Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  Rain sprinkled across the gardens, compelled not so much by gravity but by the gusts of wind blowing in from the sea. It sprayed across me sideways in a thick gray cloud. The gardens were lush but drowned-looking, the way they always were during the rainy season. Everything sparkled like it was covered in diamonds.

  The guesthouses appeared at the top of the hill, white wooden siding with yellow trim. They were surrounded by banana trees. The first one, and the smallest, was shut tight, the shutters locked over the windows. I followed the gravel path around to the next one. The shutters were open and a pair of black boots sat next to the front door. My heart fluttered.

  I walked up to the porch. The main door was open too, although the screen door was locked into place. I banged on the metal frame. “Hello!” I called out. “Is anyone there?”

  Silence answered me at first, and then footsteps, soft and padded like a dog’s. A man appeared in the foyer, dressed in a thin white T-shirt and green-gray fatigues. I didn’t recognize him at first, not without his helmet. It was the engineered soldier. Private Snow.

  “Can I help you?” He sounded formal, like one of the staff. He leaned up against the frame and studied me. “Ms. Coromina, right? The eldest daughter?”

  He might have phrased it like a question but I could tell he already knew the answer. “Yeah. Can I talk to you?”

  I was staring at him, fascinated, trying to figure out how Dad had known he was engineered. But he looked like anybody else.

  “Yeah. Sure. You’re not going to get me in trouble, are you?” A half-grin appeared, along with a dimple in his right cheek.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He laughed. “That’s a yes.” But he unlocked the screen door anyway and held it open. I pulled off my rain boots and dropped my umbrella on the porch and went in. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been inside this particular guesthouse. The decor was unfamiliar: wooden blinds covering the windows and Quillian rugs on the floor. Maybe Isabel had redecorated it.

  “You want a towel?” Private Snow asked.

  I shook my head.

  Private Snow led me into the living room. The furniture had been shoved off to the side. Exercise equipment littered the floor. “Sorry,” he said.

  I shrugged. He grabbed two armchairs, one in each hand, and dragged them into the center of the room, in front of the fire. It was weird to watch. The armchairs were made of dark wood and leather. Heavy materials. Too heavy for a normal man to pull across the room one-handed.

  “Thought you might want to sit down,” he said, not quite looking at me, like he was shy.

  “I just had a quick question. Or a request, really.”

  He snapped to attention.

  “You have to promise not to tell my dad, though. Or anyone at the house.”

  Private Snow shifted his weight and crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t promise that until I’ve heard what it is.”

  I sighed. “It’s not a big deal. There’s a party I want to go to, down at the public beach. But Dad won’t let me go if I ask him, so—” I shrugged and grinned, hoping he would figure the rest of it out.

  “Oh,” he said, dropping his arms back to his sides. “You want to sneak out.”

  “But I don’t want to get shot.”

  “We wouldn’t have shot you.”

  I blushed. “It’ll be after the sun set, so I didn’t know.”

  Private Snow looked like he wanted to laugh. “We’re trained,” he said, “not to do that. And we aren’t stumbling around in the dark. I’ve got night vision, and the others have goggles.”

  He tossed that off casually, I’ve got night vision, the way someone else might say I can do a hundred pushups. Not a confession so as much as a brag, like I could have night vision if I just put my mind to it.

  “But if it makes you feel better,” he continued, “I’ll let the others know you might be slipping through the woods.” He smiled again, more shyly this time. “We’re always glad to be of service, Ms. Coromina.”

  “And you won’t tell my dad?”

  “My word as a soldier.” He stuck out his hand. I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but he said, “In Alvatech, we shake on it.”

  “Oh! Sorry.”

  I grabbed his hand and shook.

  • • •

  I slipped out to the party without trouble, taking my usual path through the gardens and down to the dirt road that led into the village. The rain clouds had cleared away during sunset. Catequil and Amana were both out, and Coromina I was nearly full, so the landscape was flooded with dim, burnished red light, enough to see by. I passed one of the soldiers when I came to the road, and he lifted his hand at me in a wave before walking on.

