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Sanctuary (Part 1)

by Alexis Ames

1.

The king of the galaxy died the day before the biggest holiday of the year, and six hours before I was supposed to be on a shuttle home. It was lousy, rotten timing, and I reflected that I should’ve done as Cecil said and called in sick, telling my superiors that I picked up a virus from the case we worked last week and taken the dawn shuttle instead of the evening one. But I knew it would’ve caused me more problems than it was worth, namely because the director would want to put me through a battery of tests when I returned to make sure I couldn’t pass the “virus” on to any of the computers or other sensitive equipment at the station.

I should’ve done it anyway, because if I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the director’s office, listening as she handed me an assignment that almost certainly meant I wouldn’t be returning home for the foreseeable future. Cecil and Halvor both were going to kill me.

“I don’t know if you’ve checked my job description lately,” I told her as I tossed the screen on the desk, “but I promise you that babysitter isn’t in there.”

“But other duties as assigned is.” She pushed the screen back to me, then leaned back in her chair, crossing her ankle over her knee. “Eilan Lázár must be escorted safely back to the palace.”

“Don’t they have guards to do that?”

“Eilan gave them the slip a few weeks ago, apparently.”

“The palace kept that quiet,” I said.

“Would you want the galaxy to know that you lost the heir to the throne?” she asked dryly.

“Clever of them, to have slipped past security.” Despite myself, I was impressed. The palace was the most fortified planet in the galaxy. For a child to manage to escape without notice was impressive indeed, and meant Eilan might have a chance of survival after all.

“You have a teenager; you know what they’re like. Slippery little things,” she said, shaking her head. “Only problem is, Eilan didn’t expect their father to die while they were out joyriding across the galaxy. But now the king is dead, and the entire galaxy is on alert. Intelligence tells me that Eilan is in Alexandria. I need you to find them and escort them to the palace. It’s not an overstatement that you’re the only person on the planet—hell, in this galaxy—who can do that.”

“I’m a detective, not a bodyguard,” I said. “And I’ve got a week of leave that’s been on the calendar for eight months now. I’m going home.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of unrest it would cause if the heir is murdered before they can ascend to the throne?” she asked.

“Yes. It would create a power vacuum and likely result in civil war.” I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t particularly care, and I don’t see why you do, either. It won’t affect us. Barnard’s Star will become the independent system they’ve always wanted to be, and so will Alpha Centauri and Sol. We’re too far away from those systems for any war to reach us here.”

“Infrastructure across the solar systems will collapse; millions upon millions of lives could be lost–”

“I don’t see why all that rests on my shoulders,” I snapped. “I am one android. You can’t possibly expect me to be able to keep the heir safe when people from five different solar systems want them dead. They’ll be killed before they even leave this system, you know that.”

“Dominic—”

I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m sorry, but the answer is still no. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a shuttle to catch.”

“I’ll release you from your contract.”

I paused at the door, my fingers on the handle.

“You’ll what?”

“You heard me,” she said. “I’ll break your contract with us, wipe your record clean, and you can go home. For good, this time. Forever.”

“I don’t believe you.” My fingers tightened on the handle, hard enough to leave faint impressions behind in the metal. “Return the heir to the palace so they can ascend to the throne, and you give me my life back? I don’t think so.”

“I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart,” she said. “The Royal Guard is offering twelve million creds to the person who can get the heir safely back to the palace. I intend to be the one to collect that money. You’ll get a portion, too, of course. But I believe your freedom is a more compelling motivator.”

Damn it, but she was right. I let my hand fall from the handle and faced her, weary even though I was at almost a full charge.

“What do you need me to do?”

---

By the time I got to the heir’s safe house, deep in the heart of Alexandria, they had already survived three attempts on their life, which the journalists on the news feeds had been happily dissecting for hours.

