by Robin Banks
Among the Stars
Robin Banks
Among the Stars
© Copyright 2017 by Robin Banks. All rights reserved.
Written by Robin Banks.
Cover Illustration © Copyright 2017 by Robin Banks.
Cover design by Robin Banks.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Celaeno
1.
2.
Anteia
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Semele
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Thalia
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Hestia
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Megaera
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Parcae
1.
2.
3.
Anteia
1.
Glossary
Discography
About the author
1. Luke
Celaeno
Year 2377
Terran Standard
1.
Smart people will tell you that there are no happy endings because nothing is really truly over. I know I’m not smart, but I’ve been around and I reckon that’s about half true and half bullshit. Happy endings, yeah, sure, they don’t happen: happiness is something you’ve got to keep fighting for. Endings, though, they’re real alright. Sometimes things end on you and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. That part of your life is over, there’s no going back, and pretending otherwise is just kidding yourself.
When the door of the juvie center clangs shut behind me, I know that’s what an ending sounds like. There’s no going back. Not ever. I’ve spent the best years of my life in that place. It was home, in a way, and now it isn’t, and that’s that. Although I’m glad to be out, I’m not enjoying that feeling of finality. That’s a word Tom taught me. I never thought I’d use it, but here I am. All I can do is move forward, 'cause I sure as hell can’t go backwards.
I look out in the distance to see if the portabubble is still there. That’s a ridiculous thing to do and I know it: I know it’s there and I know that I can’t see it from here. Still I try, and I fail, and that just ties another knot in my stomach. I can see Tom waiting for me, though, and that makes me feel better. I wasn’t at all sure he’d be here. We’re lucky that our birthdays are so close together, but he’s had to be out a few weeks already and there was no way for me to know if he was ok. I half expected him to have gone off somewhere without me. Or to be in jail, or dead, or tied up in a basement – those are always options. But he’s here, sitting on his bag right in the middle of the damn road, ignoring the scowls of the passers-by. That’s my brother.
He shakes his head at me. “If you could see your face. I mean, I know I’m pretty, but seriously. This isn’t the time.”
I shrug. “Whatever. I thought you might have gone on ahead.”
“Not bloody likely. This was your idea. You can pull it off.”
“Sure I can.” I’m not sure at all and Tom knows it. I’m starting to get really worked up now.
He gets up and we start hoofing it straight to the gate. I’m supposed to be heading home, but nobody’s going to make me and nobody really expects me to, either. I don’t care, anyway. This is way too important. It’s the only chance we’ve got.
“Luke, my man, if you can’t pull it off, then it’s back to plan B.”
“We don’t have a plan B.”
“Speak for yourself. I can find me someone old and rich to keep me and spend the next two years in luxury.”
“As a bumboy?”
“Bumboy, toyboy, not fussed. Life of luxury, I tell you.”
I know he’s talking shit. He’s as scared as I am. There’s just as much at stake for him as there is for me. More, probably: my home may be shitty, but I’m pretty sure it won’t kill me. I know he’s pretending to be cool about this, but I don’t care. It still makes me feel better. That’s one of the things I love about him, that he always makes me feel better. So I shoulder him hard enough to make him stumble and nearly faceplant on the cobbles.
“Asshole.”
“Whatever.”
We stand up a bit straighter, make ourselves a bit bigger, and march down the road like we’re some kind of big deal. Which we are, really. I mean, either of us on our own, we don’t amount to much, but the two of us together, we can look after ourselves. The citizens who’re giving us dirty looks ought to know that. I mean, I look like shit and Tom looks worse, with crumpled clothes and shaggy hair and fading bruises all along his jaw, but we can cause a bit of trouble. People ought to watch out.
When we get to the bubble gate, we’re reduced back to being mere mortals. We have to line up and take our turn with the rest of the throng. I’ve never seen the place this busy. I mean, I hardly ever come here, a handful of times per year at most, but the crowd seems impressive.
The gate guard gives us the disgusted look that all guards always give us. I sense Tom starting to brace up for something, so I elbow him. “Not today. Save it.” He scowls at me, but he cuts it out. He knows I’m right. We get through without any excitement and get crammed in the tunnel with the crowd. We’re crawling forward way too slowly given the hurry we’re in, but there’s no way to get through any faster without trampling people.
