Cherise gawked at the tablet Vy had just handed to her. She was looking at a media browser.

Movies.

TV shows.

A lot of premium subscription services from her homeworld, plus apps, including a web browser. She was holding a magical iPad.

“It’s not stealing,” Vy assured her. “We’re paying for the services in perpetuity through a Dovanack bank account.”

“How…?” Cherise struggled to form a coherent question.

“Ariock and Thomas teamed up to build superluminal relays in strategic places,” Vy said with pride. “So we can stream stuff from Earth that’s just about real time. It’s like an hour lag.”

Cherise began to hand the tablet back.

“No, this one’s yours.” Vy pushed it into Cherise’s hands. “It’s a gift.”

Cherise felt speechless. She hadn’t spoken to Thomas since his near suicide-by-cannibals in the dead city. Was he rewarding her for ignoring him?

“Thomas wanted me to tell you that there’s no strings attached.” Vy sat across from Cherise in the teacher’s lounge, legs crossed. “He figured you can use it as a teaching tool for your classes.”

It really was from him.

It probably wasn’t a bribe. Maybe it was just a lazy afterthought? Vy’s prosthetic shone with a metallic meshwork surface that matched her coppery hair, and it was a clear upgrade. Thomas was showering gifts upon his favorite foster sister. Perhaps Cherise had received this one by extension, by accident?

“It works like any data sleeve or tablet,” Vy explained. “You can beam it to display screens.”

“This is thoughtful,” Cherise had to admit.

It was more than thoughtful. It was magical. She could not begin to guess how superluminal relays worked, but everyone in the city was buzzing about the latest generation of supercoms. People were able to see regular news broadcasts from liberated cities on foreign planets. Kessa even had undercover spies in Torth cities, reporting in real-time from slave tunnels.

But this tablet was just for Cherise.

This was special. “Can you tell them both ‘thank you’ from me?” she asked.

“You could tell Thomas yourself.” Vy’s tone was full of hints. “He specifically wanted you to have this.”

Cherise sighed. Vy clearly believed that a visit to Thomas would be no big deal.

But Freedomland was full of gossipers. If anybody spotted Cherise near the research annex, Flen would hear the rumors, and he would…

She was going to need to hide this special tablet.

Certain forms of human entertainment seemed like wicked rekveh magic to Flen. He’d be all kinds of offended by “sinful” flirty behavior from American culture. Cherise could imagine the accusations he would hurl at her.

Was she in love with power?

Was she a Torth sympathizer?

Was she brainwashed?

“I’m not ready to visit Thomas,” Cherise said.

Mostly, she wanted to avoid a bunch of arguments with Flen. But there was apprehension mixed up in her feelings towards Thomas. He was a miracle worker, yet he was also … well.

Few people knew how cruelly the zombified Torth were treated. Vy might hear rumors, but she never visited the Alashani quarter. She never went to active battlefields. So she never witnessed those shambling messes who used to be sapient beings.

Even if Vy saw the abuse, she would just blame the hotheaded Alashani warriors.

Vy, like Ariock, would entirely skip the inconvenient truth that her friend Thomas was the source of the whole abominable system. Alashani rage towards Torth was justified. They feared extinction, and they were right to be afraid. What excuse did Thomas have? Why was he doing it?

“Thank you.” Cherise brandished her new tablet. “And thank you to Ariock, and especially to Thomas. I’ll use this for my classes.”

Vy had learned not to pressure Cherise. So she smiled and changed the subject.

Cherise used the tablet in her humanities class later that same day.

She purposely wanted to delay the introduction of movies and animation. She would not inundate her students with torrents of alien images, thereby reducing art to mere noise. Instead, she would guide them, in measured steps, into realms of expression that went beyond anything they had ever known.

Creativity often meant a death sentence in the Torth-ruled galaxy. Slaves had never gained opportunities to refine their musical or artistic talents over contiguous generations. Their stories were whispered, their songs quiet, their artwork mostly hidden.

So movies were inconceivable to her students. Under Torth rule, slaves could never unite as a team working towards a creative vision.

Cherise started with music.

Week by week, she introduced her students to genres and styles of music. On the fourth week, she cautiously began to show them still images of paintings.

“Yes, Rhyow?” Cherise pointed to a govki who had raised one of his quartet of hands.

“Teacher.” The student seemed to gather his thoughts. “Would you say that these masterpieces are analogous to what the Torth see, when they speak to each other in their minds?”

Other students continued to gawk at the ceiling as if feasting upon a portal into Heaven. They were gobsmacked. A dramatic fresco of Olympian gods, painted by Giulio Romano, glowed up there. It was the last entry in the slideshow which Cherise had put together.

