by Amie Kaufman
Hey, it’s hard to focus on fabric finishings with this level of hello there coming at me in stereo, okay?
Pixieboy’s in a coat with a hood that casts a shadow over his forehead, and therefore his Warbreed sigil—smart work, Scarlett—and Zila’s in a neat blue jumpsuit covered in pockets, her tight black curls tied back in a braid.
Kal and Tyler muscle their way through the door with a big plastene crate between them. Both are breathless and look like they’ve been in trouble—Goldenboy’s lip is split, and Kal is limping. Their hair is damp, too.
“Everyone okay?” Cat asks, peering anxiously out into the corridor.
“Five by five,” Tyler says, shutting the door behind him, and casting a quick glance around the room in the dim light, taking in the rock walls, the softly glowing plants, the trickling water. It’s a trip, coming from the metal hallways outside into this little slice of Trask.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Scar says, dragging damp red hair from her eyes. “But thank the stars for all those laps they made us run in PT.”
Tyler shakes his head. “How you move that fast in heels, I’ll never know.”
“It’s a gift, Bee-bro.” Scarlet does a little twirl, showing off her new boots. “And aren’t they gorgeous?”
“What did you do with the trouble magnet?” Cat asks.
In reply, Tyler raps on the crate with his knuckles, and Kal kneels down to open it up, revealing a blinking, mussed Aurora inside. Her black-and-white hair is askew, light brown cheeks turned pink, hiding her freckles. She’s dressed in a black tunic dress with a hood and a pair of black leggings, looking a little worse for wear.
“Can you smuggle me in something softer next time?” she groans as Goldenboy helps her up. “With room service?”
Dariel’s watching all this with undisguised interest, leaning against a dry section of the wall, arms folded over his open shirt. With an inward sigh, I make with the formalities.
“Everyone, this is my cousin Dariel. Dariel, this is everyone.”
Tyler looks our brand-new host over, gives him a polite nod. “We’re grateful for your help,” he says.
“I’m certainly anticipating that.” Dariel smiles, which I guess answers the question of how he’s going to handle my debt.
“Any friend of Finian’s … ,” says Scarlett, turning her attention to my cousin and unleashing one of her deadlier smiles on him.
Dariel’s clearly as impressed as I am by the team’s Face, because without a word, he produces a green box, the sight of which sets my mouth watering. Scarlett leans forward as he takes the lid off, and makes a suitably impressed noise.
“Are those luka cakes?”
“The very same.” He nods, holding the box out for her to take one.
She does, and dials her smile up to Pure Heart Attack. “The guild seal means they’re all the way from Trask, if I’m remembering right? I love what you’ve done with the place, by the way. The flic vines really bring it together.”
Don’t get me wrong—given the chance, I’d cheerfully jump aboard either of the Jones twins, but moments like this, it’s hard to take my eyes off her. Flaming-red lipstick to match her flaming bob, the same fiery color shaded around those big blue eyes of hers. What Dariel’s serving up is clearly an attempt to impress—delicacies from our homeworld are hard to come by—and recognizing the gesture is the best thing she could possibly do right now.
I grab one, too, just in case Dariel forgets to offer the box in my direction. The flaky pastry dissolves on my tongue, the slightly sweet, slightly sour ground luka nuts inside flooding my mouth with flavor. These things taste like home. But if I’m not careful, they’re going to taste like homesickness instead. Like safety, and the longing to get the hells out of this situation. I swallow quickly.
Scarlett’s nibbling slower, more appreciative. “I like a man who knows how to get what he wants. You must know this place inside and out.”
Dariel puffs up, predictably. “I’ve been around.”
“I’ll bet.” She winks. “Anything you can teach me?”
He drifts closer, like oily smoke. “There’s a lot I can teach you, Earth girl.”
Scarlett only smiles wider. “I mean about this station. For now, at least. Nothing like a local to show you the ropes.”
“What do you want to know?”