For all its achievements, humanity was still largely a barbaric species, to the point where it seemed to revel in bloodshed. In a society where a single family ruled the galaxy, humanity had still managed to make even that complicated. Each time a monarch died, society was allowed thirty days to try its best to murder the successor. Should that successor survive all the attempts on their life, they were deemed worthy enough to take the throne without further challenge.

It was a stupid way to put a potential leader to the test—but, I allowed grudgingly, it had been effective all these centuries. The galaxy hadn’t collapsed, at least. Neither had society. Not yet.

It was difficult to sneak up on an android, but I had to give Eilan credit for the attempt. Had I been a human, they would have easily tackled me to the floor, pinning me there with their knife at my throat. Instead, I heard them moving several seconds before they struck out. I blocked the blow, knocked the knife from their hand, and twisted them around, slamming them into the wall and holding them there with a hand on the back of their neck.

“Pleased to meet you, Your Highness,” I said. “I’m here to save your life.”

“Dear gods,” the almost-monarch groaned, “you have a funny way of showing it. Off.”

“Are you armed?” I began to frisk them anyway, unearthing two more knives and a gun before they could answer.

“Ankle,” they added, and I found the final weapon strapped there. Tossing them all over my shoulder, I said, “You’ll behave?”

“I’ll only kill you if you give me reason to. Get off.”

I released them, certain I could fend them off if they decided to do something foolish like attack me again. The heir turned, tugging their shirt back into place and smoothing a hand over their hair. I’d only ever seen file photos of them in the Alliance databases or news feeds, and though my facial recognition software recognized them, the average human likely would not. They had altered their appearance in subtle ways—modifying their chin and nose to be more blunted, changing the color of their eyes. It was effective enough given that they were still alive, but not foolproof—at least three people had figured out who they were, after all.

“My name is Dominic,” I said. “I work for Veduvis Authority. I’ve been assigned by the Royal Guard to escort you to the palace, and deliver you there alive in thirty days.”

A bit of a stretch, but still mostly the truth. Eilan held my gaze, unblinking, for several seconds longer than was socially acceptable. I knew what they were trying to do, even if I couldn’t feel it, and added, “Your gifts won’t work on me, Your Highness.”

“You’re not human.” Eilan blinked. “You’re not real. Hologram?”

“I assure you, I’m as real as you are,” I said. “Android.”

“Android,” Eilan repeated flatly. “Oh, brilliant. Just brilliant.”

“Upset that you can’t read my mind, Your Highness?”

“It does make things difficult. How do I know that you’re telling the truth?”

“I suppose you’ll just have to trust me. I have a shuttle at the spaceport.” I pulled a screen out of my pocket and held it out. They looked at it warily, as though it might explode. “Papers. You need them if we’re going to get you off this planet.”

Eilan took the hand screen. It lit up at their touch, and they scanned the identity I had created for them.

“No one,” they said after a moment, “is going to believe that I’m an ice miner.”

“Not with that attitude, they aren’t,” I said. “It’s half an hour to the spaceport. Hopefully you’ll learn how to act like one by then.”

I said it casually enough, certain that none of my anxiety bled into my words, but my doubts were mounting. Even in their plain clothes, Eilan stood out. Their features were fine-boned, delicate, what humans would describe as aristocratic. One couldn’t help but stare at them. But more importantly, there was a presence to them that even I could sense, an inexplicable crackling in the air as they moved. They would draw attention, no matter how hard they tried to pass themself off as an ordinary human.

We needed to get off this planet, and fast.

My rented hovercar—paid for in untraceable creds, bought using my own false papers—was out back. As we climbed in, I said, “When we get to the spaceport, I do the talking.”

“Fine by me,” Eilan said, and spent the entire drive with their nose buried in the papers, memorizing the vital information. I was thankful for the silence.

Getting through spaceport security was the first hurdle, and where we were most likely to fail. I doubted that the heir was well-versed in subterfuge, and I was a homicide detective, not a spy. We got out of the hovercar, and I pulled two bags from the back, tossing one to the heir. They gave me a puzzled look, and I said, “It would look suspicious to be traveling for such a long time without luggage.”

