Integral, Julie Steimle [reader novel txt] 📗

like a sixteen-year-old. Once Tacy had looked in a mirror and had seen what her body had become. She had not aged a day. Eternally sixteen? It was no wonder she had not grown. They said the gel also worked like a cryogenic preserver. Would she grow now? Tacy lowered her hands to her side. Was she more machine than human now?

Standing back in the open hangar full of ships, watching crewmen and pilots work together, some landing, some taking off, Tacy stared over at them all, picking out her own ship like finding a private suit of clothes she had lived in for years. Her name in black paint on red shone with reflection from the lights on the walls. Her skin shivered with goose pimples as she stared at the repainted craft.

“Look at that. She found it already,” her handler murmured under his breath.

“Of course, she did. Integs know their shell like a hermit crab knows its new home.”

Tacy turned and blinked slightly at the young looking man in uniform who grinned back at her.

He gave a nod then saluted. “Captain Stoneman, at your service.”

She said nothing, looking back to her ship. Then she drew in a breath to say, “Hermit crabs steal their shells.”

Captain Stoneman winked at her. “And so did you.”
He turned to walk down the set of steps Tacy had not seen earlier. They switched back behind a large bus like shuttle and ended up near several fuel barrels. Tacy with her handler followed him.

“Are you saying you approve of what we did?” Tacy was just a few steps after him.

The captain gave a small chuckle. “I’m saying nothing of the sort.”

She remained silent.

They walked to the ship’s doorway. Tacy listened with
her inside ears, hearing the murmurs about pirates again, echoes of remarks including mentions of the Gardo whom their military has had skirmishes with on a front somewhere. The lies the cold woman had told her about their winning the Gardo Wars refuted with whispers and gossip made Tacy’s green pulse quicken. The Gardo were not finished yet. Larke knew that. The Gardo were powerful yet.

The captain stopped at the doorway and turned with a nod to her, extending an arm like a gentleman. “After you.”

Her handler huffed somewhat tersely as Tacy rolled her eyes as she walked up the familiar steps. He then tried to follow, but the captain blocked the way with his arm, covering the rest of the space with his body.

“I need to speak with Tacy alone. You can wait outside the door.”

“But I’m her handler! She barely is out of the gel! She needs me!”

“Tacy is not a weakling. Sergeant Freeman has entrusted her to me. This means we do things my way,” the captain said.

The handler stepped back, still glaring at the military captain. However, he knew his place. “Fine. But call me if she gets weak.”

Captain Stoneman smirked, turned and walked inside.

Tacy sat in the hollow space where her gelled cell used to be. The green film was even washed off. There was nothing left inside but a machine brace with pads, newly installed. She noticed that she could sit in it, but Tacy only sat on the edge, staring at the wall. Captain Stoneman paused in the hall, watching her.

“This is all I ever looked at when I opened my eyes,” she murmured.

His feet shifted on the metal flooring.

“Sometimes I’d see Marka and Larke. Her kids would skirt around as if terrified I’d move. Most of the time I’d just see the space around us whipping by like a dream. Was it real? Was I real?”

Captain Stoneman glanced out the door and then smiled slightly. He walked past her towards the pilot’s chairs, extending a hand to Tacy to follow. “You wanted to sit here?”

Tacy had followed him, even sitting in one of the chairs she had seen Marka use. It felt so empty now.

“How many years has it been since I last opened my eyes?” Tacy stared at the blank screen, able to see outside the ship even without it. Men in orange jumpsuits busied themselves as usual, though her handler looked incredibly put out standing outside the door by himself. Another man jogged up to him dressed in a blue military coat and a hat. The young man was smiling with a tip of his hat to her handler.

“I couldn’t tell you,” the captain said with a sigh.

With a hop, that blue suited man was up the steps, grinning broadly at the pair of them and then at the doorway, which he promptly pulled closed.

“Ah! You’re here!” Captain Stoneman hopped out of his seat, reaching out to the other man. “Come on then, take a seat.”

“Oughtn’t we start the engines?” the young, what looked like a lieutenant with his suit and badges though his face made him look more in his late teens, man suggested as he thumbed towards the door.

Tacy stood up, blinking at the images she saw outside the ship. Another green uniformed man marched with a team of armed men across the bay, going what looked like directly towards her ship. She looked up to Captain Stoneman.

“You aren’t the captain?” She blinked at him.

He grinned wider, leading out towards her compartment again. “We never exactly met, Aunt Tacy. But Dan and I are taking you home.”

Blinking, she turned to look at the tall version of the ragged child that had clung to her sister’s pants. “Aunt?”

But Tacy took her place in the hall with the fake captain’s help. He did remind her a bit of Larke, though his eyes were like Marka’s.

“I’ll strap you in so you won’t fall,” Cobie said winking at her.

Tacy nodded, grabbing the armrests to the strange sitting mechanism and then looked inward to see outward. She nodded, lifting her chin. “They’re getting closer.”

“Alright, Dan! Start up the engines!”

Tacy started them for him.

Dan glanced to his brother and then shrugged. “She got them. Like Mom says, Aunt Tacy’s the pilot!”

Laughing, Cobie nodded, strapping on his own belt as soon as he hopped into his seat. Turning on the view screen and steering towards the opening above, he called out. “All right Aunt Tacy! Let’s take her out!”

Tacy heard the rapid fire. She even felt the bullets puncture some of the hulls, though none important enough to worry about. As the ship lifted and she was up again flying into the sky towards space where she belonged, Tacy turned and dodged like she had before in dreams. She was the ship. The ship was her. They were integral.

And now, she was free.


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Publication Date: 12-02-2009

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