Principia — Sa Ki Kache I

The Hidden

Tahlia looked out the window of her hospital room at the view of the Sinus Medina from within the walls of the Martian Embassy. The new eye was still a little glitchy, but at least the Martian magic masquerading as science had returned her vision to her like it was before.

The room, like the rest of the parts of the embassy that she had been able to see in her month-long convalescence, was immaculate — polished to a shining sheen with a gleaming white ceiling, buffed terracotta walls, and a glistening rust-colored floor. The lighting was soft, so as to avoid blinding the occupants with the glare.

She felt apprehension and relief in equal measure at how well and how quickly the Sinus Medina had cleaned up since the wargubbahs turned it into a massacre site where thousands of poor moonfullas would never sing out again.

All those people, murdered by Earthfulla brutality, and now erased, buried, paved over to be forgotten. No one will remember it as a massacre, where children were blasted into viscera by cannon shells, elders and respected fullas shredded by machine gun fire, whole city blocks leveled in percussive, thunderous barrages, pregnant women carbonized alive by incendiary bombs launched by military mortars.

If they’ll remember it at all, they’ll remember it as a peacekeeping mission that saved the colony from a shameful, violent mob of moonfulla thugs who just wanted to destroy everything around them like rabid dogs.

The Earthgubbahs were going to pin the blame for her people’s sorry business on the moonfullas themselves and paint themselves as the fucking heroes of the story instead of the villains who engineered this whole bust up so they could kill a bunch of Loonies with impunity.

Those fucking savages.

The lights in the room flickered slightly before the burnished bronze door to her hospital room slid open cleanly to admit her visitor, a young Earthfulla wearing a clean, pressed, and smart military uniform in Martian camouflage and shined and polished black combat boots. On her lapels were pinned a single red square precisely one centimeter in area.

“Ay, there you are, sistagirl,” Tahlia said without looking at her visitor, “Been wonderin’ when you’d knock about here, Sookie.”

“How’d you know it was me, Tahli?” Sara asked.

“I got a tap-tap,” Tahlia said, “Where you go?”

“MCM BRT, Commander!” Sara said with military sharpness as she snapped to attention and saluted, before breaking with her rigorously-drilled discipline and joyously embraced Tahlia in her newly-toned and muscular arms, “I joined up with the gumbagubbahs, spent the last month learnin’ to walk and talk like they do.”

Tahlia laughed. “They think they’re so good they say their name twice, unna?” she asked, “What’s all them letters mean, ay?”

“Mars Colonial Militia, Basic Resocialization and Training,” Sara answered, “I got a day pass before Green Phase begins, so I decided to come visit my sista from another mista and see how that busted up eye was doin’.”

“Really, Sookie?” Tahlia asked with tears welling up in her eyes. Sara still wasn’t entirely used to all of the information that her new implants fed into her brain, but her kinanalysis suite was picking up on every minute detail that Tahlia’s face betrayed, and it was clear she was far more distraught than she intended for Sara to see.

Sara was still unsure of whether people should have the ability to shine this sort of beacon into another’s soul and know that which they kept most secret. Sara felt as if she knew Tahlia better than she did herself.

“Really, Sookie?” Tahlia repeated, “You’re leaving the community? You’re leaving my mob? You’re leaving… …me?” She began to cry.

This was no sook, no cry, no sob, no weep, no shedding of tears. This was a full-throated bawl of profound grief and mourning, as if she were shedding these tears over the grave of the woman that she held in her arms, the woman she loved sororally.

She believed that the anguish she felt would kill her.

“My mob is dead!” Tahlia sobbed, “Mum, Nan, Charles, Rosie Leah, Dennis — the Earthgubbahs ripped them all away from me, and now you’re leaving, too?”

