and had come to visit, but she still had her com equipment with her. That’s how we heard the first news that there was an attack. Before anyone could do anything, the shells were raining down.”

“My memories are a little hazy for a while after that, but I do clearly recall that she was the one who pulled me out of the building in time. She was also the one that rushed back in and tried to save my parents. She managed to get two out. Mama Linny only had minor injuries but was out cold. Mama Gertrude, however, almost died. Borealis had to make a choice between running back in one last time to try to find Papa, or quickly applying a medkit that would keep Mama Gertrude from bleeding out at her throat. I hold no grudge at all for the choice she made. For all I know, I could have lost two of my three parents that day instead of just one.”

Stacia looked right at Stanton, both of them making unwavering eye contact. “And that was the moment where I decided that not only would I grow up to be a Galactic Marine, but that I would do everything in my power to one day pay your mother back for what she had done. I figured I owed her. One life saved in exchange for another.”

“You never found out who was really responsible for the shelling?” Skin asked.

Stacia shook her head. “Still a mystery. In fact, there’s still not any solid evidence that someone involved with the Galactic Marines was responsible. It’s just a conspiracy theory, even if I’ve seen more than my share of evidence that corruption in our branch of the service is alive and well.”

“But you still sound like a true believer,” Stanton said.

“I am. I believe in the good the Galactic Marines can do. I also believe they need to be kept in check. This planet is the perfect example of what can happen when people with our augmentations are given too much power.”

“But what about the things I heard from Lexton’s people about you shooting my mother?” Stanton asked. “You’re telling me none of that actually happened?”

“No, that happened. I shot General Borealis repeatedly. Last time I saw her, she was being dragged off to be put on life support.”

Stanton blanched.

“But there’s one important detail I haven’t told anyone. It didn’t come up at my trial and no one witnessed it: she told me to shoot her. In fact, she gave me a direct order.”

“Wait, are you trying to say that my mother ordered you to try to kill her?”

“No, I’m saying that she ordered me to shoot her. And to do a thorough job of it without actually killing her. It had to look like I’d actually wanted her dead.”

“But that’s crazy! Why would my mother ask anyone to do that?”

“Because, Stanton, no one is ever supposed to go down to the surface of Leviathan. Unless, of course, they’re trying to make a political statement and actually crash instead.”

Stanton’s face went from pale to beet red.

“After your crash, the security around the planet was beefed up. You can imagine what kind of PR nightmare it was, for the son of a prominent Galactic Marine general to be making a protest at the most heavily guarded prison planet in the explored galaxy and then get stuck there. The powers that be didn’t ever want a repeat of that. So trying to get someone in to rescue you the same way you got in was impossible. The only way to get someone here to help you was if a major, unforgivable crime was committed. Such as the attempted murder of a superior officer.”

“She did that?” Stanton asked. “She made that kind of sacrifice for me?”

“Of course she did. You’re her son. And I owed her. She’s tried to tell me for years that I didn’t owe her anything, but I couldn’t rest until I felt I had paid her back. This whole thing was my idea. Trust me, it took a long time to convince her this was the only way.”

Stanton sighed and looked down at his hands in his lap. “I didn’t crash.”

“I was wondering about that,” Stacia said. “You’re well known for your piloting skills. It never sat right with me that you would crash during what was, for you, a routine publicity opportunity.”

“It wasn’t a publicity opportunity! There are people on this planet who are suffering. The existence of the Skins has been speculated for years.”

“Sure, by the same wacko conspiracy theorists who think the Galactic Marines are run by a group of secret lizard people from the Earth’s core.”

“Except this conspiracy theory turned out to be real, didn’t it?” Stanton asked, pointing at Skin. Skin stared at his outstretched finger as though she wasn’t sure if he was offering it to her or not.

“You’re right,” Stacia said quietly. “Your concerns were valid after all. But back to the crash. What happened?”

“Sabotage, as far as I can tell,” Stanton said. “After the people at Roo-Soh nursed me back to health from my injuries, I went back to the wreck of my ship to try to investigate. I thought I saw evidence that a few major regulators in the engine had been removed prior to take-off. You know, from scorch marks where there shouldn’t have been any scorch marks. But I could never be sure, because the Roo-Soh people had already begun to strip it for parts by then.”

“Interesting,” Stacia said. “Why would someone sabotage your ship?” But Stanton didn’t need to answer that one. It was obvious. He had rubbed some people the wrong way with his meddling and revealing that there was anything less than perfect with the Galactic Marine’s inescapable prison planet. Again, it all came back to corruption somewhere in the upper echelons.

“So does this mean you really are still a Galactic Marine after all?” Skin asked her.

“No,” Stacia said quietly. “If it ever becomes public knowledge that this was all an escape attempt orchestrated by General Borealis, then she will be seen as guilty. She would probably end up down here right beside us. I really was stripped of my rank and dishonorably discharged. As much as being a Galactic Marine was part of me, it will never be a part of me again.”

There was a long period of silence between all three of them before Stanton spoke again. “No offense, but so far it looks to me like your rescue plan is seriously flawed.”

“How so?” Stacia asked.

“How about the fact that we’re still here? A rescue would imply that we’d be able to get off Leviathan.”

“Except nobody leaves Leviathan,” Skin said.

“Nobody ever,” Stanton agreed. “All you’ve managed to do by coming down here is make Lexton even more angry at me for trying to organize people against her than she was before.”

“That might be true otherwise,” Stacia said, allowing a twinkle to appear in her eye. “Except haven’t either of you noticed that, ever since we escaped Roo-Soh, we’re not exactly moving at random?”

Both of Stacia’s companions sat up straighter. “So you do have something else up your sleeve?”

