by Mason, Jolie
“She's invisible?”
The incredulous tone of his voice made the doctor bristle. “She isn't the only one to have been altered, Commander. There's evidence of that in this room. Our priority has to be in finding her and figuring out how to help her.”
Grimly, he answered, “Right. Well, I'm sure in a crew of thousands we can find someone up to the task of finding her and keeping her in one place.” His tone clearly implied the medical staff wouldn't be first on the list of candidates since they lost her in the first place.
“A child capable of breaking high security quarantine. And if she's equipped with her own fail safe?” The doctor chided her boss bravely, almost brazenly. Luca thought there might be a more personal issue at play, but, at the moment, she had an idea. She stood quickly and walked briskly to the door. No excusing herself, and no waiting to be dismissed. She wasn't in the military, she thought. Best to make it clear to everyone. She suspected, at some point, Em would needs someone outside the team. She nominated herself.
***#***
The hydroponics pumps whirled and spun maintaining perfect conditions in the large space. Luca walked as softly as she knew how toward the garden park recreational area beyond the farm portion that sustained the crew on long trips. The air was humid and filled with the smell of loam. She scanned the wide open green area and the benches. There she saw a small girl with clear, brown skin staring at the ground and kicking her legs on the bench.
She approached carefully. “Hi”, she said.
The girl looked up like a scared doe and gasped. “I'm not here to hurt you. My name is Luca. What's yours?” Luca held her hands out at her sides.
“I'm Bettine. I wanna go home.”
“Me, too.”
“You aren't home?”
Luca looked back toward the open hydroponics bay and smiled softly. “I guess I live here, but it's not home. I don't know where that is.”
“How can you not know where that is?”
She shrugged. “I was taken from there a long time ago.” Luca sat next to the girl, moving slow and easy like she would with any wild creature. She felt more than heard movement back by the door. Emery stood there watching her with those intense eyes of his, eavesdropping she was sure. She smiled softly, elbowing Bettine to show her they weren't alone. “He always finds me”, she said.
Bettine looked him over with wide, uncertain eyes. “Does he love you?”
She saw his lips quirk up as he walked closer. “Yeah, I guess he does.”
“That's why he always finds you, then.”
Stated so simply, it hit Luca. They would always find each other. “Nobody found me though,” the little girl said softly.
“How long have you been here?”
“I don't know. I saw the screen with the dead planet on it.”
Luca inhaled sharply at the thought of what impression that sight could make on a young mind. She nearly stopped breathing at the child's next words.
“I was glad it's dead now. I'm glad you killed it.”
“We didn...”
Bettine faced her angrily. “He hurt us all. There were hundreds of us once! He just kept killing us.” She was, after all, only a little girl, and Bettine's face crumpled to a sob before she leaned forward into Luca's lap.
In shock and wanting to crumple herself, she looked up at Emery who appeared just as upset as Luca. He squatted down with one hand resting casually on Luca's leg for balance as she held the crying child. “Bettine,” he said softly. “Bettine, do you remember where home is?”
With her face still buried in Luca's stomach, she shook her head. Brown, straight tendrils curling around Luca's hands. She rubbed her hands over the child's hair and back, hoping to comfort and knowing she couldn't. Nothing would comfort her now, only time could make it better. Time and someone to care for her.
“We'll see if we can't find it, Bettine.” she promised, knowing she probably shouldn't. Luca just couldn't help it. Her maternal instinct, an instinct she thought defunct and deactivated by her life and reprogramming, roared to life in a heartbeat. “You want to go find some cookies somewhere?”
The girl's head popped up tearfully. She had to be hungry. It had been a long stressful day. Luca needed cookies too.“You have cookies?”
Luca shrugged. “It's an imperial cruiser with more than a thousand people. Somebody's gotta know where a cookie is.” Bettine didn't smile, but she did stop crying. The girl stood and wandered away, a dejected set to her shoulders.
Luca made to stand herself, but Emery put a hand on her arm, not moving from his place at her feet. “I love you. I'm bad for you, but I do love you. More than anything else in the universe.”