She let out a wail. “I’m all alone,” she lamented, “I can’t even return home to my custodial lands. My colony, my healing place — I can never return to them as long as I have to hide here in mission country! I’ve never been so isolated…”

Sara held Tahlia in a gentle embrace, letting her cry the tears that she needed to cry. They stood together like this for uncounted minutes until Tahlia ran out of tears and could only make dry sobs. Sara could have learned the time elapsed down to the millisecond, but she chose to ignore her internal timepiece so that she could share this human moment with her surrogate older sister.

“Shair, auntie girl,” Sara whispered soothingly into Tahlia’s ear, “I’m not leavin’ you, or our mob. I just gotta go walkabout, and find myself. I will return, though, and help our community rebuild. You know that I keep my promises, ay?”

“True that,” Tahlia sniffled, “You’re a killer goodfulla, unna?”

They remained in this embrace for a while longer.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Corsée slumped against a structural pillar in Lady Julianna’s cargo bay. Exhausted, she wiped the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her coverall, and hungrily anticipated her next meal. Not that she was expecting anything delicious — all they ever fed her was concentrated rations made from simple carbohydrates and synthetic proteins — but she simply hadn’t eaten in the last 36 hours and they had her do all kinds of hard labor in the meantime. It wasn’t just her, she could see the other girls on the cargo crew in various states of collapse for the same reasons. Strictly speaking, they weren’t supposed to be lying about like this when their shift hadn’t ended yet, and they could be harshly punished if they were ever caught by the foreman, but they had finished redistributing the ship’s cargo load ahead of schedule, and some of them couldn’t physically stand anymore, they were so desperately tired.

One of the younger girls stumbled over and collapsed next to her. Her name was Enchantée, and this 12-year-old girl was the most beautiful child anyone had ever seen — far too innocent for this job, this place. She rested her head on Corsée’s shoulder and fell asleep right away. Corsée didn’t mind — the younger children often slept with her in the barracks, finding refuge in her ample bosom and soft, curvaceous figure. They told her that they found the sensation of her embrace comforting, the rhythm of her heartbeat soothing, and they felt safer when they were with her.

Because of this, Corsée had become a sort of surrogate mother to the small children, and an older sister to the rest — at 17, she was the oldest of them. Corsée slowly negotiated her right arm around Encantei’s back and embraced her tenderly. In this cruel life fate had dealt them, every one of these moments of innocent intimacy was precious.

“HEY, FREIGHT DYKES!” the foreman bellowed, “Y’ALL BITCHES BETTER NOT BE LAYIN’ ABOUT ON THE JOB! WE DON’T PAY YOU TO BRAID EACH OTHER’S HAIR!”

Iu donna pei ui na tryk at all, Corsée thought bitterly as she summoned the energy to stand up. “Revilei-vu, Ancantei,” she whispered as she shook the poor girl awake, “ui kanna let de bos catch ui.”

Enchantée stirred, and the Toucouleur girl’s eyes opened. Corsée helped her to her feet, and lightly patted her on the cheek to help her wake faster. She didn’t come to full alertness until the loud smack of flesh striking flesh reverberated around the bay, immediately followed by a gasp of pain yipped in a soprano register. It sounded like the foreman caught someone falling asleep. Corsée could see her fellow “freight dykes” making haste to not appear idle. Say what you would about the man, but he was a terrifyingly effective motivator.

“ALL OF YOU RATION HOGS GET ON OUT HERE FOR ROLL CALL!” the foreman roared, “ANYONE MISSIN’ GETS SPACED!” That was no empty threat — he had forced Corsée and the older children to watch his prods vent underperforming laborers out the airlock before. The sick bastard actually reveled in watching people suffer and die helplessly by his hands.

The laborers all gathered at the inspection dock, where they formed up into two ranks of six columns, all barely standing on their own two feet, all filthy, exhausted, and starving. Corsée passed by Irati, whose right cheek was still sanguine where the foreman struck her a minute ago. She was fighting back tears from the pain.