  The party was a relief after weeks spent cooped up at Star’s End. Laila drank too much and threw up in the sand dunes. Paco showed up, driving a beat-up old car, its engine rigged to run on the light from Coromina I. He and I stripped down to our underwear and went swimming in the sea. He kissed me as the waves crashed around us. The bonfire threw long wavering lines of light down the length of the beach. Music thumped against the sand.

  Everything was perfect.

  I was back in my bed by three in the morning, and I slept for four hours and woke up with my alarm, which I’d forgotten to turn off the night before. Yellow sunlight streamed around the curtains. A bird chittered outside my window. I’d only had a couple of beers, so I wasn’t hung over—I thought of Laila and figured she was buried in her bedsheets right now, screaming at her brothers when they came in to wake her up. Still, I lay on my back for fifteen minutes after I silenced my alarm, watching the dust float through the sunlight.

  My tutoring session didn’t start until after lunch that day, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. I thought about the soldier who’d waved at me on the road, and Private Snow promising he wouldn’t rat me out to Dad or anyone else. Dad might ignore me most of the time, but slumming it down in the village would be an event worthy of his attention. Given the lack of angry messages on my lightbox, it seemed Private Snow had kept his word.

  I wanted to see him again. I’d always known that the Coromina Group manufactured soldiers—providing arms to the militaries was how Dad made his fortune. But I’d never seen an engineered soldier up close before. And yet they were going to become my responsibility some day, just like all the other citizens of Coromina I. Maybe I would be even more beholden to them—after all, these were true Corominans. They had been created here.

  I ought to thank Private Snow, I decided. If I thanked him I had an excuse to see him again.

  The house was quiet when I left my room, but I slipped out the front door, just in case. No one ever used the front door unless we had guests. Outside, everything was brilliant and shining from yesterday’s rain. My feet sank into the soaked earth as I threaded through the garden. The plumeria maze was blooming, scent wafting sweet and heavy on the air. The gardeners were out, clearing away broken branches and fallen leaves from the storms, but they ignored me.

  I arrived at the guesthouse. The boots on the porch were gone, but the main door was hanging open, just as it had yesterday. I knocked and called out a hello.

  I expected Private Snow to answer, but instead a woman came to the door. She wasn’t much older than me, but her body was corded with muscle and her face was hardened in other ways. She leaned sideways in the doorframe, watching me like I might attack.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Is Private Snow here?”

  “Nope. Out on patrol.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the house. “You the Coromina girl?”

  “Yeah. Esme.”

  “Private Abad. Nice to meet you.”

  “Oh. Do you think you could give Private Snow a message for me?”

  “Sure. You want to leave it on the lightbox? He’s more likely to get it that way. We’re in and out of here. Don’t know when I’ll see him next.” She grinned. “I’ll even encode it if you want. CG military–style—no one’ll be able t
o translate it but us.”

  I shrugged. “You don’t have to do that.” All the militaries had their own secret codes for sending message between soldiers without threat of interference, but a thank-you wasn’t that important. Besides, I figured she was just indulging me like I was some little kid.

  Private Abad let me in. The house was unchanged from yesterday. The two chairs Private Snow had dragged in front of the fireplace remained where we had left them, like they were waiting for visitors. We walked through the living room and into the den, which had been converted into a center of operations; I’d immersed in enough war dramas to recognize one. Private Abad sat down in front of the lightbox and hit a switch. White light filled the room, and that white light was all I could see on the projection screen. The lightbox was encrypted.

  She looked up at me expectantly.

  “I just wanted to thank him,” I said, feeling stupid for making her turn on the lightbox for something so simple. “I mean, for keeping everything a secret—”

  Private Abad grinned. “Just say it into the holorecorder, honey.”

  I laughed, flustered—of course I knew how the stupid messaging system worked, but something about being in the guesthouse made me nervous. She pointed at the recorder, its little pinpoint of gray. I took a deep breath and said, “Hey, Private Snow, just wanted to thank you for not shooting me and everything. And for not telling my dad.”

