Another glimpse that will never be, of a future that didn't happen (in my novel)

First draft of Lee coming to the TWO, that monstrous ship made of coralized metal and alien flesh...

A reader of Navvies’ Flight will notice many reasons why the ending didn’t go like this, but this was my first draft, like three years ago. So much has changed, but I do like this Sheris introduction to Lee, so here it is for posterity.

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I shook my head, no longer sure the voices saying ‘Ledas’ were coming from the figures surrounding us, or the ships parked next to Bedalia, or if they spoke aloud at all.

The neat rows of armored Faege around us dropped to their knees as we passed, synchronized as androids. The shell covering their faces was iridescent and reflective. In the nearest ones, I caught pieces of mine own scrawny reflection next to Natoth. My battered coveralls were in stark contrast to his luxurious robes.

We passed through more cheering throngs of more armored admirers. Sprinkled among them, a few unmasked. A smiling, dark young woman wearing robes like Mureen’s. A pale, bearded man in the same robes, scowling. A cluster of ten uniformed sents whose skin was painted blue--was it paint? A woman whose skin was definitely greenish--and here and there, areas of the ship where the bulkheads seemed covered by that same combination of dark metal and fungus that had infested Natoth’s navvy.

Queasily, I wondered if it was catching.

“Obviously,” I bit out. “I would like to see… these… reports.”

“I’ll have them sent later--we’re going this way,” Natoth stopped me before I nearly walked past an unassuming stairway half covered in growths that looked like a bad case of mold. “The lift is broken,” he added. “We’ll need to take the stairs.”

I shrugged. “Looks like the old girl’s gone to hell.” I let him open the door, trying to ignore the way the brown crud on it seemed to stir when he pushed it, moving in his direction as if it knew him.

“The old… girl? You have always kept Bedalia apart...” Natoth added. “But Two is evolving.”

“Like her master?”

“Regretting your choice?” His hand feathered the edge of my cheek, not quite touching me, yet close enough that I felt an unmistakable spark of something--like a pilots’ connection between navvies. Whatever it was made me shiver. “Lee, if you open yourself to the krov--”

I remembered Carolina Station and thought about Feldelroy. “I could rot on a stinking garbage scow too?”

He sighed. “I see nothing has changed.”

If that’s what you see you’re blind, I thought, a little hysterically.

We met Illcord Natoth’s replacement lover in the hallway on the deck below with three wooden boxes floating in her wake. They seemed filled with silk and frippery, packed hastily as if she’d just received instructions to depart. Instead of scurrying away or kneeling, like every other soul we’d encountered thus far on his terrifying ship, the affair stood her ground, head held high, hair billowing out behind her in such a dramatic pose that I suspected she’d been waiting for us to show up to use it.

“Lady Ledas.” Her voice dripped razors. “Nate was so pleased to have you return to us.”

I stopped dead, attempting to close my mouth because this place probably had flies. Earlier, Natoth had remarked that he didn’t care about my looks. Apparently, the Krov conqueror didn’t care what his wife looked like now because his mistress remained the spitting image of Lady Ledas in her prime.

Or moreso.

She almost took my breath away. Auburn corkscrew curls tumbled to her waist. The hips flared into curves I hadn’t known this body could achieve; but I recognized those cold green eyes, the carved lips, which she had stained a sensuous red, the perfect oval face, hers seemed carved to allure from every angle. The mistress wore a white diaphanous gown stitched so tightly it looked grown-on, sheer as a second skin, promoting more of her rack than it concealed. A crown of yellow flowers, which appeared to be actually growing, tangled in her luxurious curls, and the wild dapple of freckles across her skin seemed painted by a master. Every point was an enhancement to her rose-gold skin beneath.

What I had seen of my former self had been but a pale shadow. I had thought Arkan Davad had the looks in the family… but this woman was more than his match.

“Lady Ledas?” she murmured again, in a clipped, and dulcet tone I was fairly sure mine own vocal cords could never achieve. “Are you unwell?” Her red lips curved up. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“A ghost would be more original,” I drawled, which caused Natoth’s hand to tighten on mine, and her to look confused and me to reflect that Ledas Starfire had never drawled anything in her life, probably. “I am pleased as well,” I added, through gritted teeth, because I figured I didn’t have to seem overjoyed. “Pleased you’ve already packed. Nate did say he’d get rid of you.”

Her eyes widened. I smiled.

“Lee...” Nate murmured.

“Will you heal him yourself?” The affair recovered quickly, green eyes spitting fire. “Have you mastered the precision for such work? Were you practicing on your own body? Is that why your eyebrows are so--”

“Sheris--” Natoth began.

“--so missing?” she finished.

I’d never imagined meeting the scourge of the galaxy would be like an episode of the Hook and the Rod but here we were: me, the amnesiac with a borrowed personality, my estranged husband and would-be conqueror of the galaxy, and his harlot, who for some reason had my face. Was she a clone…? Was my waist truly so narrow? Had my skin once glowed with that same freckled abandon that hers displayed? I had my doubts. Lia’s representation of my looks had been more subdued, even with its strangeness.

This woman’s arms were both bare. She was no pilot.

At least I had a name for her. “Sheris,” I sighed. “I wish to be alone with my husband. Go.” I raised my hand and she actually shrank back.

“Don’t,” Natoth warned me--leaving me to speculate as to what they expected me to do before Sheris brushed past us with her boxes and double doors opened onto….

I gasped at the impossible.

“Yes. Just the same,” the stranger murmured at my side. “She wanted to make it more arboreal… but I didn’t change a thing.”

At first glance, the chamber was a plain of grass perhaps only ten meters by twenty, but the way the edges curved at the horizon, the way what appeared to be unimpeded space pressed in from above… made the room seem much larger. A… nest (there was no other word to describe it) made of flowering branches overlain with a bed of moss lay to one side, and across was an actual pool of water with a small waterfall cascading down from the wall. As I watched, the grass lengthened and flowered. A wind blew across it and the air smelled sweet and heady and nearly familiar.

“There,” Natoth said, holding my hand to walk across its surface. It was then that I noticed his feet were bare--and had been this entire time.

At the edge of wall where space intruded sat two chairs, molded from what could have been the ship’s hull. As we drew closer I saw that the translucent barrier between us and the stars held the familiar shimmer of good, old-fashioned reinforced silicote, that at least some of what I saw was nothing more than an illusion. “Sit,” Natoth added, and I did as he settled down opposite me. “The ship will rotate to give us a full view,” he added. “Just give me a moment--” and then I had to stifle a scream as his eyes darkened, even his irises filling to black and his body stiffened--

Our view rotated and I forgot about his stinking eyes.

The Southern hemisphere of Feldelroy’s surface was covered in an oily green mist that seemed to spread from the pole and flow upwards in eddies and whirlpools until the landmasses were lost beneath its layer.

“Make it stop!” I screamed, only to hear his lazy chuckle.

“Oh, Lee… far too late for that.”

My companions had planned to kill this man and now here he was before me: smiling, relaxed, and committing what looked like biological warfare on the only place I remembered ever calling home. If I had been an actual Kamen-lord I could have broken the walls surrounding us in a heartbeat. I could have sent his body spiraling out into space. I could have ripped this ship apart with my only my mind--