She shrugs, her eyes sparkling. “Anything you want to tell us.”
Dariel glances at me, then leans in closer to Miss Jones.
“Well, first off, you can’t just think of this place as a big city,” he says, with what he clearly believes is an air of suave authority. “You gotta think of it more like a hundred different cities that just happen to border each other, right? There are probably a million souls aboard. We got governing councils and lawless zones, warlords and high society and rumors about black sectors in the depths. You can find anything for the right price. We got fancy art, we got weaponry, we got delights that’ll take you away from your troubles. If you were, say, looking for a place to go dancing in those fine new clothes …”
I can’t even tell if he’s being sleazy or just doesn’t have any social skills—and when I’m noticing your lack of grace, you really oughta take a good, hard look at yourself. But Scarlett just shrugs in an elegant maybe kind of way.
“It was a long ride here, handsome.” She stretches, and lifts one hand to muffle a yawn. “What I’m really looking for is a place where we can sleep?”
Dariel blinks. “You mean … you and me, or …”
“I mean me and them.” Scarlett smiles, gesturing at the rest of us.
“Wait, all of you are—”
“Don’t hurt yourself thinking about it too much,” I growl.
My cousin takes a few moment to try and wrap his brain cell around it, but eventually he just gives up and leads us through to a back room. It’s not decorated—the walls are standard issue, the ceiling bare. There’s one flic vine up the far end of the room, but the leaves are barely glowing. The places has got three bunks, one atop the other, the lower two mostly full of cans of luminescent white paint and freeze-dried sarbo oil pods. I don’t ask. I can only assume he got a good deal.
“This is perfect,” Scarlett says. “Thanks, handsome.”
“No problem.” Dariel smiles. “If you want any more compa—”
The rest of his offer fades out as Scarlett winks and slides the door closed, finally giving us a little privacy. I dunno what it is about this girl, but she pulls it off without offending him—she could probably slap you in the face and make you feel good about it afterward. The others set to work clearing a place to sleep—the taller among us could touch both sides of this room with our hands held out to each side. Tyler’s making room on the bunks, Kal is piling the junk around the place into perfect stacks. But Scarlett hangs back by the door with me, out of the way.
“Do you need a hand?” she asks softly.
She’s talking quiet so the others won’t hear. Gesturing at my suit. I thought I kept my movements pretty smooth since we came aboard, but truth told, my muscles are aching—they don’t love being flooded with adrenaline over and over. And though I’m usually the first to bite when people point the thing out, somehow she makes it so I don’t mind. There’s no sympathy, no gentle grimace. Just a casual offer.
Truth is I’d kill for even a few hours in low gravity—I could get my suit off, curl up to sleep properly—but making that happen would mean leaving the squad. And adding another favor to the list I’m racking up with Dariel.
I was meant to have low-gee accommodations aboard the Longbow, once my squad was assigned. I had my own room at the academy so I could reduce gravity every night and operate without the suit. I’m gonna pay a price for sleeping like this later. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. For now, I’m really not taking a hand from anyone with my next shower.
“Thanks, I’m fine,” I say. “It’s designed to stay on for several days if needs be.”
Scarlett nods, content that I’m content.
“You think we can trust your cousin?” she whispers. “My gut was yes.”
I nod. “Your family seals your den, that’s what my clan says.”
“I haven’t heard that one before,” she admits, keeping her voice low. “What’s it mean?”
“It means yes, we can trust him.”
That was meant to be the whole of my answer, but she just looks at me, expectant. Trust a Face to want to learn something new when they should be focusing on naptime.
With a sigh, I try my best to explain. “You know we live underground on Trask because of the wind, right? It carries microscopic shards of stone. Get enough in your lungs, it’ll kill you.”
“So the seals on your den help keep it out?” she supposes.
“Right. When you build a new home, your family comes around to make the seals that go around the edges of your door out of peta mud. It’s a whole ceremony, and it’s a gesture of trust. Everybody gets their hands on it.”