When the tunnel finally opens up into the portabubble, I realize that hurrying wouldn’t have served us, anyway. The place is so busy that nobody would have had time for us.
There’s a row of All-Terrain Rovers and mobile habitats making a square perimeter, with only one entrance into the structure in the center. Everyone is being funneled into that, but that’s not where we want to go. Not that we could get in if we did. I pull Tom aside and we find a quiet spot out of people’s way where we can wait this out. It’s hard not to stick out hanging around like this, but there’s not much we can do about it.
It doesn’t take long for the throng to be swallowed up. Once everyone has cleared out and the doors have been shut behind them, Tom and I get going. There’s a converted ATR right by the entrance, with three windows on one side and ramps leading up to them. Through one of the windows we can see a lady tidying up an office.
The lady’s not much older than us, so I nudge Tom to walk up and talk to her.
He waits until she’s noticed him, then he smiles at her. She can’t help smiling back and blushing. It’s a talent he’s got. It’s damn near his only talent, apart from stuff he can’t do in public, but it’s a good one. I don’t have to hear what he’s saying to know what he’s doing. He’s got a way of looking at people that blocks the rest of the world out. He’ll talk inanities to her for a bit, ask her questions in a way that will make her feel like he really cares about the answers, and once she’s fallen for it he’ll tell her what he wants.
When he changes tack, she looks a bit flustered but she does as he asks. They always do, unless they don’t. She walks to the back of the ATR and we hear her bellowing at somebody. After a couple of minutes of intense bellowing back and forth, she comes back to the window. Whatever she tells Tom must be what he wants to hear, because he beams his best smile at her before heading back down the ramp to stand with me.
“They’re hiring. She just called out the person in charge. So far, so good.”
He’s still full of shit. Even the flirting didn’t calm him down, which is a bad sign. His eyes are showing way too much white. As I’m thinking that, I realize that I’ve been opening and closing my fists for minutes. We’re both way too wound up.
“Tom. Be cool. You’re stressing me out.”
“Bullshit. You’re fucking twitchy. You’re always fucking twitchy. And I’m too hot to be cool.”
The wait is killing me and it’s sucking up time. I’m thinking they must have forgotten about us when a dirty, surly, burly man emerges from a gap in the row of ATRs and waves us in. We follow him, squeezing between the vehicles, and he leads us right to the opposite end of the site. When we reach another ATR, he waves us to stop and disappears up the ramp and into it. He comes back out and walks off without even looking at us.
Tom shakes his head. “I hate chatty people.”
“Too right.” I’m feeling more and more stressed out. Telling myself that I need to relax isn’t helping any.
When the ATR door opens my heart sinks. Standing in the doorway is a woman. An older woman: she’s got to be 25 at least, maybe even older. She’s too tall for a midget, but too small for a regular person. That’s not a problem. The problem is that she looks at us as if she’d seen us a million times before – unperturbed, unimpressed, and cosmically uninterested. She’s not resenting our very existence like most people do. She doesn’t care enough about us one way or the other to bother with that. That’s not someone we’ll be able to bullshit, I can tell.
Tom isn’t as good as me at reading people. He’s much better at manipulating them, particularly women and guys with an itch in their pants, but his game isn’t really targeted. So he does his usual thing with his body, his eyes, and his smile, thinking he’s going to charm her. Instead the woman raises an eyebrow and stares at him until he cuts it out. I can practically hear his dick shrinking in his pants. It’d be funny, if it didn’t mean that we’re probably screwed.
Having thoroughly diminished him, the lady turns to me. “Yes?”
I’ve rehearsed this a thousand times in my head. I still manage to nearly choke on it. “I, I mean we, we were wondering if you’re looking for workers.”
“Workers? Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“No, Miss. We’re sixteen. Both of us.”
“And what kind of work do you think you could possibly do?”
This is the hard bit. “Whatever you need doing. Well, most everything. Not fancy work, but we can do most practical things. Fixing and cleaning and stuff.” I trail off. She looks even less interested than before. “And we know our way around a shovel.”
