Burndive

by Karin Lowachee

  “I’m already dressed.”

  “Presentable.”

  He sighed. “Why?”

  “Your grandfather will want to see you. He’s coming aboard once we dock.”

  He’d forgotten Grandpa Ashrafi was on Chaos. With the Warboy, whose ship was also docked there. And the symp who’d killed that pirate Falcone and caused the retaliation at the Dojo—did the captain still harbor him on this ship?

  Ryan thought he might have a few words for that symp.

  “Don’t wander around,” the captain said. “I’ll be there in about forty.”

  It was his father’s quarters, but for all intents and purposes it was a cell. He didn’t even bother to answer that, just poked the comm until nothing blinked and slid back on the bed.

  Lying on his side, he noticed his guitar was secured against one wall, beside the drawer tower, in webbing attached to the bulkhead. His clothing case was nowhere in sight. His father must have unpacked for him.

  An excuse to go through his belongings, no doubt.

  He must have drifted, because the comm beeped again and he had to open his eyes to reach for it. This time he got it on a first tap.

  “I’m on my way to q,” the captain said. “I hope you’re dressed.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “We’re going to eat something and you’ll feel better. Get dressed, Ryan.”

  He slapped a hand on the panel. Of course that didn’t shut off the comm; he had to touch the words “private incoming” twice to make them go black. Maybe he ought to ask the captain if it had voice recognition and could the captain please program it properly if he wanted his son to live in this damn room.

  Quarters.

  Whatever.

  After a minute Ryan dragged himself up and looked through the drawers, eventually found his clothes and dropped them on the bed before he went to the bathroom. This time he stood outside the stall and waved the water to how he wanted it before undressing and stepping in. No more arctic wake ups, thanks.

  After, he changed into something not quite so wrinkled or casual. He knew the protocol, his mother liked him to dress up for dinner too, so he chose a plain red shirt and black pants and even ran a comb through his hair, although he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes wide open enough to really care how it looked. Then he wandered out to the living room just as the captain walked through the hatch.

  “Will I be able to get on comps at some point?” he asked his father, remembering now that he saw a comp on the couch’s sidetable.

  “You have your mobile, don’t you?”

  “You know I’ll need the ship link since I’m hell and away from Austro. You have to authorize me.”

  “Later.” The captain went into his bedroom.

  Ryan stood outside the screen. “When?”

  “When I get a moment. Use Sid’s if you want to scan the Send; I’ve already authorized him. You won’t be transcasting so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Did Mom say anything about Tyler?”

  “I don’t know.” He started to change clothes.

  Ryan looked at the kitchen space and thought of the vodka. “She wants me to comm her.”

  “Use Sid’s for now.”

  Because Sid wouldn’t let him transcast either.

  They had it all worked out.

  “I think I have a right, you know,” he said quietly.

  The captain came out of the bedroom, dressed in a clean black uniform and with neater hair. His eyes were tired **gh, almost hooded. They grazed Ryan. “A right to what?”

  “To dispute Tyler if I want. To say something.”

  “Figure out what you want to say and maybe I’ll look at it. Calling Tyler a bastard wouldn’t be smart.”

  “I wasn’t going to do that. I know better, you know.”

  “There’s more going on now than Tyler’s little report, you might have noticed. It would be wiser to just let your mother handle it.”

  That patronizing tone prickled his skin. “You think it looks good that the captain who’s spearheading these talks has a murderer for a son?”

  His father stared at him, a sudden deep attention that made him regret opening his mouth.

  “Ryan, you’re not a murderer. What happened in the Dojo was a pirate thing. And as far as the Send goes, I never really cared what they thought. Captain S’tlian doesn’t care what they think, and we’re the ones talking to each other. We’re not talking to the Send.”

  “But it matters.”

  People looked. People talked. People shot at him and why couldn’t his father see that it all counted?

  “It matters as much as I make it matter, Ryan. They’d like me to make a big deal of it, like Tyler wants you to make a big deal of it. They want us to worry about everything and validate what they say. But it’s all shit.”

