Dothin had done thousands of designs like this and they ended up on doors, cabinets, tables and the like. Where they never ended up was Dothin’s flat. Nix could never figure why. As much as Dothin seemed to love his craft he never kept anything he made even when he had the opportunity.
Nix paused in the middle of carving out the space between two branches. He looked down at his link and considered playing some music. With Dothin not around, he didn’t have anyone to gripe at him about it.
“Why don’t you listen to music while you work?” Nix had once asked him. “You’re in here for hours at a time with nothing but silence.”
“Because my brain is too stupid to focus on two things at once,” Dothin had replied. “Consider yourself lucky when you get as old as me and don’t need to drown out your own thoughts.”
Nix set his link down without choosing a song and went back to carving. The scrape, scrape, scrape sound of his chisel on the wood turned into its own song. The air recycler took on a thrumming beat that syncopated well with the sound of his carving and his hands did the work on their own. The feeling of thinking about the strokes he needed to make, then thinking about which tool to make them with, then thinking about how he needed to hold the tool, all fell away and his hands did the work.
His link chimed, and the sound shocked him so that he jumped. His tool fell off course and cut a jagged rut in the trunk of his tree. Nix looked down at the damage and sighed. Dothin would instantly notice it. Nix sighed, set his tool down and checked his link. The first thing he noticed was that he’d been carving for three hours. He looked back down at his work and blinked. The whole tree was carved out. He still had hours of work to do on it, cutting the details and rounding the forms, but Nix had the vague idea he was looking at someone else’s work.
The link chimed again, and Nix saw Vinny Kando’s smirk pop up on the screen. Nix hit the button to accept the call.
“Vinnaaay!” he called.
“Nikaaaay!” Vinny replied. “Grease among the gang is your old man is off station.”
“He’s not my dad, Vin.”
“What he isn’t is irrelevant,” Vinny said, taking on his deep, philosophical tone. “What he is, is the owner a bigger flat than the station administrator, which is prime real estate for some serious deck crashing.”
“No way,” Nix said, chuckling to make his point clear.
“Come on.”
“Not a chance.”
“Nikaaay! Seriously! You’d be the biggest name on the grid. Your old man’s got plenty of cred. We borrow some money, grab some liks, blast some waves. I’ll put the word out and--”
“You’re insane, Vin,” Nix said, trying hard to hide his growing interest in the idea. It had flaws. Dothin didn’t have tons of cash laying around like all the gossip suggested, but he did leave Nix some money for food and Nix had saved up a bit himself. Also, Dothin’s place was big but it wasn’t fancy. But a place doesn’t need to be fancy for a party.
“Come on, Nix! It’ll be—”
The doorbell rang, cutting Vinny’s words off. Nix flipped to the door cam and saw Ms. Pattie Kalen standing outside. She was still wearing her blue and white station uniform minus the cap. Instead her otherwise tight, tied-back hair fell in big lazy curls over her shoulders. She carried a bag bulging with the conspicuous shapes of takeout boxes. Pattie looked up into the camera and her eyes narrowed in that playful way they always did.
“Ni-ix,” she called at the camera. It seemed like she was looking right at him, like she could see him. “I know you’re in there.”
Nix flipped back to his call with Vinny.
“Vin, I gotta go.”
“Fine,” Vin said. “I’ll get the grease flowing on our party tonight and meet you later to—”
“No!” Nix said and cut the connection. He ran to the door, unlocked it, and tabbed the release. The front door to Dothin’s flat slid open.
“Hey Nix,” Pattie said. “I didn’t know if Dothin planned anything for you, but I finished my shift and I thought I’d bring dinner.”
Nix felt a familiar, uncomfortable tremor in his chest at the sight of Dothin’s long-time friend. This was followed by a greasy feeling in his palms. Nix ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat.
“Um,” he said, barely keeping his voice from squeaking. “Dinner?”
“Well,” Pattie said, “if you’ve already eaten you can throw this in the fridge for later.”
“No!” Nix said, and this time he did squeak. He cleared his throat again. “No,” he said again. “I haven’t. Eaten. Yet. I haven’t eaten yet.”
“Great!” Pattie said. She smiled, looked past Nix, looked back at Nix. “Can I come in?”
“Yes!” Nix cleared his throat. Why was it so scratchy all of a sudden? “Please.”
Nix moved aside, and Pattie walked in past him. He shut and locked the door and followed. Pattie set the bag on the table, opened it, and set the containers out one by one.
“Do you mind if I eat with you?”
“No,” Nix said. “Of course not.”
Nix pulled silverware, napkins and dishes from the cabinets and set them on the table.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.
“Please,” Pattie said.
Nix grabbed two cans of soda and set them down. Meanwhile Pattie was spooning rice, beans, meat and vegetables into the dishes. They sat down and ate in silence for a while. The silence felt like a vacuum. But when he opened his mouth to break it, nothing came out.
“So,” he said, not sure what to say afterwards. His lack of a follow up lingered a second too long. Finally, something came to him. “How are things going in the command center?”
Pattie narrowed her eyes to think a second. She pressed her lips together in thought the way she always did.