“Right.” Eilan slung the bag over their shoulder, and I did the same.

The officer who took our papers grilled me about our travel plans. It was lucky I had been created with subroutines for deception, or we might not have made it any farther than this.

“Why are you headed to Kumia?” she asked, frowning as she examined our credentials.

“Vacation.” I’d learned over the years that it was best to say as little as possible when speaking with government officials, especially when you were lying.

“Vacation,” she repeated slowly, skeptically. She looked at Eilan. “Taking your android butler on a trip, is that right?”

“I’m a government employee,” I said before Eilan could respond, as my false papers had given me a relatively minor position in the administration building in the capital, “who is taking his child on vacation. Is that an issue?”

As I spoke, I put a hand on Eilan’s shoulder. To their credit, they didn’t flinch or stiffen, but relaxed under my grip, as though it grounded them.

“We’re going to see his wives. My moms,” Eilan said, and part of me wondered if they said it just to see the agent blanch.

Relationships between humans and androids weren’t illegal—I had two husbands to prove that—but given that my species numbered only in the dozens, most humans had never encountered such a thing. The officer blinked at us, too well-trained to show any outward sign of surprise, but her silence was enough.

“Is it an issue?” Eilan repeated, their voice cool and hard as ice. I pinched the skin at their shoulder, felt them suppress a flinch. Don’t speak, I tried to mentally project, even though it was impossible for me to form a telepathic link with them. They gave away their aristocratic upbringing in their movements and speech, in their mere presence. Right now, their ordinary clothes and the cosmetic alterations kept people from looking at them twice, but that wouldn’t last if they kept drawing attention to themself.

Eilan’s warning tone was effective this time, it seemed. I marveled at that as the officer quickly signed off on our travel plans and papers, and waved us through to the security line.

I didn’t dare speak again until we were on the other side of the security barrier and striding to our shuttle. Eilan was long-legged, but even still they struggled to keep up with me.

“Where’s the fire?” they hissed, grabbing my elbow.

“You almost gave us away,” I said in an undertone.

“I did no such thing. You need to stop being so paranoid.”

“Eilan.” I drew to a stop, pausing in the shadow of another shuttle. The crowd around us paid us no mind; we were simply two fellow harried travelers having a quiet argument. “You might have altered your appearance but you are clearly not who you say you are. Everything that you do—every movement you make, every word that comes out of your mouth—screams money and power. Screams royalty. When I said to let me handle the talking, I meant it.”

“I’ve survived this long—”

“Your father has been dead for less than three days. You’ve gotten by so far on wits and luck, but that won’t last you forever. You need strategy, and you need me. Got it?”

I strode away without waiting for an answer. Three seconds later, I heard Eilan hurry to catch up.

Our shuttle was an old Vector-class cargo ship, once used for shipments of ice mined in the outer system that were then transported back to Veduvis. It wasn’t the kind of luxurious shuttle one might rent for a vacation, but it would suit us for this purpose. It had been cheap, paid for again in untraceable creds, and I intended to destroy it as soon as I completed my mission.

“What kind of training do you receive as a royal?” I asked as we climbed aboard and stowed our bags. “Is it all manners and etiquette and learning how to count taxes?”

Eilan rolled their eyes. “I know how to fly, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m also decent at hand-to-hand combat, good at wielding an actual weapon, excellent at commanding an army, and competent in an engine room.”

I inclined my head in the direction of the shuttle’s lower decks. “Power up the engines, then, please. I’ll be starting launch procedures in the cockpit.”

2.

I didn’t shift my focus from the controls until we passed the system’s outermost planet. Only then did I pause to take stock of the situation, to let it sink in that we had made it this far without arousing any suspicion. To be honest, I’d never imagined we would make it off Veduvis.

