The younger boy sat close enough to touch Charlie, and he simply looked sad and tired. Charlie resisted an urge to put an arm around him. “Did either of you sleep last night?”
“No,” Justin said. “I was trying to keep Richard awake talking to him.” He stopped for a moment, blinking back tears and then turning his face away. After a few deep, shuddering breaths, he turned back to Charlie. “He lived until halfway through the night.”
“I’m sorry. You know this place is off-limits to humans.”
“You’re here,” Sam said.
“Good thing for you. But there’s two continents where you’re not allowed to go on Lym. Here on Goland, and do you know the other one?”
“Entare.”
“So you did know better than to come out here.”
“Dad told us to see the wild places before they’re all gone.”
“They’re not going to be gone,” Charlie said. “We’re keeping them for everyone. And Lagara is almost a park. People visit there every year.”
“Rich people,” Sam said.
“There’s some truth in that.”
Sam looked surprised that Charlie agreed with him. “So what were we supposed to do?”
Charlie fell silent, pondering. “Respect the boundaries. The same way I’m respecting the tongats out there. We almost destroyed this place once, and then we almost destroyed it again. This time that’s not going to happen.”
“Are you sure?” Justin asked.
“Yes.” Charlie drank some water himself. He pointed in front of them. “Look. One of the tongats is getting up already.”
Sam and Justin were silent as they watched the biggest animal stand up and shake itself, looking one way and then another and then nosing a packmate’s flank. “See,” Charlie said. “They’re a family. They watch out for each other.”
“They tried to kill us.”
“You were invading their home.”
“Will they hurt us now?” Justin shrank closer to Charlie, almost touching him.
Charlie’s glasses pinged for danger and he blinked a few times, adjusting his view, taking in the size of the heat signature behind him. “Charlie?” Jean Paul’s worried whisper vibrated in his ear. “Do you see it?”
Charlie whispered in turn to the boys. “Stay completely still. Don’t make any sound. None.” He checked his gun, stood up and turned slowly. A huge animal stood on its hind legs about twenty meters in front of him, just at the bottom of the rocks. He drew in a sharp breath and his hand tightened on his gun barrel. Being above it might not help very much.
“Boys,” he whispered. “Stand up as slowly as you can and be careful not to fall.”
Justin’s arm slid around Charlie’s waist and Sam let out a tiny moan, then went silent.
The predator cousin of the jumpers he’d flown over earlier stood three times the size of a man, with a long neck and snout and huge haunches. A thick, long tail twitched on the ground. Its neck moved like a snake’s, back and forth, back and forth. Vestigial wings fluttered on its back and the small hands attached to them reached out sideways as if pulling on the air.
Justin whimpered. His braver brother whispered, “A rakul. A real rakul.”
Charlie swallowed. “That’s what might have eaten the tongats that might have eaten you.”
“What do we do?” Sam whispered back.
“Nothing, unless it comes closer. It’s trying to decide what to do.”
A howl came up from behind them. The rakul raised its head and looked around. It bounded close enough for Charlie to make out the small fine feathers on its arms and the folds in the leathery skin of its neck. Its teeth were as big as his forearm. A breeze blew the smell of carrion and earth toward them.
Justin buried his face in Charlie’s stomach. Charlie’s free arm snuck around the kid, patting his back awkwardly. The other hand flexed at the gun, keeping it ready. He’d need a very precise shot to even slow a rakul.
Time slowed. The beast glanced at them directly from time to time. It bent to sniff at a tongat body and then lifted its head again, apparently surprised that the possible dinner in front of it was alive.
Charlie aimed his gun at the rakul. His hand shook. His own rules told him to allow predators to kill, but he had put the tongat in harm’s way, and it shouldn’t die because he’d stunned it.
Another tongat bayed, then a third.
The rakul glanced around and then cried out. The high-pitched screech drove a smile out of Charlie.