“Oh fine!” Pattie said. “Pretty much the same. You know, ships come and go every day.”
“Yeah,” Nix said. He chuckled and then regretted the awkward sound. “What about the administrator? I hear he can be a monster.”
“Not usually,” Pattie replied. “For the most part he’s calm and easy. Every officer is terrified of him at first. He kind of looms over you and you can feel his shadow on your head.”
“That does sound scary.”
“Yeah,” Pattie said, “but once you’re used to him, he’s just a grumbly teddy bear.”
Nix laughed and was happy it sounded natural. Then he noticed something about what she said. Not usually.
“But something’s changed?”
Pattie, holding her fork aloft with a bundle of beans, rice and meat on it, opened her mouth to speak, then looked at Nix and narrowed her eyes. It wasn’t an angry expression, just thoughtful.
She put the fork of food in her mouth and chewed. She was stalling.
“Tell me how Dothin’s treating you,” she said.
Now Nix returned the thoughtful expression.
“Come on, Ms. Pattie,” Nix said. “That was pretty weak.”
“You are a better listener than Dothin gives you credit for,” she said.
“Thanks,” Nix said, but tried to keep his smile under control. “So, what’s up with the administrator?”
“Well,” Pattie said, and Nix could feel her attempt to minimize what she was about to say. “He’s been tense lately.”
“How so?”
“Just yesterday he practically screamed at one of the comm officers over some sensor data.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Pattie said. “And then, last week he...”
Nix shook his head.
“He what?”
Pattie narrowed her eyes turned her face away from Nix, but still looked at him.
“I shouldn’t be talking about this.”
Nix frowned at her.
“Come on,” he said, surprised at the relaxed way he pried at her command center gossip.
“No,” she said, “No. Instead, I’d like to find out how you’
re getting along with Dothin.”
Nix couldn’t help but roll his eyes. He was about to protest but her expression warned him against it.
“He’s...” Nix floundered for a minute. Discussing his, what? Adopted father? Maybe? Discussing Dothan was always something that made him feel unsafe. Made him feel insecure.
Nix sighed.
“He’s kind of a mystery to me,” he said.
“How so?”
Nix knew why he liked Pattie so much more than Dothin. She didn’t treat him like a kid or a feral animal.
“I mean, look at this place,” Nix said, taking in the flat with spreading hands. “Dothin has the biggest flat on the station. I’ve seen the kinds of sums people pay for his craft. He’s got money. But all his furniture is old. His clothes are all old.”
Pattie didn’t respond. Instead she gave him room to keep talking.
“I mean,” Nix went on. “If I had his money, I’d be living it up. Wouldn’t you?”
Pattie waited, and when it was clear Nix wasn’t speaking rhetorically, she replied.
“There’s something you’ve got to understand about Dothin,” she said.
Nix shoveled a fork-full of food in his mouth and waited for Pattie’s explanation.
“Dothin grew up poor,” she said. “He worked in the docks before he was legally old enough. When he wasn’t on the docks, he was pursuing his woodworking. He’d save up his money and get a better set of tools. Then save up and get a table saw. Then save up and get his first metal-cutting station. All the while working days in the docks and nights in his cramped little workshop until he passed out on his project.
“Well,” Pattie said. “One day, the last station administrator, the guy before Commander Baladin, made a surprise inspection of the docks while Dothin was showing his friends the clock he’d made. The administrator offered to buy it for 200,000 credits, which was, what, five years’ pay?
“Wow,” Nix said.
“So what do you think he did?” Pattie asked.
“He quit his job, for one,” Nix said.
Pattie shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Instead, he got this place, and ordered some more equipment, paid the legal expenses to get a proper business started, worked just as hard, until he sold another piece, and another, and another.”
“Jin,” Nix said.
“Watch your mouth, young man,” Pattie said.
Nix flinched and then felt his face get hot.
“Sorry.”
Pattie’s sudden authoritative tone returned to the easy smile and the playful eyes.
“Actually, Dothin didn’t quit working the docks until about ten years ago. He sold the clock closer to twenty.”
“No way,” Nix said.
Pattie nodded, took another bite of her cooling food.
“When a person who has almost nothing works hard and achieves wealth, it’s different than the lucky rando who wins the lottery. He appreciates where he came from, and he doesn’t so easily forget what’s important.”
“What is important?” Nix asked. The words came unbidden from some dark place.
“It’s not what, actually,” Pattie said, smiling, “It’s who. People are important, not things.”
Nix dropped his eyes to his empty plate. Then he looked at all the images on the wall, portraits of dozens of people Nix didn’t know. Dothin had met them. Dothin knew them. This wasn’t the factory default screen with all the fake pics. They were the sincere faces of people smiling at whoever was taking their images.
“Ugh!” Pattie said, and Nix started. She didn’t seem to notice. “I’m stuffed. Beans and rice always fill me up so fast.”
Pattie got up. She scraped the rest of her food into the recycler, then dumped the plate and silverware into the dish bath.
“Are you done?” she asked, holding her hands out to take his plate.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “But you don’t have to...”