The foreman’s prods took up positions around the dock, surrounding the laborers. Although there were only five of them, they were large, formidable men and women who were well-armed, armored, and more importantly, better fed. They could easily overpower the laborers if they tried to revolt, not that any of them would. Every one of them had been thoroughly beaten into submission by these thugs, to the point that a glare from them was enough to make them flinch.

That fact was not lost on the foreman’s thugs, who took perverse pleasure in terrorizing them at every opportunity.

“ALL RIGHT, DOCKRATS,” the foreman yelled, scaring them all into staring forward, “LET’S SEE IF Y’ALL EARNED YOUR KEEP TODAY!” The foreman, an immense American man with a buzz cut and more chins than everyone else in the room combined, lumbered to the front of the laborer’s ranks and leered at them with relish. While portly — his waistband must have been two meters in circumference — he also had whole slabs of muscles hanging off his bones, giving him a low-maintenance strongman body. Somehow, with his chubby hands and doughy skin, this good ol’ boy looked incomplete without a decaliter-sized bucket of fried chicken in one hand. He looked at a tablet and tapped it a few times, then grunted percussively.

“It looks like y’all just barely got the job done,” the foreman berated them, “so ah guess y’all get to eat today.”

Sighs of relief from the laborers immediately stopped when the foreman pointed to Irati. “‘Cept you,” he continued, “Ah’m dockin’ you a day’s rations fer nappin’ on the job.” Irati audibly gasped. The wretched Basque girl was one of the more frail workers on the dock crew, and she hadn’t eaten regularly in months because of this — her poor job performance cost her rations more often than she earned them. Everyone was worried that she might be the next laborer to be blown out the airlock, and those who had borne witness to a spacing had no desire to watch another comrade die in that manner.

“Mesedez,” Irati whispered so weakly that her voice failed her for the rest of the sentence, only moving her lips. Corsée steeled herself, as the foreman often struck workers who didn’t speak English in his presence.

“…But ah might be persuaded to waive that penalty,” the foreman added sadistically, “if’n you git on yer knees an’… beg, if you git mah meanin’.” The foreman reached down and fondled his genitals, to the suggestive laughter of the prods.

Irati’s eyes filled with tears as both Corsée and the foreman could plainly see that although the thought of it was repulsive to her, she was giving serious consideration to surrendering to his appetites. Perhaps she thought that whatever the foreman had in mind for her would be a small price to pay for the meager ration she needed to survive.

“L-leave…” Raul started before a glare from one of the prods shut him up. Raul was one of the few boys on this crew; thin, lanky even for a Spaceborn, and shorter than the girls his age. His tiny body and timid nature led the prods to treat him as a wimp, a perception they used to torment and emasculate him at every opportunity.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” the foreman asked with a sneer, “YOUR BALLS FINALLY DROP, FAGGOT!?” The foreman shambled over to Raul and leaned over, getting in his face. Raul tried to reply, but all he could do was murmur wordlessly with his lips pursed in abject terror.

The foreman planted Raul into the deck with a right hook. “WHEN THE FUCK DID YOU GIT SO MOUTHY, YOU LITTLE SHIT!?” he roared as he stomped on the boy and rained spittle from his toothy maw, “YOU THINK YOU CAN PROTECT HER, YOU LITTLE FUCKER!?”

Corsée flinched at the brutality of Raul’s beating. The foreman saw her reaction and turned to face her, his bulk lending weight to his intimidating presence. “Aw, you don’t like me beatin’ on this punk, do you?” he jeered.

“If iu gon panic dem,” Corsée whimpered bravely, “du it to mi insted.”

“Oh, I ain’t gonna punish you,” he said, checking her out, “I’m thinkin’ you could do somethin’ better for me. How would you like to earn yerself an extra ration?”

An extra ration would be good — Corsée could give it to Irati, and her own to Raul, both of whom needed to eat more than she did.