“I don’t have sleeves,” Stacia said, pointing at the armor on her arm.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. Finding you was just phase one. Phase two is to reach our spaceship.”

Skin’s mouth dropped open. “A spaceship? An actual, working ship?”

“No, that can’t be possible,” Stanton said.

“It shouldn’t be, but we figured out a way.”

“How? It’s not like we have the materials to build one, and the security platforms wouldn’t let one just land on the surface.”

“Of course not. Anything that got close would be shot down with extreme prejudice. So we let them.”

“Explain,” Stanton demanded.

“That was the hardest part of all this to plan, even more so than shooting your mother in such a way to let her live but still make it look like I’d actually tried. About two days before I was discharged, an unidentified ship appeared in orbit. All attempts to hail it were ignored, even as it got closer. So it was shot down, obliterated, and crashed to Leviathan’s surface where it exploded in a spectacular, very visible fireball.”

“Okay, still not seeing where this helps us.”

“The outside of the ship was shot. The outside of the ship exploded. The reason the security platforms would never be able to identify its make and model is because all they saw was a cobbled together shell. If it looked like some kind of makeshift, pirate craft to them, that’s because it essentially was. But inside, hidden from view, was the real ship, a luxury craft heavily modified just for this occasion. If everything went as it should, the real ship should still be safe and in a place far enough from any settlement that no one would have come to salvage from it.”

“If,” Stanton said. “There are a lot of things that could go wrong with that if.”

“Yes, there are, the first being that someone else might have already found it, and the second being the possibility that the landing didn’t happen the way we wanted and something got damaged. We’re not going to know until we get there. And we’ll get there tomorrow, at this pace.”

“Not exactly the most elegant plan,” Stanton said.

“We had to come up with it on the fly. Satellite scans of the surface implied that your ship was intact enough for you to have survived the crash, but any more thorough scans are blocked by the security platforms, so we had no idea how long you were going to remain in one piece.”

“But… what happens to me when you leave?” Skin asked.

Stacia was surprised she even had to ask. “Skin, you’re coming with us, assuming we don’t die on the way out. That is, if you want to.”

“I… I get to leave the planet? But nobody…”

“Nobody leaves Leviathan,” Stacia said. “Yes, I know. That’s the rule. But in case you haven’t figured it out yet, my track record of adhering to rules is a bit spotty.”

“I can go into space? I can see other worlds? I… I can live?”

“Yes. Hopefully. Again, there are a lot of things that could go wrong.”

But Skin didn’t seem to hear this last part. “I get to leave Leviathan!” She stood up and jumped up and down with a vigor and energy Stacia hadn’t thought possible from someone so malnourished and scrawny. “I get to leave! I get to live! I get to…” She stopped, suddenly serious. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do out there.”

Stacia smiled. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

“There’s still a major problem that I see with this,” Stanton said. “The security platforms aren’t going to let anything launched from the surface outside of the atmosphere. We’ll take off in this ship and get blown out of the sky within a minute.”

“There’s a plan for that, too. It’ll be tricky, but we can make it work.”

She gave them a rough idea of what they would do, and Stanton agreed that was risky as hell but could still work. Skin didn’t seem to understand a word they said, but none of it tempered her enthusiasm. When they finally settled in for the night, Stacia took the first watch and told her companions to sleep. While she stood at the edge of the camp, however, she could hear Skin still moving around behind her even as Stanton snored lightly.

“Stacia?” Skin asked quietly.

“Yes?” Stacia didn’t even turn around to see her. She had no doubt that Lexton and her people would come for them, and she had no idea when it might be. The last thing she wanted was for it to happen at the one moment when she had her back turned.

“You’re serious that I can leave with you?”

“Assuming we don’t all die in the attempt, yes, of course. Why would I lie to you about this?”

“You already lied to me once.”

Stacia paused. “I’m sorry. Sincerely.”

“I thought you were my friend.”

Stacia cocked her head. She didn’t usually make friends. She was all about her work, her duty. She had to admit, though, that over the last few days, she’d started to feel something for the young woman. Friendship didn’t quite describe it. It was almost maternal, like she’d started to look at Skin, no matter how old she might be in reality, as a daughter in need of love and guidance. Stacia hardly thought she was the best person to provide that, but she thought she could definitely try.

“I am your friend.”

Skin was quiet for a moment before saying, “I’m too excited to sleep. I want to have sex.”

It took every fiber of Stacia’s being not to laugh. “I already told you, I’m not interested.”

“There’s nothing I can do to change your mind?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Are you sure? I’m really good at…”

“Skin, I’m sure.”

Another pause. Then, “I’m going to have sex with Stanton, then.”

“Remember what I said the other night? You ask permission first. And if he says no, then you have to take care of yourself by yourself. No exceptions, got it?”

“Got it.” Stacia listened as she padded her way over to Stanton. Stacia turned around just long enough see the young woman kneel down over Stanton and look straight down into his sleeping face before poking him in the chest. Stanton snorted awake, then started violently as he saw the face with a lascivious look just inches away from him.

“Hi!” Skin said with comical enthusiasm. “I want to have sex with you!”

“Whuh? Uh…”

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

“I… I’m not sure…” He sat up and looked in Stacia’s direction, as if he needed her permission.

“Don’t look at me,” Stacia said. “You’re the one who gets to choose. As long as neither of you hurts the other without permission, I don’t care.”

“Do you have protection?” Stanton asked.

Skin cocked her head. “Stacia’s standing right there. And we have guns.”

“No, that’s not what I…” He paused, staring at the young woman who was desperate to jump anyone’s bones, probably thinking about whether or not STDs had a presence on Leviathan. Stacia turned and took up a position further from the camp to give them a little more privacy. The sounds they tried to muffle in the darkness told Stacia exactly what they both decided.