  Private Abad watched me for a moment, then switched off the lightbox.

  “He’ll think that’s funny,” she said.

  My curiosity piqued at that—he thought things were funny! But I didn’t say anything. Private Abad stood up and stretched, crossing one arm over her chest. And that’s when I saw it. Her tattoo. A black circle dotted with stars, a red silhouette of a dropship hanging in the background. The Andromeda Corps insignia.

  “The Andromeda Corps!”

  “What?” Private Abad blinked, then looked down at her arm. “Wow, I’m impressed. Not many civvies can tell the insignias apart.”

  “I can’t, usually. I just know that one.” My heartbeat had picked up, my palms were sweating. “My mom—she serves in the AC.”

  “Your mom?” Private Abad laughed. “I gotta admit, I was wondering about that. Coromina’s wife doesn’t look old enough to have a teenager.” She paused. “Sorry, probably shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s okay. You’re right. She’s only ten years older than me.”

  Private Abad was looking down at her hands like she was uncomfortable, and it occurred to me she thought my mother had died. Soldiers always get weird about death. Mr. Garcia had told me that. They’re supposed to think it’s an honor, but most of them don’t, not really.

  “You might know her,” I said, “My mom. If you worked for the AC. She’s still around.”

  Private Abad looked up. “I wasn’t with them long,” she said. “Joined up right out of school. Hence the tattoo.” She tapped it. “I got traded though, part of a parley, and wound up switching allegiances. Money’s money.”

  I must have looked crestfallen, because she added, “What’s her name, honey?”

  “Harriet Oxbow.”

  I had never said her name out loud, and it felt funny in my mouth, sharp and heavy. But Private Abad’s eyes lit up and she said, “Sergeant Oxbow? Hairy Harriet?”

  This moment, that flash of recognition, was a gift I’d been waiting for my entire life. I had no idea what to say, so I just blurted, “Hairy? What?”

  Private Abad laughed. “That was her nickname, assuming it’s the same lady. And that’s ‘hairy’ as in a hairy situation, by the way. A Corps thing. Your mom’s Harriet Oxbow?” Private Abad leaned back, arms crossed over her chest. “Wow. Wow.”

  I looked down at the floor, embarrassed. I must not have looked like my mother’s daughter.

  “I can’t believe she hooked up with fucking Phillip Coromina,” Private Abad said, laughing. “My God.”

  I lifted my head. “What?”

  Private Abad seemed to remember that I was in the room with her. She smothered her laughter and ran one hand over her hair, like she was trying to calm herself. “Sorry. Look, Hairy Harriet is kind of—I don’t want to say famous, exactly, but she’s renowned, at least among the AC.”

  “Really!” A warm, familiar feeling billowed up in my bloodstream, and I tingled with anticipation and a bit of nervousness. It was the same feeling I got whenever I looked my mother up on the newsfeeds, trying to learn about her. “I look her up sometimes but I can never find anything.”

  Private Abad grinned. “It’s not the kind of thing you’d find on the newsfeeds, honey. War stories. We keep ’em to ourselves, usually.” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe Harriet Oxbow would have even met Phillip Coromina. Much less fucked him.” Another laugh.

  I squirmed, knowing full well that fucking would have had to occur for me to exist, but not wanting to think about it, either.

  “Can you tell me some of the stories about her?” I asked. “Even though I’m not a soldier.”

  “A marine.” Private Abad wagged her finger in admonishment. “Learn the difference. Soldiers are in the Army. They don’t do shit.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Well, I’d hate to think you’ve been thinking of your mom as a soldier all these years.” Private Abad leaned up against the wall, hips jutting out. “I’ve never met her, now. Just heard talk, back when I joined up with the AC. She’d served out in the Perre system, during that fucking bar fight they called a war. Waste of everybody’s time. But Sergeant Oxbow was out there with a squad, headed toward Perre Red for some reason or another. And they got attacked. Not the Spiro Xu Alliance, but pirates. Fucking pirates!”