“Uat iu uant mi du?” she asked hesitantly. The foreman grinned with cruel satisfaction.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Sara stepped back into the corridor, and after the door slid shut behind her, she slumped against it and began to sob. The thought of leaving behind the closest thing to a home and a family that she had ever known was hard on her as well, especially in this time of sorry business and great loss.

For the first time since Hell Week, when she spent the first seven days — correction: sols — of her basic training marching in formation, shouting cadences, physical training, following every stupid order that her DI issued without question, hesitation, or complaint, having to shower, eat, sleep, and live with her troop of erstwhile perfect strangers in close quarters, learning the language of the Militia, never knowing whether she would end up covered in sand, grease, or synthetic blood by rack time, putting up with everyone’s bigoted talk of dirtkissers and salvage jobs, being sore in places she never knew was possible, having to show off her war face on command, running through gas and vacuum chambers, getting her head shaved to look like everyone else, and all the while adapting to her new implants and new intelligence, she was now giving serious thought to quitting and staying with Tahlia.

But as her CO said, she could quit at any time, but she’d never know what she was capable of. She’d never earn the iron in her blood.

She half-heard the familiar footfalls of Martian militia members marching, and she reflexively jumped to her feet at attention.

“At ease, Recruit, before you hurt yourself,” Jon said. Sara stood at parade rest.

“How did Red Phase treat you, Recruit?” Jon continued.

“This recruit requests permission to speak freely, Captain!” Sara asked what wasn’t exactly a question.

“Granted, with a due sense of apprehension,” Jon answered, “Also, I’m a commander, not a captain.”

“It fucking sucked ass, Commander!” Sara reported laconically.

“You know it’s supposed to, right?” Jon joked, “Once you know that it can’t get any worse, you can enjoy the rest of BRT.”

Sara’s eyes turned toward Jon.

“Well, except for you, rust stain,” Jon continued, “You’ve been reassed to Operations-9 Autonomous Covert Intelligence Team Meganeuropsis Permiana — my crew.”

“What about Green Phase, Commander?” Sara asked.

“Master Chief Olayinka will see to your Green Phase training, Recruit,” Jon said, “You couldn’t ask for a better DI than a LEO.”

“Aye, Commander,” Sara replied.

Jon sighed. “Relax, Recruit,” he said, “In our line of work, informal conduct is essential to maintaining our cover and avoiding discovery by Threat assets. Walk with me, Reynolds.”

Sara walked side-by-side with Jon, trying to match his pace exactly, as she had been drilled in Red Phase.

“Was that Ms. Napangardi you were visiting?” Jon asked.

“Aye, Commander,” Sara responded laconically.

Jon’s kinanalysis suite showed him that Sara was trying hard to hide her pain and grief. This might not be the best time or place to discuss this matter, he figured. He left it alone.

“Commander Orvar, Chief Olayinka, report to Conference Room 7,” the embassy’s cyphont spoke on the overhead, “Commander Orvar, Chief Olayinka, report to Conference Room 7.”

“Anyway,” Jon continued, “report to me in Suite 25 at 06:00 hours. Bring civilian clothes and all your gear. That is all.”

“Uh, Commander?” Sara asked, “This recruit hasn’t been issued any civilian togs.”

“You’ve got four weeks of back pay, right?” Jon asked, “There’s a commissary on level one that has civvies in stock. Buy a couple outfits. Make sure they’re inconspicuous.”

“Aye, Commander,” Sara answered. She turned about face and returned to Tahlia’s room.

Jon went to the nearest elevator to go to his appointment in Conference Room 7.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Finchley stepped into the Surveyor City Morgue with practiced ease. This was by no means the first time that he had been in this sort of place, but he had never before seen a setup like this.

The coroner’s office was surrounded by six autopsy theaters, each with its own dedicated refrigerator bank. All those storage drawers, however, couldn’t contain the sheer number of bodies, which littered practically every cubic meter of space, in violation of cadaver storage laws.

