Even as her ship nears the target planet, Veksana ignores the view through the thin glass that separates her from the vacuum of space. For anyone else — for a normal person, especially — the inside of her tiny, one-person shuttle would be so boring and nondescript compared to the dark world looming ahead that they’d stare through the viewport in awe. But Veksana is no such “normal person.” No, as many have been quick to remind her, normal people don’t quit perfectly good jobs to smuggle books halfway across the galaxy. Paper books, even, meaningless antiques to most: but it’s not like her clientele have any computers to read the digital ones on.
She can almost still smell them, around her. Not open, or in shelves, but packed up tight inside metal spheres, welded to the top of homemade arm-length missiles.
Her hands steady, Veksana arms the first pair.
“Orbital defenses have yet to pick us up,” a dialogue reads on a screen. Even though it’s text-only, the chatbot interpreting the ship’s systems for her has some suave accent in her head, as if it were one of the alien intellectuals who pick up her species’ language to study the very books Veksana’s smuggling. “The first pair of missiles are ready to launch.”
The militia who recruited her — more like armed activists, in Veksana’s mind — had offered her a larger ship, with a copilot’s company instead of a chatbot’s. She declined. If a person said the chatbot’s words, she’d have to say something back. But the chatbot requires no answers, no jokes, no nuanced social knowledge, just like the books, packed away in their missiles.
Veksana launches the first two missiles. With thunks she can feel through her seat, they streak away into the darkness toward the dark side of the planet. They burn out moments later, but they’re already headed toward the surface. So small, just like her ship, that the orbital defenses won’t notice: after all, how much damage could such a small missile really do?
Or at least, that’s the idea. Veksana tries not to think about the alternative.
“Missiles away.” The chatbot reads off a string of numbers. “Here is the next deployment vector.” Veksana moves the control sticks to follow the new vectors. The ship slowly drifts lower, closer to the planet known to the chatbot as Watkara, to everyone else as the Breadbasket. Grains, some native and others engineered to fit its environment, cover so much of its temperate surface to feed hundreds of billions elsewhere in the galaxy. “There is still no indication that the orbital defenses have detected us.”
“That’s weird…” Veksana’s mutter is so quiet that the chatbot doesn’t notice she said anything.
The militia said she’d probably have to make a quick escape on a run like this. That, experience, and common sense all agreed: with a world this important, a world this well-defended, a world this oppressed.
It doesn’t matter, Veksana thinks. It’s her people, down there, who are oppressed. Who are kept in chains and cages, who farm grain they can’t eat, for profit they can’t spend. And without her, how else will they remember her people’s language, after so long? How else will they know of a history of imagination, of freedom, of hope?
Reaching the coordinates, Veksana fires another pair of missiles. Only two left; those that once lay to either side of her have now been mechanically moved down into their tubes, ready for launch. The next vectors take her into the light side of the planet. The system’s star is a brief glare in her eyes before the viewport adjusts.
And as it does, alarms blare across her console. Orbital defenses.
A few probing particle beams flash past her, then the chatbot catches up. “Incoming vessels. Hostile. Ten light fighters, three heavy fighters, one…” and so it keeps reading off the list of ships. For once, Veksana doesn’t need the specifics, beyond the last line: “Current likelihood of successful escape: twenty-seven percent.”
Veksana stifles a knot in her throat. None of that is important. The last dictionaries and spelling books and histories and religious tales won’t smuggle themselves to the hands of enslaved children. Without them, how will they know that revolution is possible?
She gives more to the engines.
Warning shots graze her. Another few glance off her ship’s side. One shot burns a hole in the hull. Air rushes out, but Veksana’s suit deploys its helmet and pressurizes. She takes a hard turn. The ships follow tight on her tail. There are more of them, though, all around. Bigger ships, too. Destroyers. Defense platforms.
Missiles race toward her, and plasma bolts sear by. More alarms blare. Damage to the engine, to the guidance system. Veksana ignores that, too. All that matters is her trajectory. Weaving and rolling through it all, she arms the last two missiles.
Scrolling by so fast, with all the other warnings, Veksana gets only a glimpse of the chatbot’s “We have reached the final deployment vector.”
Clenching her teeth, Veksana fires the last two missiles.
Side-by-side, they streak away, toward the green and golden fields of the world below. They’re too small and fast for the orbital defenses to catch them.
Those books will bring their own worlds with them. Worlds of mere imagination, of mere paper, yes. But also, worlds of hope. Worlds to which Veksana owes her life, brought not through the horrors of enslavement but the tumult of a free childhood.
Another blast connects. The engine goes out, and missiles close in.
Veksana doesn’t tremble, or scream, or cry, or even fear her imminent doom. All she feels is the smallest pang in her chest: if only, just once, she had someone to enjoy all those wondrous worlds with.
But the fire comes, and the free, beautiful worlds of Veksana’s mind blink out of existence.
About the Author
M. L. McCortney is an author and undergraduate at the University of Rochester. Between in-progress novel- and novella-length works, short fiction, poetry, and digital art, his creative work mainly orbits science fiction and science fantasy. His short fiction, set to appear in Penumbric and Bullet Points, has earned two honorable mentions from the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest.