“I get it,” she murmurs. “You’re showing your family that you trust them by letting them make the seals. If they didn’t do a good job …”
“Right, you’d die. So, you build strong seals, then you close the door and fight behind it, if you have to. Dariel won’t cross us because he’s family.” I smirk. “That, and my grandmas are pretty scary ladies.”
She’s quiet a moment, and her whisper is gentle. “It must be hard, being away from family.”
I snort. “For me? Not really. I got sent away from most of them early.”
She looks like she doesn’t quite buy it, but she lets it go.
“Get some rest,” she offers. “I’ll stay up and watch for a while.”
The squad is busy claiming their spots—everyone is pretty wrecked after the fight on Sagan, then Bellerophon, then the Fold here. Kal’s big frame is in the top bunk, Auri and Zila are curled up together in the middle. Ty’s on the floor—looks like our noble leader is planning to sleep sitting up against the wall, which I’m sure he won’t regret at all later on. Cat’s opposite, still looking sore she missed out on the brawl.
Scarlett and I both know I’m going to need the bottom bunk, so I wordlessly hand her the pillow and blanket, and she settles on the floor near her brother. I bed down on the mattress, staring at Aurora’s boots where they hang over the edge of the bunk above me. From the glow on the ceiling, I can tell she’s plugged into her secondhand Uniglass again, eating up info as fast as she can read.
She’s such a little thing. No bigger than Zila. Nothing about her hints at the trouble she spells for all of us. Except, you know, when her eye starts glowing.
I know we’re in deep because of her. I know the smart play would just be to sell her to the GIA and pray our court-martials don’t end us in prison. But my whole life, I’ve been on the outside looking in. A problem. A burden. An aberration. Just like her. And it’s taught me to be sure of one thing.
Us outsiders gotta stick together.
I lie in the dark. Watch Scarlett watching over the rest of us. She reaches over, pulls the blanket up under Cat’s chin, tucks another around her brother. There’s something about her—under the bitchy and the sexy. Something almost maternal. Goldenboy looks after us because we’re his squad. His responsibility.
Scarlett looks after us because she cares.
She catches me watching her.
“Go to sleep, Finian,” she whispers.
I close my eyes, and let the slow breathing of my squadmates lulls me to sleep.
I dream of home, of Trask, with its red sun and sprawling city hives running deep beneath the ground. I’m topside in my dream and it’s snowing, tiny flakes spilling from the sky and covering the unforgiving white rock surface in an endless thick blanket, far as my eyes can see.
It’s the weirdest thing, though.
Last time I checked, snow isn’t supposed to be blue. …
•••••
I wake up to the sound of Tyler and Cat arguing in whispers.
“I don’t care,” she hisses. “This is bloody creepy, Ty. And we’re in it up to our love pillows already. She’s a wanted fugitive. We need to turn her in.”
“We don’t even know what this is,” he points out, just as soft.
Zila’s voice comes next. “It appears to be repetitions of a single image.”
I roll over from where I’m huddled in against the wall. My major servos and muscle-weave activate immediately, though my fingers take a moment to articulate. Cranking open my eyes, I’m greeted with our grungy little room and …
Maker’s bits.
By the light of Cat’s uniglass, I see a design—the same design—daubed over and over again in the luminescent white ship paint. It’s on every grubby wall, every hatch, every crate, and it’s slowly dribbling toward the floor, where one huge version of the design takes up all the space that wasn’t needed by sleeping squad members.
It’s a figure. Humanoid. But it has only three fingers, growing longer from left to right. Its eyes are mismatched—the left one empty, the right one filled in white. And there’s a shape drawn on its chest where its heart would be.
A diamond.
Kal wakes, and Scarlett opens her eyes after a nudge from her brother. She props up on one elbow with a groan, arches her back, then freezes in place when she spots the hundreds of glowing figures now decorating our temporary home. The six of us sit and stare at the paint on the walls, or stare into each other’s eyes.