Other than his hand patting Justin’s back, he wasn’t certain he could move if he had to, even in self-defense. His eye stayed on the beast, drinking details. He’d never been so close to one. “What terrible beauty,” he whispered, and Justin clutched him harder.
The tongat closest to the rakul pushed itself up and then raced away, a little unsteady on its feet but obviously driven by fear.
Two more rakuls came up over the rocky ridge, both bigger than the one they stared at. The biggest called sharply. The one close to them turned and jumped away, its thick tail thumping with every leap.
Charlie closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them and double-checked. Nothing. “It’s fine, Jean Paul,” he whispered. “It’s all fine. It’s gone. They’re gone. There were three of them.” He turned and did a three-sixty visual scan of the area. “The tongats are gone, too.”
Jean Paul’s relieved laugh on the other end broke the spell. “Wouldn’t you be gone if you could run fast enough to outpace a rakul?”
“Even the one the boy shot got away.”
“They’re lucky beasties,” Jean Paul said.
“The tongats? You bet. I’m bringing the kids in.”
It took thirty minutes to bundle the body and the two living kids into the skimmer. “I don’t have helmets that fit you,” he told them. “You’ll have to close your eyes when we go fast.”
“Okay.”
Even though they weren’t moving fast yet, Sam had his eyes closed when he said, “The rakuls might be big enough.”
“Big enough for what?” Charlie asked him as he stepped on the gas a little, sending the skimmer lurching lightly forward.
“Big enough to stop the ice pirates.”
Charlie blinked. “Probably not. Hard for flesh to stand up to machines. But the ice pirates can’t get here. We’re way inside the Ring.”
“Pirates have been coming inside the Ring. More than usual.”
Charlie stiffened. “Who told you that?”
“My dad.”
“Was he trying to scare you?”
Sam was quiet for a long time. Eventually he said, “No. I think he was scared.”
CHAPTER TWO
NONA
The room reeked of antiseptic and medication, the sharp scents fighting the thick flowery smell of lilies. It was enough to make someone sick. Nona coughed. The miasma of smells clotting her throat felt like death. Death was close—very close. Her mother Marcelle’s skin had gone the white of the nurse’s uniforms, so thin that spidery veins latticed her cheeks and ran in red threads along the pale line of her neck. Her body had thinned too; she could be a child huddled under the soft blue throw.
Nona and her mom had spent so many years being confused one for the other that Marcelle’s fall into old age seemed impossible, like a bad dream Nona would wake from any moment. She checked the small mirror above the sink from time to time, as if she needed confirmation that the horror happening to her mother wasn’t happening to her. Her own skin was still taut with youth. Her blue eyes matched the blue streaks in her hair, which hung heavy and limp in the medical air.
It hurt to see her mom so weak. Marcelle had been a warrior once, a lieutenant in Ruby Martin’s army. She had fought in an insurrection long before she came home here to the station the Diamond Deep. She had even fought ice pirates as The Creative Fire came home after generations in space. She had fought disease and illiteracy and every unfair thing she ever came across. But for Marcelle, for everyone wh
o was born on the spaceship, the fucking unfair cheat of old age had stolen their lives. That was the only way she could think of it—all of the people she loved the most in the world, all of her family, gone or almost gone. Doddering. Forgetful. Trapped in robotic chairs.
Old age sucked.
Nona had been the first person from The Creative Fire to be born here on the Deep and given the cocktails of life. A month or two either way, a tiny change in the priorities of the returning crew from the Deep, a little less financial success on the part of Ruby the Red, and Nona would be age-spotted and weak by now.
She hated death. Not only her own death, but all death. She’d lost her father the year before, and the pain of Onor’s passing was so deep that this loss—this final loss—couldn’t hurt her more. Not really. It couldn’t.
A nurse brought in another vase full of flowers—blue roses this time. An impossible color that had to be engineered—so bright Nona thought they might glow if the lights of the medical monitors ever went off and let the room be truly dark. At least the roses didn’t smell as strong as the lilies. “From Satyana,” the nurse mumbled.