I set a course for the Wolf system, switched over to autopilot, and leaned my weight back in the chair. At FTL speeds, the stars shifted from pinpricks of light in the black to a centralized glow, a sight that I always had found unsettling. I pressed a button on my console, lowering screens over the window that imitated the night sky I was used to seeing from Veduvis.

I was stuck on a shuttle for the next two weeks with the heir to the galaxy, charged with making sure they made it home in one piece. I checked our sensors repeatedly—no one followed us. Had we truly been that successful? If so, that posed a different problem—what we were going to with ourselves for the next two weeks, trapped aboard a cramped shuttle with nowhere to go.

Eilan appeared in the doorway to the cockpit, leaning one hand on the frame. “Engines are good to go, needless to say. Sorry, I never asked your pronouns. I’d look up your file in the database to find out, but I don’t know your surname.”

“He and him,” I answered. “And that was on purpose.”

Eilan frowned, but all they said was, “Do you need me to do anything else?”

I shook my head. “Sit back and enjoy the ride. You’ll be back at the palace in two weeks.”

“Provided all goes well,” Eilan said dryly.

“Feel free to explore the ship if you want,” I said, ignoring the comment, “just don’t touch anything.”

“I already have. It’s a tiny ship.” Eilan sounded less than pleased about that. “There’s only one cabin.”

“That’s common for ships like this,” I said. “Usually they only had a crew of two or three, and those humans slept in shifts. Obviously, I don’t need sleep. As long as there’s a console for me to plug myself into, I can use the ship to recharge. The cabin is yours. Oh, and no magic.”

“Why?” Eilan demanded.

“This is an old ship. Your powers will interfere with its systems,” I said. “It was built at a time before humans knew just how powerful some of their species could get.”

Eilan stared moodily at the fake stars that covered the window.

“When was the last time an heir was caught outside the palace borders when a monarch died?” I asked.

“Three hundred and forty-seven years ago.”

“Bad luck,” I said.

“Do androids believe in luck?” they shot back.

I held up my hands. “Just a turn of phrase, Highness. I don’t relish these circumstances any more than you do, but we’ll have to deal with it. Is there anything else I should know about? Any assassination attempts you’re expecting that haven’t happened yet?”

Eilan shook their head, looking suddenly haggard and much older than their sixteen years.

“I expected the Quinlan, Kato, and Utkin families to try to take the throne,” they said, “which they did, and failed. That’s not to say they wouldn’t try again, but they’re going to be more cautious about it. The Yanev family has schemed to get the throne for decades, long before my birth, but they don’t have the political or monetary support to try it. Aside from that, an attack could come from anyone and anywhere, provided they had the means.”

“I haven’t seen any ships tracking us, but we’ll keep the sensors powered up all the time so that our surroundings are constantly monitored.”

“What kind of weaponry does this ship have?”

“She fought in the last war, so she has some guns mounted on her hull but not many,” I said. “She’s a converted cargo vessel. She’s faster than most ships, slower than others. She can hold her own in a fight against another ship, but I don’t like our odds if it comes to fending off an entire fleet.”

“I doubt we’ll have to worry about an armada,” Eilan said.

“Then who should we worry about?” I asked. It came off snappish, but I was past caring. I was operating on less than a quarter of a charge at this point, and I desperately wanted to be home with my family, celebrating Veduvis Day. Instead, I was going to be spending the next two weeks stuck in deep space with the heir. The only children I ever voluntarily spent time around were my own.

“I don’t know,” Eilan said softly. “Anyone. Everyone. It’s open season on the heir right now.”

They were right. We truly had no way of knowing where an attack might come from, if it came at all. Perhaps we had managed to elude detection, and no one realized that I had managed to smuggle the heir off Veduvis.

“I need to recharge,” I told them. “I’m turning on the autopilot. You should get some rest, too. I’ll be back online in six hours.”