“Zero’s right,” I say quietly, looking around. “This is spooky shit, Goldenboy.”
At the sound of my voice, our stowaway stirs in the bunk where she slept with Zila. She sits up to dangle her legs over the edge of the bunk, yawning, squinting at the light in Cat’s hand. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she blinks around the room, finally twigs we’re all staring at her.
“What?” she asks. “Was I snoring or something?”
Her fingers are smudged with luminescent white.
There’s a smear of paint across her cheek.
She looks at the pictograms on the wall. Down at the paint on her fingertips. The look on her face when she realizes this was her—or at any rate, that she did it, even if it wasn’t her—kind of breaks my heart. At least, I assume that’s what the ache and contraction in the center of my chest is.
Doesn’t happen too often.
“I don’t …” Her whisper trails off.
Kal drops down silently from the topmost bunk to peer at the design. He turns his eyes on Aurora, a small frown between his brows.
“Why do you fear?” he asks, his voice cool. “This is a sign. We are in the place we are supposed to be. And now we know something of what we seek.”
It’s definitely the most practical thing anyone’s said so far, but his tone doesn’t help calm Auri down any. She’s got her jaw clenched, eyes wide, and I can see her fighting the urge to scream. Cry. Break. Which is exactly when Dariel opens the door. Without knocking.
He pauses halfway in, blinking slowly. “I see you’ve redecorated,” he says eventually. “I’ll put the cost of that paint on your tab.”
Nobody says a word, because really, what are we going to say? But my cousin doesn’t seem to understand he’s walked into the middle of an awkward situation. He blinks again, then squints at the biggest of the designs, painted on the floor by Scarlett’s feet.
“You people art buffs or something?” he says slowly. “What you painting that old chakk on my floors for anyway?”
The room comes alive.
“You recognize this?” Tyler says, immediately on his feet.
“What the bloody hells is it?” Cat, less delicate.
Scarlett stands in one smooth mo
vement, the groaning of a moment before, the night on the floor, all forgotten. She shoots Cat a shut up smile, turns the high beams on my cousin.
“You really do know this place inside and out. Color me impressed.” She smiles a little wider, leans a little closer. “This … chakk … is something we’re looking for. If you could help us out … ?”
A lot of people assume all Betraskans are traders—which is kind of hilarious, if you think about it. I mean, a whole society made up of nothing but? Who’d manufacture anything? Who’d plumb your house, design your latest comms gear? Betraskans are as many and as varied as any other species.
But every Betraskan likes a deal, no question of that. And we know how to get one. Which is where the universal rep came from, I guess.
We know how to bargain, and the de Seel clan is famous for it.
“Mmmmaybe,” says Dariel slowly, with the air of a man realizing he has valuable information to hand. “Yeah, I think maybe I can do that.”
“For a favor, maybe?” I ask.
Daniel smiles at me. “You catch on quick, Cuz.”
I glance at Aurora. At Goldenboy. Hoping Tyler knows what the hells he’s doing and how deep we’re sinking. But it’s not like we’ve got much choice here.
“Fine,” I sigh. “Deal.”
We follow him out into the main room, cluster around him as he sits at his console. Scarlett’s leaning close, one hand on his shoulder, watching the screen as he logs into the Sempiternity network. I pick a dry spot and lean against the cool of the stone wall, easing a glowing vine out of my way.
“It was an exhibition,” he’s saying, one hand flipping through the air to alter the holographic display. “About a year ago. I made some quick creds putting up the posters. Casseldon Bianchi, art connoisseur and resident of the one and only World Ship, Sempiternity, put it in his museum. … Here it is.”
Dariel’s console projects an advertisement he’s found in 3-D. He swipes again, and the display spins, showing off vases and paintings, necklaces and bowls and sculptures and things I’m not civilized enough to appreciate.
Beside me, Auri abruptly leans in at the sight of a glazed ceramic bowl. “That’s Chinese. How did it get all the way out here?”