“Thanks.” After the door closed again, Nona whispered to her mom. “Are you awake?”
No movement. Just the slightly rasping sounds of thin and labored breath.
“Satyana sent you flowers. They’re exactly the color of her eyes.” She took her mother’s hand. “I’m going to miss you, mom. I will. So much.” Marcelle’s hand was cold, the fingers almost turned to claws. “It’s going to be hard.” A whine edged Nona’s voice, and she hated whiners.
She’d survive this. Somehow. She didn’t want Marcelle to remember her whining.
She stood and stretched, taking a deep breath. “Do you want some music?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned on some of Marcelle’s favorite music, traditional songs from the old revolution that Nona had never really liked. But this wasn’t her last moment. It was her mom’s. Or close. On the way in—hours ago now—the nurses had told her to expect death. They’d taken her aside and said, “A day or two. That’s all. Maybe less. Do you want support?”
She’d laughed at them, playing tough. “I’ll be okay. Really.” They had been steady, looking back at her with no comment. They were always steady, full of the angelic beatitude of hospice nurses. It didn’t help that they worshipped Marcelle. And Ruby, whose dolorous and dead voice filled the room.
“Honey?”
Nona turned at the unexpected sound of her mother’s voice. Marcelle looked stronger than she had for days. “Yes?” Nona took her mom’s hand again. It felt cold and still, as if her hand had already lost contact with her heart. “Yes?”
“Remember what you promised your dad?”
She nodded. A tear she hadn’t even felt landed on the back of her hand. “I do.”
“We didn’t tell you.” She stopped and swallowed, her hand gripping Nona’s almost as strongly as she used to. “There’s enough for you to go. You can go to Lym. There’s more than we ever told you.”
Nona had planned to go anyway. She’d saved enough for a volunteer’s passage. She’d studied the ecosystem to make herself worth putting on the list. She leaned down and kissed her mom on the forehead. “I’ll go find a sky, mom. I can’t promise I’ll stay on Lym, but I promise to see a sunset. For dad.”
“Go. For. You.” Marcelle’s voice faded a little. Then she gripped and pulled so that she was sitting up, the muscles of arms that had been too weak to hold a cup somehow holding her up as she clutched Nona’s arm. “Satyana. See Satyana.”
“Okay, mom.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. I’ll go find Satyana.”
“Do you see her?”
“Satyana?”
“No. Ruby.”
Her mom had been claiming she saw her old friend in the corners of the room for three days now. A ghost. A memory. Ruby had seen Nona born, had held her once. But Nona had no memory at all of her famous ancestor. Or sort-of ancestor. Whatever. She’d actually never been able to sort out the relationship between Ruby and Marcelle and Onor. They guarded that time in their emotional lives, the only clues pictures of the three of them in infinite varieties of twosomes.
At best, Marcelle was seeing the past. She’d remembered scenes from Nona’s childhood, birthday parties and trips to garden habs that Nona didn’t remember even after Marcelle recited every detail down to the color of the wrapping on presents. “I’m sure Ruby’s there, mom. If you say she’s there, she must be there.”
“I’m going to go with her now.”
“Okay, mom.” Nona watched the light in her mom’s eyes dim. It took a long time. Over and over she whispered, “I love you,” like a mantra or a shield.
When there was nothing left to do, Nona braced herself for the stab of loss that came when her dad died.
It didn’t come. Not exactly. Instead she felt thinned and raw, insubstantial.
Marcelle slipped down her arm, the strength gone from her fingers. Nona caught her gently, laying the shell of her mother down on the bed and then sitting and staring at her face, unable to look away.
Ruby’s voice kept spilling from the wall speakers. Surely that was why Marcelle thought she saw her. Ruby was everywhere in the room—in a portrait on the wall, in the music, in the weight of Marcelle’s life.
The music played through until it stopped.
The door opened. Nona didn’t look up; the corpse had bespelled her. It didn’t matter. Only Satyana smelled or walked like Satyana. Ship’s grease and flowers and credit and fancy clothes and good hair products and success. Satyana was all of those things at once, and each of them more than anyone else Nona knew. A power of a woman, a force. Almost a mother to Nona as well, or at least Satyana thought so.