  Maybe it was easy for the captain, locked away here in his ship. He went on, “Some people in the Hub will think bad of you, or me, or your mother. Does that change what’s really going on? I’m still going to work these negotiations and sooner or later the rest of the galaxy will get on the bandwagon. It doesn’t work the other way. I don’t listen to idiots. Now let’s go eat.”

  He said it in his captain’s tone. No argument.

  Ryan still wanted to pound Tyler’s nose into the deck.

  But he followed without a word, or tried to; his father waited for him to walk ahead, to make sure he went forward. So Ryan stuck his hands in his pockets and preceded the captain through the hatch, careful not to trip on the threshold. He glanced over his shoulder to be told which direction. As it turned out it wasn’t far, just down the corridor on his left and into a private dining room.

  Cream-colored walls greeted them instead of the slate gray of the other bulkheads. Finally some variation; this colorless world had been enough to make him want to toss a can of red paint into the mix not only for the color but for the chaos. In the middle of the room was a three-meter-long table with a faux-wood finish; he could tell by the too-perfect rings beneath the dark veneer, not quite Mom Lau’s imported dining set. Shiny bone-white place settings for five sat at one end, with domed, fragrant serving dishes between them. Three of the seats were occupied.

  His grandfather sat at one and stood to shake the captain’s hand, then without preamble or warning he pulled Ryan into a long hug.

  “So good to see you,” he said, smashing Ryan’s nose into his shoulder. “We were worried.”

  It was unexpected and embarrassing and hit him dead center like a rock. He took a breath of the admiral’s exotic caff scent that had clung to the clothes all the way from Earth, and didn’t let it out for fear of what else might leak out of him. His grandpa hadn’t seen him in person until he’d gone to Earth but never treated him as anything but a grandson. He hadn’t seen Admiral Grandpa since Earth, and Earth and all of its tangled memories came back in a rush, as he was held against that warm, uniformed chest.

  “Are you well?” his grandfather murmured, loosening his hold just a little.

  Ryan still couldn’t speak, so he just nodded and avoided the admiral’s observant eyes before he gave away all of his emotions and lost control of them completely. It felt too good to be held like that and he couldn’t give in to it, not in public.

  His grandfather squeezed his arm, maybe in understanding, and over the admiral’s shoulder Ryan saw Sid, who stood and smiled at him almost relieved. So the captain had remembered that Sid knew the admiral and offered the courtesy of attendance. Sid was a familiar anchor, made him focus, and between him and Admiral Grandpa, sitting at a table with the captain might at least be tolerable.

  But in the last seat was a stranger, a young man maybe his age who stood reluctantly and didn’t look any more enthusiastic about being there than Ryan felt. His eyes strayed away from the familial scene and found a blank spot on the wall. Ryan glanced at Sid and let Sid follow his gaze back to the kid, a question. But Sid only shrugged. He didn’t know either.

  A friend of
his father’s? The kid looked too young. Unless that was another deep-space deception.

  Finally Admiral Grandpa stepped back and motioned Ryan to the empty seat beside Sid. The captain, expression held in as he glanced at the admiral, took the other empty chair across from Ryan and next to the kid.

  The admiral was, naturally, at the head of the table.

  “A little respite, finally,” Grandpa Ashrafi said, sighing as he sat. “Without all the govies, eh?” He smiled. He never quite considered himself a govie, Ryan knew, despite the fact he had enough brass on his uniform to outfit a cruise-ship. In his younger years he’d captained the battleship Trinity in the war. His dark eyes were alert as usual, his hair shorter than Ryan remembered and sparsely grayed at the temples. But he looked a lot younger than his sixty-plus Standard years, thanks to five tours in deep space and post-thirty suspended aging treatments. It was a common irony that by appearance alone he seemed to be the captain’s chronological age—mid-forties—but was old enough to be his biological father. He said to Ryan, “Your grandmother sends her love.”