She met his gaze. “Stop it. You're perfect for me.” She nodded at the child fiddling with the hydroponics. “Kid's right. You're home.” Leaning in, she brushed a soft kiss over his lips, with just enough fire to hint at what she wanted later. They let their lips cling until a disgusted sigh reached them over the whir of the pumps.
She smiled, “Don't spose you know where they keep cookies around here?”
10
Havoc station promenade remained crowded late in the night, filled with pick ups and come ons. The local prostitutes solicited the local miners, and the local miners pretended it was all their idea. The place stretched upward in long stringy columns too many floors up to count looking deceptively like gathered wires in a row as they wound above the main community area. He'd already deposited the other kids in their new small set of rooms in the residential district just off the shuttle bays, where they kept their practically useless ship.
Ian. He sighed, Aiden. His name was Aiden now. Aiden Simeon. He needed to ditch the shuttle and look for a job. He'd left Danielle curled in a ball on a cheap chair, while Tolly did her level best at housekeeping, but Tolly was only twelve or thirteen. He'd purchased a few supplies, so the best he could hope would be she could feed them all and keep Gerid out of trouble. To be six, Aiden sighed, that kid was trouble.
He'd heard that there was a dealer down here on the promenade who'd buy the shuttle, sell it for cheap or for parts, and Aiden could save himself the storage fees. The station shuttle fees were exorbitant.
A sign flashing standard to Purdish, the most common local language, read, Shuttle repair, sale or lease. This must be the place. Hands deep in his pockets, he loped toward the entrance.
Inside, a row of well-used chairs faced a rundown counter, behind which stood a paunchy mechanic covered in grease and oil whose hair had thinned thoroughly on the top, but stuck out in unusual red tufts on the sides. The funny man smiled at Aiden.
“This Gurley's?”, Aiden asked.
“Sure, sure. Let me guess, you're looking for your first flyer?”
“Nah”, Aiden said. “I'm looking to sell it.” The man looked disturbed at this news.
“Sell it? You had to just get it, boy?”
He snorted. “Not like I got happy memories in it. Sell it for parts, I don't care. I have a family to take care of.”
“Family, huh? In good condition?”
“Like new.”
The man wiped his hands on a towel, and nodded. “I'll take a look at her. Where you got her stored?”
“Just at the primary dock”, he answered.
“Good,” The old man threw down the towel and walked back to hit a control panel to lock the shop doors, since it was almost closing, Aiden imagined. “I don't like long walks.”
Aiden could clearly see that, and he let a small smile peek out. Hadn't had much reason to smile in a while.
They left the shop and strolled with the moderate crowd down to the busiest part of the station, the transportation hub. They checked in at the service desk and kept going down the large tube-shaped hallway of the separate section of the station's structure. It had two levels stretching the length of the tubes with individual pods for shuttles of various sizes.
Aiden walked down the center walk where the kiosks hawking souvenirs and trinke
ts stopped and flashed a hub-pass at the first uncomfortable, gree tram car on the line. The mechanic pulled himself heavily up in the other seat, and the car separated from the other docked cars and sped down the rail to the E section. Wind, from their movement down the artificially lighted tube, blew his hair off his face.
They stepped off as it stopped and waited for it to leave before crossing the track and entering the large framed opening marked E. He waved down eight, gray metal hatchways. He opened up the eighth to the man's long whistle. “Boy, that's a pretty nice ride. Where did you come across this?”
“It was our shuttle. Our parent's ship was attacked. They're...were space haulers out of Andron.”
He really hoped he'd memorized this story sufficiently to fool one old man. He waited a moment as the mechanic inspected the hull. The man bent over to pull on the port access panel. “Clean”, he murmured. “How'd you end up here, boy?”
“We were in-system headed for an auction. Dad dealt a lot in antiquities, kinda hobby, I guess. Anyway, when they saw the pirates on scanners, they ordered me to take the others in the shuttle and hide behind the larger, slower asteroids. We watched them....”