For once Satyana didn’t issue any orders. She sat down on the bed opposite Nona and quietly asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m a little dizzy.” She hadn’t realized it until Satyana asked.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Did your mom tell you to come see me?”
Nona nodded, apprehensive.
“I’m available now.” Satyana said it like time with her was a gift.
“I’m not. I have to see to mom.”
Satyana gave her a long assessing look. As usual, Satyana didn’t seem to approve of what she saw.
Losing her mom didn’t hurt the same as losing her dad. It wasn’t sharp. It destroyed her in a completely different way. Other than the occasional round of tears that snuck up on her in bathrooms or in the middle of the night, she became a ghost on the Deep. She begged off work, avoided crowded galleys, and stayed alone with just herself and the vast hole that filled her insides.
She ignored Satyana for a week before she called. “I’m ready.”
“Good. I’ll meet you tonight.” With that, Satyana hung up abruptly, surely right in the middle of some deal or important social event.
Nona hadn’t really wanted to talk to her anyway. She showered and dressed in neat, pressed blue pants and a white blouse.
Satyana met Nona on one of her ships. Of course. Everything important to Satyana happened on a ship. The Deep had almost as much livable surface area as a planet, but only if you added in the berths on the myriad ships that made up much of the perimeter of the station. Some came and went, of course, but others had simply been parked and absorbed into the fabric of the Deep. Satyana had come here on a ship, run out of credit, thrown a few parties, and decided to stay. Now she was the queen of entertainment on the Deep, and not incidentally, rich and powerful.
Rich enough to give her ships stupid names.
They were deep inside the Sultry Savior, Satyana’s newest cruiser-class ship. It was midsized and midpowered and still more expensive than any one human should be able to afford. At least Satyana hadn’t forced a tour on her. She’d taken Nona through security with a hand wave and settled her onto a comfortable couch and given her a bulb of tea and a blanket.
Nona sipped the sweet green tea and waited while Satyana cut fruit, her back to Nona. When she turned, she looked worried. “I’m sorry that we lost your mom.”
“I know.” Satyana and Marcelle had worked together for decades, even though Nona had been sure Marcelle didn’t entirely trust the other woman. “I hate it that she had to die that way.”
“Of being old?” Satyana asked.
“Fucking age.”
Satyana didn’t look at all shocked. “We’ll all die someday,” she said. “Maybe sooner than you think.”
Satyana wanted her to ask what she meant, so Nona sipped at her tea and waited the older woman out.
Satyana sat beside her. “This ship. The Sultry Savior?”
“Yes.”
“It was built for you.”
Nona blinked. She didn’t want a ship. She sipped her tea, thinking over her last conversation with her mom. “To take me to see a sky?”
“For you to command.”
Nona spilled hot tea on her knee and jerked away from it, spilling more.
Satyana held Nona’s hand still, steadied it, removed the cup. “Your parents commissioned her when you were thirty-five.”
So long ago? “Does it take twenty years to build a starship?”
“It takes longer to build a captain.”
“You don’t approve of me.” Nona made it a statement.
Satyana sat back, looking thoughtful. “I’m mystified. That’s all. There’s so much more to you.”
Than what? Nona stiffened. “Shouldn’t you just say I’m not my mom and I’m not Ruby?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“I can’t be them. There’s no evil empire to fight. The Brawl is a third of the size it used to be and it’s almost humane. There’s nothing to fix.”
“Is that it? Is it all too easy? Brace yourself.” Satyana’s expression looked far more serious than usual. “This would be a really good time to take on more responsibility.”
Nona managed not to flinch, but only because she was used to Satyana. “And become a captain?” Nona couldn’t imagine it. She’s never even tried to fly the little skimmers that were readily available to get around the Deep via the outside, preferring the inner passageways and the trains and, under duress, the taxis.
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