“I don’t know what Torth see.” Cherise leaned on her desk. “I’m not a mind reader.”

A few students chuckled. Her denials of being a mind reader had become a running joke, since she was obliged to remind people so often. Her classes were so popular, the auditorium was overcrowded, with people standing between the seated students.

“But they repress their emotions,” Cherise reminded her class. “So I don’t think they see things like this.” She gestured at the dramatic fresco.

There were more questions. Cherise answered, explaining what she knew of the mythologies or emotional ideas conveyed by each fresco.

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Many of her students had seen artistic relics from conquered civilizations, as well as Torth versions of fashion and architecture, and gardens, and advertisements. Slave farms had their own art, too: pictograms and statuettes. It was enlightening to discuss comparisons that resonated with the experiences of former slaves.

When the questions began to wind down, Cherise used her tablet to queue a music playlist that she thought fit the mood.

“In my country,” Cherise said, “it is said that artwork is how we decorate space, but music is how we decorate time.”

The music played, light and sweet. Aliens looked at each other, enchanted by what they were hearing.

Cherise sat back in her chair. She knew that some of her students experimented with their own makeshift music instruments after school. Digital recordings were being sold in shops around the city. Former slaves would pioneer new forms of music. And a few of her visionary students were already practicing art, working towards becoming masterful painters or sculptors.

Every day brought something new.

The future stretched out, unknown, yet exciting. There could be ummin film directors, nussian architects, govki game designers. Today’s generation of former slaves had a lot to learn, but tomorrow’s generation would be born into freedom. They would inherit all of the technology and science of the Torth Empire—assuming the Torth got conquered.

They would have the wisdom of many civilizations.

They would change the universe.

Humanity would get left behind, in the dust.

Cherise let the music wash over her, sweet and nostalgic. She told herself not to worry about weighty matters such as the fate of humankind. That wasn’t her job. It shouldn’t be her concern.

But what about Flen, and the fate of the Alashani?

She suppressed a groan. The faces of her students were gray, red, yellow, furry, or beaked, but none were albino. Cherise taught multiple classes, many hundreds of students, and not a single one of them was shani.

She didn’t think that Flen had gone around telling people to avoid her classes.

But the Alashani, as a people, saw no value in learning about foreign cultures. As far as Flen was concerned, humans were fat and weak versions of Alashani. He thought that humankind had been preserved like zoo animals. So why bother to learn from them? It should be the other way around.

That was what most Alashani believed.

Cherise gazed at a pile of cherished picture books on her desk. Those came from Earth, imported by Ariock. She used them to teach aliens how to read and write. Flen refused to look at them.

She had asked, “Do you think I’m just a fat and weak version of an Alashani?”

Flen had hugged her, and said, “No! Of course not. You’ve been honed and sharpened by your experiences.”

He meant her Alashani experiences. He thought of her as something like an adopted Alashani.

Cherise wondered if she was being too judgmental of Flen’s judgmentalism. He was open minded enough to date her, to call her an angel. And who else would be thoughtful enough to buy jars for her that were embossed with her artistic designs?

Flen surprised her with gifts every week. A decorative scarf. A beautifully crafted kitchen set.

It wasn’t like he had free time to go shopping between battles. He must gain special favors for being a war hero. Cherise understood how many people admired him, because some of that admiration scattered onto her. People invited her to parties. Every door in the Alashani quarter was open to her.

Anyhow. His efforts to please Cherise showed how much he cared.

And she cared, as well. How could she not? Flen wept in the middle of the night, woken from nightmares. He clung to Cherise as if she was the mother he had lost.

To Flen, family was everything. All he had left was an elderly chambermaid who treated him as if he was a knight in shining armor. And Cherise.

That was probably why he kept bringing up the topic of babies.

He wanted Cherise to stop using the birth control pills she had gotten through Vy. He considered birth control to be a self-imposed curse peddled by soulless rekvehs. He would lay a hand on Cherise’s stomach and tease her about how good she would look, pregnant. He held her hand and speculated about how they would be wonderful together, as parents.

Cherise tried to laugh off those uncomfortable conversations.

“I’m too young,” she had said. “On Earth, I’m not even legally an adult. I’m not ready to look after a baby.”

Flen had said, “Underground, it is a blessing to have children young. Children are always a blessing.”

He looked forlorn, perhaps remembering loved ones who had died in the flood, or in Torth raids. He did not have to say that Cherise was now his family. It was plain by the way he treated her.

The next song in the playlist went on, whimsical and playful. Class was over, but few students moved to leave. They often stayed for the music.