When they had gone from the cockpit, I pulled a cable out of my jacket and opened a port on the console. It wasn’t my charging station, but it would do. I plugged into the console, and everything went blissfully black.

---

I was rudely pulled out of my charging cycle less than two hours later. Like this ship, I was an old model, and my systems came back online in fits and spurts. Motor function returned first, gears and servos whirring to life, and then my fans kicked in to keep my body cool. My photoreceptors came back online three seconds before my auditory ones did, but only at a forty-percent capacity, so I could only make out blurred shapes in the cockpit. I registered the alarms once my auditory receptors turned on, and I was blindly reaching for the computer before my vision cleared.

“What happened?” I demanded when I could speak. My vocal modular hadn’t warmed up yet, and it made the words sound rusty.

“There’s a ship.” Eilan’s skin, naturally pale, now looked almost translucent in their fear. They held the cable that had plugged me into the console in their hand, and I took it from them. “They’re headed for us.”

“What kind of ship?” I asked, even as I pulled the data from the sensors.

“Not a friendly one. They’re flying the Luhman flag.”

Just my luck, I thought miserably. Barnard’s Star and Alpha Centauri simply wanted their independence from the Crown; people from the Luhman system wouldn’t be happy until the entire monarchy and everything it stood for had been dismantled piece by piece. Utter chaos in the galaxy was better than having to live under the rule of a royal family, they seemed to think.

“Suggestions?” I asked as Eilan sat in the co-pilot’s seat. Collapsed into it, really.

They licked dry lips and said, “I don’t know.”

“You’ve survived three attempts on your life already,” I said briskly, one eye on the data as it scrolled past. Only one ship, thank all the gods, but she was armed to the teeth and there were at least a dozen people on board. We could outrun her if this was strictly a race, but she didn’t need to be close to us to cripple this shuttle. All it would take was one barrage from her turret guns, and it would all be over. “Can’t you use your magic and, I don’t know, vanish them somewhere?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Eilan said. “Portal spells like that require a great deal of energy, and even then you could only transport a small object a few hundred kilometers… perhaps a thousand, if you were exceptionally lucky and powerful. I couldn’t displace an entire ship and everything on it even a meter.”

“How are you at illusions?”

“Illusions are easier,” Eilan conceded. They looked at me. “What kind of illusion?”

“Can you create an image of this ship on their sensors? Give them something to target and fire on that isn’t actually us?”

“I might be able to,” Eilan said. “I don’t know how long it will last.”

“Do it for however long you can. I need you to confuse them so I can get behind their ship. Draw their attention away from this shuttle and get them to focus on the fake one.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“We have less than a third the amount of ammunition they do,” I said, “but all I need is one clear shot. I can disable the ship and they won’t be able to follow us.”

Those Nova-class vessels were top of the line, and even though that one was five years old at the least, it was still a formidable opponent. But every ship had its weak spot, no matter how hard her engineers and designers tried to make her foolproof. In a former life, I’d made a career out of robbing these kinds of ships. I doubted their design had changed much in the intervening decades.

“All right.” Eilan’s fingers curled around the arms of the co-pilot’s chair. “On your signal.”

Fine by me. I powered up our weapons and modified the flight plan, all the while bracing myself for the punch of weapons fire slamming into us. It never came.

“Now,” I said, and Eilan closed their eyes.

I didn’t need to ask them if they’d managed it. I saw it unfold on my screen—the green dot on the lidar screen that had once been our shuttle faded, replaced by another a few hundred kilometers to port.

“Move your ass, Dominic, I don’t know how long I can hold this,” Eilan said through gritted teeth.

I didn’t need telling twice. I brought the ship around, powered up the engines, and was off like a shot. It didn’t take us long to loop around and come up behind the Luhman ship, perhaps ten minutes, but already Eilan was shaking with the strain of both concealing us and maintaining the illusion.