  Private Abad roared with laughter. I smiled to be polite, because I didn’t see what was so funny about a pirate attack.

  “Two-bit operation, from what I heard. Oxbow’s unit wasn’t on an official AC vessel, though; it was this moon-hopper they got off the Perre rebels, and the pirates didn’t know better. So, they boarded, took the ship, and Sergeant Oxbow—your mother—she took stock of that situation faster than anybody else in the unit. That’s why the call her Hairy—she knows how to worm her way out of a shitshow. Anyway, the Perre rebels had been dragging the AC down for weeks at that point, because they wanted to fight themselves. Didn’t understand the point of contracting out to a stand-in military. So, that’s why Harriet and the rest were on that crapheap in the first place. The pirates had more weaponry than the rebels did, so Harriet demanded to see their captain, and she managed to talk the assholes into fighting for the rebels for free.” Private Abad laughed and shook her head. “Although from what I hear, she didn’t do a whole lot of talking. Mostly shooting. But whatever gets the job done, right?”

  I had no idea about getting the job done. I’d never so much as thrown a punch in my life.

  “Wow,” I finally said, because I didn’t know what to make of any of it. The story made my mother seem less like a mother and more like a character in an Amanan action immersion, one of those trashy ones where you can request extra blood and dismemberment. “That’s—thank you for telling me.”

  “I got some others. You want to hear them?”

  Of course I wanted to hear them. The picture I had of my mother was so fragmentary, like a falling-apart quilt. I saw snatches of her from the hologram and from the letters and from the fact that she was a soldier—a marine—and that was it. Private Abad’s story was strange and I wasn’t sure I believed it, but it was another thing to add to the mosaic.

  I nodded.

  For the next hour, I sat in the den-or-command-center while Private Abad told me story after story about Hairy Harriet. The stories were more like tall tales, Sergeant Oxbow taking down a Solmored armored combat unit with just a light rifle, or blasting an atmosphere ship right out of the sky. I thought of the woman I’d seen in the hologram, short-haired and heavily muscled. I could picture her doing all those things, easily. But when I t
ried to picture that same woman holding me as a baby, or kissing Dad, my mind went blank. A malfunctioning computer.

  Still, I listened carefully, trying to remember every detail.

  Private Abad eventually ran out of stories. “Like I said,” she told me, “this is all hearsay. You hear it on the mercenary circuits. Fun as hell to tell, though. You like ’em?”

  “Sure.” I stood up. My mind was burning with the stories about my mother, like I had the fever that was supposed to preempt the worse symptoms of the flu, the bleeding and the sweating and the dehydration so severe your body mummified when you were still alive. “I really appreciate hearing it. Dad never talks about her, so—”

  “That’s tough.” Private Abad nodded. She glanced over her shoulder, as if she were waiting for someone. “Look, honey, my shift’s about to start, but I’ll put the word out, see if I hear anything else.” Her expression softened. “Something more useful, more like what you were hoping I could tell you.”

  “What you told me was fine.” I gave her a bright smile.

  She smiled back at me, looking pleased with herself. I liked her. She was exactly what I would expect from a soldier, but also nothing like what I would expect.

  I thanked her again, and she promised to give my message to Private Snow, and I walked back up to the manor, through the warm, lemony sunlight. The house gleamed in the distance, looking like a palace. I went straight up to my bedroom and sat down at my lightbox and scrawled out all the stories that Private Abad had told me with my stylus. I didn’t want to dictate them. I wanted to feel the words flowing out of my hands. It took a long time, and I worked straight through lunch, finishing just in time for the start of my tutoring lessons. I saved the stories in a sheet of memory glass and stuck the memory glass in my lockbox with the holocube and all of my mother’s letters.

  When I finished, I felt empty. But happy, too.

  • • •

  That evening, I felt good enough from my talk with Private Abad that I almost looked forward to going down to dinner with my family. I thought I might finally get Dad to tell me stories about my mother.