Pattie took his dishes and cleaned them as well.
“Well, Nix,” she said, pulling the dishes out of the bath and putting them away. “Thanks for having dinner with me.”
“Thanks for buying,” he said, standing but only because it felt rude to sit while she did his chore. She smiled at him.
“You need anything,” she said. “Just call.”
“Thanks,” he said. He felt himself blush again and hated the hot feeling in his cheeks. “Um, can I ask you a question?”
He caught her in the middle of grabbing her purse and cap. She turned back to him, as always giving him full attention. Her ability to focus on him somehow always made him feel nervous and relaxed all at once. The feeling hid the question he was going to ask for a second, then it came to him.
“How did you come to know Dothin?” he asked.
She gave him one of her sly, playful smiles, the kind that always made him feel clever. It seemed to say ‘You know how, you’re just asking to confirm.’ And he was.
“Well,” she said. “My father worked with him in the docks.”
Nix nodded.
“My father,” she said, “wanted nothing more than to see his only girl get a proper education. While Dothin scraped and saved for better equipment to pursue his craft, my father did the same but for me. When the Z13 virus took him, he had saved quite a bit, but still not enough to put me through university. So Dothin fronted the rest.”
Pattie continued to smile but her eyes took on a soft, wistful haze. She blinked, and the expression was gone.
“I know,” she said, “that Dothin can be a little harsh at times, impatient, stubborn.”
“Yeah,” Nix breathed, smiling.
“But he is a good man and I think you, deep down, know that better than anyone.”
A silence hung between them. Nix swallowed hard.
“You’re right,” he said, not sure if he said it because it’s what she wanted to hear or because he believed it.
She smiled one last time.
“See you around, Nix!”
Pattie turned and left.
“Yeah,” Nix said after her. “See ya.”
The flat felt desolate and eerie with Pattie gone. Nix looked around at the empty place, the biggest apartment in the station, so people said, and indeed it felt cavernous where it had once felt cramped.
To Nix the apartment, no matter how big it was, wasn’t bigger than the whole station. And before Dothin had caught Nix trying to pick his pocket—a short and unsuccessful attempt at personal crime—and taken him in instead of turning him over to civil authorities, the whole station had been his home. For months after the adoption was official Nix had run away almost every day. And every night he would return in the tow of station security and Dothin would be there to feed him, to offer him a clean bed and a safe home.
His link chimed and Nix, without looking pulled it from his pocket and tapped the answer button.
“Nikaaay!” Vinny called. Nix furrowed his brow and lifted the link to his face.
“Vin?” he asked.
“No, the sawking governor,” Vinny said. “Listen, son. You owe me big.”
“What?” Nix asked, still feeling half-asleep in his ruminations.
“So, I spread the grease about the party all over the station,” Vinny said.
Nix was having a difficult time understanding him.
“Huh?”
“And you know what else?” Vinny asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. “I ordered us a jack-ton of liks, man. We could like turn your old-man’s flat into a swimming pool.”
“Wait, what?”
“You’re welcome...but you can pay me back when I see you. I’m thinking a cover charge of twenty credits. What say you?”
“Vinny,” Nix said, his voice calm despite the creeping panic he felt. “Did you just prep for a party at my—at Dothin’s apartment when I clearly told you not to?”
“Yeah, son,” Vinny said. “It sounded kind of like a soft ‘no’ to me. But hey, I’ll see you there in an
hour, kay?”
Vinny cut the connection and all Nix could see on his link was the same picture of him wearing that scuff-eating grin.
Nix dropped his hand holding the link to his side and stared up at the ceiling.
“Oh no.”
Chapter Six:
Thirty Pieces of Silver
Celestine Numbar led her charge, Ashla, down the corridor behind the landing bays and beneath the gubernatorial complex. The hallway was well wide enough for two carts to drive side by side and with space in between. The wall facing the landing bays was all metal and polycarbonates but the other was bare limestone, untouched but by the regular braces supporting the wide pipes that followed the hall.
Cel stepped aside to let a cart pass her by and looked back to make sure Ashla did the same. The men in the cart, a pair of pilots on their way to their fighters to wait out their watch, gave Cel a friendly salute. Cel saluted back and waited for them to pass. Then she continued on.
“Couldn’t we take a cart too?” Ashla asked from behind. Whatever power Cel had to intimidate the governor’s daughter, it had worn off for now. Cel looked back at Ashla with her most baleful glare and the girl fell silent.
They reached the main lift and Cel hit the “up” button. They waited in doleful silence for a few minutes.
“Why are you mad at me?” Ashla asked, breaking the silence. Cel looked down at her, so thankful for the thirty or so centimeters of height she had on the otherwise imperious child.
“What?” Cel asked.
“Why. Are. You. Mad. At. Me?” Ashla said, emphasizing each word, talking to Cel as she would an idiot. Cel felt her blood boiling.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous,” Cel said, then corrected herself, “how stupid that was?”
“Dangerous this time, yes,” Ashla said. “But I’m pretty sure a slight adjustment in the design of the energy manifolds of my—”
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