The coroner, a wizened man in his sixties, pulled his mask off of his leathery face as he stumbled past the necropolis of inferred human remains. “Are you the inspector from the Ministry of Inquiry?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m Inspector Finchley,” Finchley answered, “You’re still cataloguing bodies?”

“Look, this facility is the only one of its kind in Sinus Medii, and it has to see to the mortuary needs of 15,000 Earther ex-pats and a quarter million Loonies,” the coroner replied, “In addition to the usual workload, we’ve still got 3,000 riot cases left and dozens of water contamination and asphyxiation deaths every day!”

The coroner led Finchley deeper into the corpse maze. “You shoulda seen how things were a month ago,” he continued, “We had such a backlog that we had to store most of them on the surface under mylar tents, let the cold vacuum of Lunar night preserve ‘em.”

“Why have you begun to bring them back down?” Finchley asked as he stumbled over a mutilated Selenite corpse.

“Sun’s coming up,” the coroner said as he ushered Finchley into an autopsy room.

Walking past the tandem autopsies being performed, the coroner led Finchley to the meat locker, as the technicians humorously called the cadaver drawers, and pulled one open, which contained the corpse of a naked woman of Eastern European extraction, identifying QR code tattooed on the ball of her left foot. Even though her head was smashed and disfigured, Finchley still recognized her dark brown hair and the remains of her facial features.

“Vesna Novak,” Finchley diagnosed, “Fucking hell!”

“According to her file, her name is…” the coroner scanned her foot, “…Charlize Severijns of Johannesburg, South Africa.”

“So it was a false identity,” Finchley mused, “What’s her background?”

“It says here that she was doing public relations consulting for LSS,” the coroner read.

“How and where did this woman die?” Finchley asked.

“I haven’t had a chance to do an autopsy yet,” the coroner said, “but it looks like she was killed by repeated blunt force trauma to the head, probably with a hammer.”

“Where was her body found?” Finchley repeated.

“In a storeroom behind a coffee shop on Lovelace Circuit,” the coroner answered, “She was wearing an infrablack outfit that was stained with blood, I’ll send it to your office at once.”

“Please do,” Finchley said.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Altagracia sat crosslegged on her bunk in the laborer barracks, shuffling a Piquet deck — her only possession — in her bony hands. When she was satisfied, she dealt the cards into three piles, first in the middle, then to the right, then to the left, repeating the cycle until all the cards were dealt. She then separated the cards again, upturning each pile, looking at the bottom three cards, setting the highest of the three upturned in a new pile to the left, and the others to a new pile on the right. She did the same with the right side pile, and then the left pile, and again as she had done before, until there were only the two upturned piles.

Shakti, the youngest child on the crew, watched Altagracia’s ritualistic card dealing with great interest. “Mata kilokilo, Alta?” she asked, “Mei mi uatc?”

“If dat’s uat happens,” Altagracia said in the deadpan of one consigned to fate, “hu’s mi to intarfiir? Natting ui du mattyrs, aniue.”

She dealt the first of the 12 cards on the left, the Queen of Clubs.

“Aur fiutar begins uit an affekconat uoman uit plentii of seks appiil.”

She dealt the second card, the Ace of Hearts.

“Ci uill xev or cooz a happi ivent hiir, in dis cp.”

The third card dealt was the Jack of Diamonds.

“Mani or nius of distent frends uill kom to de cp bikaas of a niir-relativ, a ratter selfish man.”

Card #4 was the Queen of Hearts.

“A lovable, guud-luuking uoman uill bi invalvd.”

The next card revealed was the Seven of Spades.

“Ci uill suffar de los of a diir frend, uitc uill bring griif in its ueek.”

She dealt the sixth card, the Ace of Spades.

“As uell as deff, or anoter greet misfortcuun.”

The seventh, the Jack of Clubs.

“A jeneras and rilaiabyl frend uill du matc to xelp ui.”

The next card she dealt was the King of Clubs.