  “I got a comm before I left Austro, but I haven’t checked since.” He couldn’t make himself do it, even if he’d had authorization. He almost didn’t want to see if Shiri had commed back.

  “She’s probably inundating you with messages as we speak,” the admiral said with a fond smile. He meant Grandma.

  “She’s bound to miss you,” Ryan said, looking again at the unfamiliar face in the room. He didn’t exactly want to get into anything personal with this kid here, so didn’t say anything more.

  The kid was staring at the covered food, but not with much intent.

  “Ryan,” the captain said. “This is Jos Musey. He’s helping with the negotiations. Jos, my son Ryan.”

  Ryan fixed on him as Jos Musey looked up, hearing his name. He had doll-innocent blue eyes, maybe genetically tampered, it was impossible to tell. Fine-featured, pretty in the way you’d associate with girls, though there was nothing soft in his stare, his expression, or the spare angles of his face. Faint braising spotted his left cheek and a red, healing scar cut a line down his bottom lip. That evidence of violence set unease in Ryan’s stomach above and beyond the steady eyes.

  Musey might have been biologically younger, even though something about the way he sat, straight and still, seemed too controlled and too aware—too adult. His dark hair grazed his eyelashes, belying the mature impression, and he didn’t wear any sort of uniform that Ryan could see—just plain black.

  He didn’t blink once as he looked at Ryan. Didn’t say anything either.

  It was unnerving.

  The captain and admiral started talking quietly to each other, leaning to their corner of the table. Sid found his glass of water interesting, maybe eavesdropping on the brass, so Ryan said to Jos Musey, “Hi.”

  Musey blinked and said, “Hey,” because it seemed to be expected, not because he might’ve meant it.

  “So you’re helping with the negotiations?” It didn’t seem likely.

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  Jos Musey glanced at the captain, as if seeking permission, but the captain wasn’t paying attention and Musey looked back at Ryan immediately. “Interpretation. Translation.”

  He was surprised at the accent. “You’re from Austro?”

  Musey didn’t answer.

  Ryan waited, but the pause kept up. Musey didn’t seem uncomfortable about it. He just sat there.

  Ryan looked at Sid but from his expression Sid had no clue either. Grandpa and the captain still talked. Words like “pirates” and “activity” floated into the sudden silence. Musey’s gaze slid over to that side of the table.

  “Sirs,” he said, “what about the people that were on Slavepoint? Have they been questioned about”—for some odd reason he hesitated—“Falcone’s lieutenant? And his protégé?”

  The captain looked at Musey and didn’t answer immediately. He leaned back. “A few of the prisoners there said a sympathizer transport took them both off planet… after we killed the Khan and crossed back to Hub space after Falcone.”

  “Falcone wasn’t on the Khan?” Sid asked. “Sir?”

  The captain looked at him. “No. He was on board a sympathizer ship. Doing business. Arms trade.”

  “Sympathizer?” Ryan said. “So they are in alliance with the pirates.”

  And yet the captain was going to make peace with them.

  “A faction of them,” his father said. “Yes.”

  As if that was supposed to make a difference.

  “How can you possibly trust—?”

  The admiral said, “The striviirc-na and those sympathizers who are in alliance with their ruling power, of which Captain S’tlian is a part—”

  The Warboy, he meant. But now that word seemed taboo. Not politic. Or polite.

  “—are working on weeding out those dissenters and dealing with them. Thankfully, they seem to be in the minority.”

  “Oh,” Ryan said. “Well then. What a relief.”

  “Ryan,” Sid muttered.

  “No, really.” He directed his words to his father. “Symps in alliance with pirates, but it’s not all of the symps, right? That’s reassuring. And the pirates? Their leader is dead, which is great, but they don’t seem to be much crippled by it. All it did was make them more pissed.”

  “It doesn’t take much to piss them off,” the captain said. “Or you, it would seem.”

  Ryan ignored that. “And—what—two of their heavyweights are unaccounted for? Let me guess—they headed for Austro after this—what do you call it—Slavepoint?”

  “Ryan,” Sid said. “Tone it down.”