His pause here was pretty convincing, mainly because he'd watched the alien ship appear, watched the battle, and recognized the cruiser with the Bell in tow rushing headlong into the aliens, blowing everything to hell. The shuttle was far enough away it didn't get a scratch. It hadn't been a long time acquaintance with the man who'd rescued them and given them a stake in the world, a chance, but he owed Emery Charles a great debt. The least he could do would be build him into the memory they would take as a family. After all, the man had basically named each of them.
The old man kept one eye on the shuttle while he spoke, until that last part.
“How many others?”
“We were all adopted. There's four of us. Youngest is six.”
“That's a tall order for a young boy.” Gurley seemed to look at him with new eyes. He cleared his throat. “You got a state of the art stealth system on this bucket. Depends what you want, but I could move it.”
“I looked up the resale. I'm willing to discount that to get it off my hands. How's 14 triceds?” It wasn't much of a discount, but he wasn't used to negotiating sales. Hands on his hips and lips pursed, the old man's wild hair shook with his laughter.
“I can do twelve.”
Ian/Aiden released a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He stuck out a hand, which Gurley took, smiling broadly. “Let's go get the funds and do a deal, boy. Say, what are you planning to do? You ain't got a ship, I take it. Are you fixed for work?”
“Not yet”, he replied, kicking at the orange shuttle pad that marked the docking mag.
“Can ya do anything, kid?”
Aiden looked at the man openly. “Not much, I'm afraid. “He patted the golden yellow hull of the shuttle. “I'm a fair pilot in one of these things. I've done some tech, basic tech work on robots and drones. I'm no techie, that's for sure.”
“Can you maintain a shuttle?”
This started to sound like an interview to Aiden, who suddenly paid more attention. “Changing fluids and filters? That kind of thing?”
The man smiled. “Yeah. That kind of thing.”
He nodded. “I've done that.”
The old man clapped him on the shoulder. “All right then! Let's go take care of this shuttle of yours, and you can report to work in the morning.”
“Are you sure?” Ian...Aiden couldn't quite believe his luck. It hadn't been around in abundance for him to know just what the good kind looked like.
“It ain't Quantum Physics, boy. We can train you on the hard stuff, and I do need another man, refugees are starting to pour in from the rim planets. People trying to get out of the way before it all hits the fan. You want it?”
“Yes, sir. I'll take it.”
“All right then.”
He clapped Aiden's shoulder harder than before, and the boy rubbed it as they left the shuttle, securing it behind them. They left the transportation hub the same way they'd come in, but the conversation was a bit more jovial this time, as Gurley quizzed Aiden Simeon on his new life.
***#***
Aiden opened his residence carrying a box of food and a few staples they needed. Tolly had apparently bathed Gerid because she was chasing him with a long shirt of Aiden's, trying to put it on his small, brown body. Danielle sat on the only chair in the room, eyes unseeing. He took her in, with concern, unnaturally pale skin for her coloring. Her gray eyes just disengaged sometimes, times like now. Her thin frame curled inward with her knees to her chest and hands clasped tightly in anxiety over her legs. The long white, wide-legged pants Luca had given her draped her tiny legs. He put the box on the table nearby, and this lured Gerid to one place squealing for Tolly to catch him. She did, hooking him with the neck of the wide shirt.
“Danny? I brought you some shampoo. It smells like vanilla.” He'd developed the habit of talking to her as if she would answer. She hadn't yet. He kept hoping. After all, he couldn't be here all the time and earn a living. Tolly was terribly young to have so much responsibility. He knelt at her side one arm leaning along the chair arm.
The girl was only fifteen. What must she have been through to get into this state? He tried again.
“I found a datapad. It's old, but it works. You can read something if you like. You like books, right?”
Danny's brown hair fell limply around her awkward young face. She didn't fit the definition most people applied to pretty, but he thought she would be closer to beautiful one day. He didn't know why. It was a feeling he had.