“Dey uill bi akompaniid bai a man hu is anorabyl and feifful.”

Card #9 was the Jack of Hearts.

“As uell as a man or a uoman hu is or uill bi aur best frend.”

The tenth card dealt, the Jack of Spades.

“And a frend hu miins uell, batt offen xaozez problemz.”

The penultimate card, Seven of Clubs.

“Bixaoz of dem, deer uill bi happiness and guud fortiun, especali truu aur fello uomen.”

The final card laid was Nine of Hearts.

“And fainali, a uic uill bi granted at de end of dis all.”

Afterward, she flipped through the second pile and turned up a sequence of three of the same suit: The Seven of Hearts, King of Hearts, and Ten of Hearts.

“Uat du dem miin?” Shakti asked.

“A fals frend hu uill xaos problemz, a kaind, affekconat man hu is entuziastik batt indiskriit, and guud lakk,” Altagracia answered, “Dey donna hav natting to du uit de rest of de riiding.”

“Uat du de rest of it miin?” Shakti wondered aloud.

“Natting,” Altagracia said as she shoveled all the cards back into a deck and returned it to its box, “Natting dat matterz to ui, aniue.”

Shakti rolled onto her back, her long dark braid bouncing on the canvas sheet that supported her weight on the bunk in lieu of a mattress. “Mi uandaz uat mi cuud uic for,” she mused dreamily, “Iu noo, jast in kees it kams truu.”

“Donna get iu xoops ap, petit,” Altagracia advised, “Oll it’ll get iu is disappointment in de end.”

The door slid open and Corsée stumbled into the room, feeling absolutely miserable. The “favor” she paid the foreman literally left an awful taste in her mouth, and she wanted very much to forget that this entire day ever happened. Bracing herself against the bulkhead with every step, she slowly made her way to the communal refresher, where she stripped, deposited her soiled clothing in the designated hamper, turned on the shower head, and drank deeply from the artificial downpour as it fell upon her skin. She stopped drinking when the water began to scald her throat, and lacking any implements, she scrubbed her deep, earthy skin and massaged her scalp with her bare hands. The warmth of the water cascading down from above was a welcome balm on her sore flesh, and she relished this precious little moment of contentedness.

The shower stopped automatically after a minute, when her water ration for the day had been exhausted. Lacking a towel, she squeezed as much excess water out of her dreadlocks as she could and tried to wipe the water beads off of her skin with her hands. When she could clean herself no more, she returned to the barracks and collapsed onto her bunk.

The door to the barracks slid open, and a 14-year-old Turkish girl entered, rolling a cart of ration boxes and clean laundry inside. Her name was Ece, and she did chores for the crew because she was judged to be too frail to work in the cargo hold. As she pushed the cart along, she distributed the rations to the grateful, weary workers, who immediately began eating to quiet their empty stomachs.

When she reached Corsée’s bunk, Ece pulled some clean clothes out from the bottom shelf on the cart and placed them at her feet. Corsée sat up to dress when Ece handed her a ration box.

“Giv im to Irati,” Corsée said as she unfolded her new bleached-white tank top, “De bos dokkd har racon agen, and ci desperatli niids to iit.”

“Mi olreedi givan Irati har racon,” Ece insisted, “Raul, mo. Iu niid to iit jast as matc as de rest of ui, iu wakari.”

“Hu uaz dis sappoost to bi for?” Corsée asked, not wanting to deprive any of her children.

“Iu,” Ece said with childlike innocence, “Mi snaak im out of de galii for iu, forgotten arm.”

“Dey gon biit iu antil iu skin is as dark as mi oon for dis,” Corsée replied as she took the box.

“Dey gon haff to katc mi farst,” Ece replied, smiling.

Satisfied at Ece’s reasoning, Corsée set the box aside, then pulled the tank top on over her head. Ece sat down on the bunk opposite her as Corsée pulled on the matching briefs that Ece had also given her. “Pliiz iit im, Korsei,” Ece urged, “Iu no dey uinna let iu seev im for letar.”