  “Why? I got shot at because some symp offed a pirate when the Hub had dibs—and my father’s kept that symp on this boat. People died because of it.”

  They were all watching him, like you’d watch a bereaved person railing uselessly at the heavens.

  Admiral Grandpa reached to touch his arm but he sat back, pulled his hands to his lap. Wanted to get up and walk out but he couldn’t move, pinned under their stares. His cheeks felt flushed.

  He fixed on Jos Musey. “What are you looking at? Why are you even here?”

  “Ryan,” Admiral Grandpa said softly, as if sound would trigger an explosion. “We know it’s been rough for you—”

  “Grandpa. Don’t.” The last thing he wanted was a speech motivated by pity and concern.

  And to have his grandfather look at him like that. With love.

  Sid’s silence on his left was enough to make him hear himself. Sid didn’t have to say a word for Ryan to know what he was thinking.

  Just calm down. You’re going to be all right.

  Eventually.

  If he stayed awake. If he let people help him. If he stayed off the drugs, Sid had said, especially the potent kind on Earth that weren’t the best to start with when you hadn’t even touched Silver before. Because everyone knew the worst—or best—drugs came from Mother Earth.

  His mind kept spiraling back to Earth, more since the Dojo, and it didn’t take a shrink to tell him why.

  Maybe his mind had never left Earth, though his body had.

  He said, “I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry.” He tried not to look at his grandfather as he said it. “I spin sometimes.”

  “It’s all right,” the admiral said.

  Ryan waited for the captain to say something, but he didn’t. His face gave no clues to his thoughts.

  “I’m the symp who killed Falcone,” Jos Musey said instead.

  Ryan blinked once, and stared. “What?”

  “Jos,” the captain said now.

  Musey still looked at Ryan, unapologetic. “If you want somebody to blame. You seem to be looking for somebody to blame.”

  Ryan squinted. “You?”

  A latent accusation. Musey didn’t confirm it twice and in that brief silence a uniformed server came in through a side door and paused, making eye contact with the captain.
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  “Go ahead,” the captain said, leaning back.

  So the server began to spoon out the creamed broccoli soup and dish out the food for them. All at once so he wouldn’t have to return.

  None of them said a word.

  Ryan’s mind buzzed as he watched Musey’s expressionless face.

  Sympathizer. Symp.

  Strit-lover, which was far more derogatory.

  Here, sitting down for a meal with them.

  The bowls and plates had central warming so nothing would get cold but it wasn’t the food giving off that ambient chill. The server poured the wine too but Ryan put a hand over his glass. Getting drunk at this table wouldn’t do him any favors. Musey turned his glass upside down before the server got to him. The server edged around the symp rather delicately, as if he were afraid to touch him.

  Not surprising.

  After the server left, Admiral Grandpa regarded all of them with a small smile and sipped his soup.

  “Well, Cairo, your meals have always been eventful.”

  The captain smiled, wry. Nobody else did.

  “Why is he on your ship?” Ryan asked. If they expected him to be seen and not heard, like at Mom Lau’s cocktail parties, that was too bad.

  “Because I want him to be, and because he wants to be. As I said, he’s helping with the negotiations.”

  “Then why isn’t he on the Warboy’s ship?”

  “Why does it make a difference to you?” The captain ate, but looked directly into Ryan’s eyes. “It shouldn’t.”

  “I’m on this ship now.”

  “Yes… so?”

  Nobody was going to step into this argument. Musey was staring at him now, as if surprised that Ryan would even question the captain.

  Ryan kept his voice mild and his gaze straight. “I don’t want to be on a ship with a symp. I think that’s obvious considering we’re at war.”

  “Technically we aren’t, or haven’t you been watching the Send?”

  “Yeah, I have. And keeping a symp on your ship doesn’t endear you to anybody. You don’t seem to get that some people aren’t happy with our family right now. Whatever you do affects me and Mom. Or don’t you care?”

  So much for keeping things impersonal in front of a stranger. There went his words, in the air and flying.