“Hold on,” I told them. The weakest spot of the Luhman ship was between its engines, a design flaw that hadn’t been exploited much over the years, if at all. It was likely that the ship’s designers didn’t believe someone would be able to—or be stupid enough—to come within a dozen kilometers of the ship and deliver the necessary firepower to cripple it.

Those designers had, obviously, never met me.

I fired off two volleys. We were close enough to the ship that I could watch through the window as the torpedoes landed true, ripping a gaping hole in the back of the vessel. Debris streamed out, and a chain reaction of explosions destroyed the engines.

“Go,” Eilan hissed. “Go, go, get us out of here, do it now—”

“On it,” I said curtly, altering our flight path once more and punching the button to fire up the engines.

We were off again, nothing but the black in front of us, the crippled ship long behind us. It would take them a good long while to figure out what had happened, and even once they did, they wouldn’t be able to catch up. Not with their engines gone, and who knew how many other systems on their ship disabled.

Eilan slumped in their seat, wheezing.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“M’fine,” they muttered.

“You don’t look it.” Their white face was tinged with green, the same kind of look that came over Adeline right before she was about to be sick. I flipped on the autopilot and grabbed the nearest bin, shoving it under Eilan’s face right before they retched. “Magic certainly takes it out of you, doesn’t it?”

Eilan must have felt truly wretched, for they didn’t have a sarcastic response to that. They pushed the bin away, wiped the back of their hand across their mouth, and said, “Can you stop the ship from spinning, please?”

“The ship is flying level.”

“Gods.” Eilan closed their eyes and rested their head against the back of the seat. “Fuck magic.”

“Most humans seem to find it useful.”

“Most humans can summon objects that are only a few feet away or levitate a few inches off the ground. Their magic is fairly benign,” Eilan said. “Most humans can’t hear everyone’s thoughts day in and day out, or transport objects from one side of a planet to another, or create a fucking ship out of nothing. Most humans can’t brainwash people, or wipe their memories, or scramble their brains so they’re nothing but a drooling mess. Most humans haven’t been told, from the moment that they’re born, that—”

Eilan stopped abruptly, cutting themself off. The silence rang like a bell. Their jaw was set in a hard, stubborn line, much like Gabriel—and this time I cut off the comparison, locked it away in a file in the back of my mind. I had to stop thinking of my children. For the purposes of this mission, I had no children, no spouses. No family. If I allowed myself to get too distracted by thoughts of home, I was going to make a mistake.

“I need sleep,” they said abruptly, getting to their feet. Their knees buckled at once, and only my android reflexes saved them from hitting the deck.

“Come on, hotshot,” I said, lifting them easily and carrying them down the short flight of stairs from the cockpit. Their head lolled onto my shoulder.

“Tell anyone you did this, and I’ll magic you into space,” they murmured.

“Duly noted.”

---

Host Commentary

Once again, that was part one of “Sanctuary” by Alexis Ames. The story will be concluded next week.

When did anyone’s “one last job” ever go right in fiction? In this case, it’s the promise of an early release from a sentence of servitude that lures our hero into taking on an almost impossible task outside of his usual skill set. His reward at the end: to be reunited with his husbands and kids, who he hasn’t seen in forever, and who he misses intensely. Add in political machinations and a dash of magic, and you’ve got a recipe for exciting space fantasy with an extra sweet core.

This story has some Murderbot vibes with its world-weary android guarding his human charge, but it’s the increasingly parental nature of their relationship that really resonates with me. The teenage monarch-to-be is just as world-weary as their protector, trying to survive a hostile universe that cares more about what they are than who they are–something both characters have in common. They’re each trapped in different ways by circumstances as well, but can they find a way to freedom? How will this “one last job” finally turn out? Find out next week.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please do share it.

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And our closing quotation this week is from Martha Wells’ Murderbot, who said: “Trying to get humans not to touch dangerous things was a full-time job.”

Thanks for joining us, and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.