Convinced, Corsée opened the box, which contained yeast and spirulina paste wrapped inside a tortilla. She took a bite — the blandness of the nutrient paste was barely masked by the bready flavor of the wrap, but Corsée longed for the days back when she was a child on her home colony of Novo Tortuga. Even though theirs was a poor ice mining colony in the Hygiea Family, the corridors in the habitat section were always full of the delicious aroma of Creole barbacoa. While the meat may have been synthetic, their hydroponic gardens grew the sweetest okra and the juiciest onions, and spacer crews from all over the Belt would come to their colony to top off their water tanks and eat home-cooked gumbo.

Oh, how she longed for an onion or some salt. Anything to add a little flavor to her repast.

Still, nan tan grango, menm ti uox trankil vant la — hunger was the best spice. She finished eating, then lay down on her bunk.

“Mi warri abaut iu, ane,” Ece continued, using the diminutive used for the oldest laborers that had been in use among them since before Corsée had been brought here. It was a sign of affection and respect among the child laborers to be called that. “Mi afreed dat iu gon uark iuself to deff bifor long.”

“Mi kopi,” Corsée replied, “batt mi kanna let de rest of iu go uitaut jast xaoz ui na givan inaff to iit.”

“Donna warri so matc abaut ui,” Ece dismissed, “Iu alueis so protektiv of ui, and ui all laav iu for dat, batt iu niid to tink of iu as uell. If iu donna, iu uillna bi ebel to stei strong for matc langar, and if dat happenz, hu ui all gon look app to?”

“Mebii iu rait, Etce,” Corsée said, “batt mi donna wakari if mi kan du dat. Mi kanna beer to uatc iu all saffar, and mi uud giv mi laif if it uud end oll dis.”

“Uell, mi cuud get bakk to mi raunds,” Ece concluded as she stood back up and straightened her off-white doo rag, “Mi get skolded if mi teek tuu lang, and mi still xavna kolekted de laundri iet. Mi sii iu nekst cift!”

“Guud nait, Etce,” Corsée said as Ece went back on her way.

“Cakti!” Ece called out, “Stapp leeing abaut! Gaie pip manke pipi a!”

“Kamiing!” Shakti replied as she dropped to the floor from her bunk and went to help Ece.

Corsée tried to make herself comfortable on her cot, but as usual, the lack of a pillow or a blanket made it difficult. The overhead lights went out — the only illumination left was Ece’s flashlight as she went about her duties. She rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes.

It was only a moment later that she heard soft footsteps approach her bed. She opened her eyes, and in the almost imperceptible light reflected off of the walls from Ece’s flashlight, she could make out a small silhouette standing next to her.

“Vofa?” she whispered.

“Mesedez…” the figure whispered back.

“Irati? Iu canna sliip?”

The figure nodded silently.

“Xam hiir,” Corsée said tenderly as she made room on her bunk, “iu mee sliip uit mi tonait.” Irati quietly climbed into Corsée’s cot and immediately snuggled up to her. Corsée embraced the girl maternally.

“Ama…” Irati whimpered as she clutched onto Corsée’s bosom as if she were drowning, before she buried her face deep into her chest and began sobbing uncontrollably. She kept crying out that same word, “ama,” over and over again, but Corsée didn’t know what it meant. Irati hardly spoke at all, and when she did it was always in her language that no one else, not even Femi, understood. She clearly understood a little of the languages that the rest spoke, mostly snatches of French and the litany of English curses, epithets, and abusive language the foreman spat at her on a daily basis, but she never used them herself.

Regardless, it was clear that Irati needed to be comforted. Corsée held her closer and gently ran her hand along Irati’s back. “Je teme telemon,” she whispered soothingly, “je teme, je teme…

Next Chapter: Sa Ki Kache II (coming 12/13/2021)