“Come on, Danny. Don't leave me hanging here.” She turned her head slightly then, eyes focused and gray as a winter storm. Her straight, firm lips curved into the barest hint of a smile. Her long, tapered fingers reached up to run one by one from the top of his nose down to the tip of his recently shaved chin. It surprised him.
“I like vanilla”, she said softly and laughed a quiet sort of laugh when he just stared at her. It wasn't that he didn't want to say something. He was just so surprised that she'd not only spoken but she'd touched him. She'd gone nova last night when Gerry had only grabbed her arm. “I'm awake”, she said to him.
“I see that. Are you hungry? You haven't eaten enough today.”
She nodded. He stood, grabbing the box of food goods, and heading to the kitchen. The FDU, food dispensing unit, here in the unit charged the apartment for any food dispensed. They would eat purchased goods when they could to save money. He'd put a lock code on the most expensive things. Danny needed to eat, so he went to work making food for them all.
As he worked, his thoughts wandered. It was strange that he was here. A month ago, he had no family, no real place in the world, and he'd been dying. The cancer ravaging his body had left him thin and weaker than he should be, but he found himself more contented with his life now than before he'd been ill. These three would never starve on streets or be used as sex toys by fat, rich men in brothels. These three would be saved, even if he could save no one else.
***#***
Two days later, he wiped grease and grime from his face with a hand towel he carried in a pocket. This job was dirty work, and clothes were still a priority for the two youngest. Gerry had a tendency to bull rush him at the door.
This day, thought, everything was different. The door hissed sideways to reveal chaos within. Gerid sat crying at the table, the vidviewer was on, Danny screamed in the corner, and Tolly stood shouting over it all for everyone to just calm down. He rushed in letting the door close behind him. “Tolly, get Gerry and take him to our room.”
She met his eyes with sad brown ones and grumbled, but she did what he asked. He went carefully to Danny, sitting down beside her. He sat with his back to the wall next to hers, as she continued to scream, ears covered.
“What's wrong?”
“Turn it off!” She pointed frantically at the vidviewer on the wall. He looked up to fina
lly notice the station's newscast. A picture of the alien ship that had taken the Carry Bell filled the screen like it was in the room with them. Then he read the scrolling newsfeed. Not that ship. Another one like it.
In one of the newest systems on the rim, not even explored entirely, these things appeared only hours ago. The Drexen system would be a wasteland. Any ships in the system were reported to have been destroyed, and landing parties were decimating the small population of the only terraformed planet, according to Manu Watts of HSN, the announcer on the screen.
“Turn off vid”, he said loudly to the room. The viewer automatically turned off, and Danny quieted to small, wracking sobs. “It's far away, Danny”, he whispered. “Not here.”
“Will be”, she said.
“We'll find a way to leave, I swear. Nothing will get to you again.” He touched her shoulder, and she melted into his side. He rubbed her arm awkwardly, and whispered nonsense till she stopped sobbing and moved onto the sniffling portion of her cry. This wasn't exactly his area, he thought.
“Ian?”
“You have to call me Aiden, Danny. No one can guess who we are. They could be looking for us.”
“My name is the same.” She pulled back, puffy eyed and red.
How could he explain this one? “We thought it would be easier for you.”
She didn't respond but chose to look up at him. Her swollen eyes and puffy nose only made her look fragile and renewed his determination to protect these three who had become his family.
“Because I'm broken.”
“You are not broken. Danny, don't ever believe that. You will heal. We're family now, and we'll see to it.”
She sniffed, continuing to hit him with those big, gray eyes. “Okay”, she said.
“Okay”, he answered. “We will get through this.”
“And, we'll go back home?”
“Back home to where, Danny?” He hated to crush her. There was such longing in her voice. “Did you have parents? I can try and find them.”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, I don't want them.”
So, she had them, but they weren't worth having. His jaw tightened and he forced his hand on her shoulder to relax. Having bad parents was worse than having none. “We can go anywhere we want. Live by an ocean or on a mountain. Anywhere but space. Where do you want to go?”