Perhaps Flen was right. Cherise did not feel at all motherly, but she did not need a mind reader to explain why the idea scared her so much. She was terrified of becoming her Ma.

Was she letting fear rule her?

After all, she used to feel terrified of speaking in front of people—only to learn that teaching was the most fulfilling thing she had ever done. She loved her students. She knew their names and their stories, and she loved helping them grow into different people, from meekness to confidence. She could not imagine giving that up.

She used to fear wearing fashion-conscious clothes, until she learned how to pull it off in ways that turned heads.

She was beginning to enjoy facing her fears. There was exhilaration in meeting a challenge and coming out victorious.

So maybe she ought to remember that she had a lion within herself? She was not the mousy girl whom her Ma used to scream at. She was loved. She was safe. Why not challenge herself to do something braver than she would have believed possible?

To raise a child.

It might be worth every moment of fear and pain. She could be light years better than the selfish beast who had been incapable of raising her.

While Cherise imagined bouncing a child on her knee, the door at the top of the auditorium banged open. A panicked mob of students poured into her classroom.

Cherise jumped up. She was not the only one.

“—Torth!”

“They’re in the building!”

“We need to hide!”

Cherise felt frozen with disbelief. This was Freedomland. This was a college campus in the safest city in the known universe. It was impossible for Torth to invade without warning.

Had the Mirror Prison failed somehow?

The prisoners were kept under surveillance and on the inhibitor serum. Zombified victims were used in battlefields far away, on foreign planets, and they had no free will. Thomas ensured that they could never be used against his own allies.

Maybe this was a penitent riot? Had a bunch of penitents broken free and gone on a rampage?

That seemed equally impossible. Penitent work crews were chained together. Some penitents did earn the privilege of serving a family without being chained up, but they were never allowed to touch a weapon.

An attack on the Academy didn’t make any sense. Penitents and prisoners were never allowed downtown. Even if they somehow went on a rampage, they would have to fight through miles of crowded streets in order to get into the Academy. There were always trained soldiers in the city.

Freedomland was fortified with blaster cannons and military transports, and everyone owned a blaster glove. Rampaging Torth would be easy targets for speeding hovercarts or snipers shooting at them from windows.

Plus Thomas.

Even if Ariock and his military forces were on another planet, Thomas was always here. He lived and worked in the research annex of the Academy. And he was powerful.

…And he was a definite military target.

“Crap.” Cherise decided that she could determine the “how” and “why” of this attack later. Students were panicking and stampeding. The lighthearted music made for an obscene auditory contrast. She shut off the playlist.

“Quiryeskul!” Cherise made her voice a commanding whip.

Her favorite amateur engraver gave a start. Quiryeskul was a bronze nussian who had a friendly manner. She also happened to be a soldier. Most of the students were wild-eyed, but those who had trained as soldiers remained stoic.

“Will you please get some fellow soldiers to block the doors?” Cherise asked. “I’ll alert Ariock.” She activated her supercom.

Her surety had an effect. The jostling students calmed slightly, making room for students with blaster gloves.

Like the various military mayors and battle leaders, Cherise was entrusted with access to the emergency broadcast channel. Everyone with that privilege knew better than to abuse it. Ariock could be in the middle of a conquest. Some of his tasks required his full focus, so he should never be interrupted. Not unless there was a life-or-death emergency that needed immediate attention.

Mostly, the emergency channel was used to report random, unexpected raids by Torth aggressors.

But it was on fire now.

“—under attack!”

“We’re being invaded!”

“—TriSolstice City, also!”

“And us! Amass MetroHub!”

“—where—”

“A thousand warships, at least!”

“We need—”

“Where is Ariock?”

The babble of panic made Cherise realize that this was a real emergency. Cities were being raided. Not small raids, either. Something major was happening.

In the midst of so much mayhem across multiple planets, would Ariock even notice if the Academy was under attack?

He wouldn’t expect it. Nobody expected Torth to be able to invade the heart of Freedomland.

Cherise selected Ariock’s icon in an attempt to reach him directly. But, as she had feared, there was no answer. Ariock was busy.

She tried Vy as well.

No answer.

Cherise sank behind her desk and considered reaching out to Thomas on the emergency channel.

But he was Thomas. He likely knew already. He probably knew more than anyone in existence. And he wouldn’t prioritize protecting a random classroom. He had to protect himself.

Cherise searched the auditorium for anything that might be used as a makeshift weapon. Orb lights might be heavy enough to throw, if she turned off their hover technology.

Students crowded next to her on all sides.

“We’re in trouble,” one of the govki moaned. “Aren’t we?”

All Cherise could do was nod.