Her mouth twitches. “Hmm. Come on up.” She turns and disappears inside the ATR. Tom nudges me up the ramp.
“Don’t close the door. Sit.” The lady sits herself behind a desk. There are two chairs in front of it, much smaller than hers, and she’s waving us towards them. As I’m taking my seat, I spot something in the darkness under her desk that chills my blood. I end up frozen halfway down, ass hovering in mid-air.
“Miss? There are eyes under your desk.”
“Yes. They’re attached to my dog. Are you planning to attack me?”
“No!”
“Then you’ll be fine. Sit your ass down. I don’t have all day. You have your records with you?”
Of course they were gonna ask. I don’t know why I bothered to hope they wouldn’t. Oh well, there’s nothing for it. I open my bag and get out my papers, Tom gets his, and we hand them over.
I never quite know what to make of our files. They seem way too slim to sum up our lives, yet somehow too heavy. As if those few sheets of paper could hold us down.
The woman starts to scan my folder. A few pages in she looks at me, blinking. She’s no longer bored, that’s for sure. She carries on scanning the remaining pages, then flicks back and counts on her fingers. Then she does it again. She takes up Tom’s folder next, scans through it, and runs the same calculations. Then she closes both folders and slides them across the table towards us.
She sits back in her chair and looks at me. “You turned sixteen two weeks ago. And during your sixteen years you have managed to accumulate fourteen stretches at a Juvenile Detention Centre, all for vagrancy. This suggests to me that either you are incapable of getting a hint, devoid of self-control, or you’ve worked out an ingenious way to game the system. The fact that your friend here picked up the same trick after you spent a stretch together suggests the latter.” She taps the desk with one finger. “As does the fact that you apparently spent every moment of your time inside achieving every practical qualification going. Though not much in the way of formal schooling.”
I shrug. “I’m not much good at reading and writing.”
“But you’re apparently good at most other things. Though unable to find your way home.”
It’s a weird system we have here on Celaeno. If you’re under twelve and run away from home, they bring you straight back to your parents. They don’t ask you why you went, or if you want to go back. They don’t ask you if it’s safe. As a child, you’re the ward of your parents and to your parents you must return. It’s weird, because I don’t know any kids who left home without needing to, but that’s how it is.
It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat that process. They always bring you back as soon as they catch you, and they always catch you. Ours is a big bubble, but it’s not that big. Off-bubble is deadly without a suit, even if you could get through a bubble gate as an unaccompanied child. You can always find someone willing to hide a young runaway, for a while and for a price, but there isn’t a hole deep enough to keep you hidden for any length of time. Not a safe one, anyway.
I never fancied any of that. It was always an option, in case things at home got too bad, but then so was taking the permanent way out. I thought about getting away long and hard, though. I hardly thought about anything else, back then. I figured that the only thing worse than staying home would be leaving just to get dragged back. I didn’t fancy being hunted, anyway. So I packed a bag with all the stuff I thought I needed and all the stuff I couldn’t bear to leave behind – a ridiculous bunch of crap, I know that now – and stashed it ready for a quick getaway. And I waited.
I waited and I kept my head down until the night before my twelfth birthday. Then I hit the road. I knew I didn’t have to get very far. When you’re twelve, if you get caught as a vagrant you don’t get sent home. A twelve-year-old child is deemed old enough to know better. To teach you a lesson, you get taken to juvie for a three-month stretch. I spent the eve of my twelfth birthday on the street, got myself caught in the morning, and spent a blissful three months in juvie.
Living there was a bit of a learning curve. Some of the older kids would try and get one over you. The staff didn’t really care about any of us. But I had shelter and food and things to do and, eventually, friends. That’s where I met Tom. It
wasn’t easy, but it was easier than home.
Three months later, when I got released, my mom and the motherfucker took me back home, where she proceeded to cry me a river while he beat the shit outta me for educational purposes. That night I ran off again, and again got myself caught in the morning. I carried on doing that until today. After the fourth or fifth time, my mom didn’t even bother getting me home. They came to my release because they had to. The Fed wouldn’t discharge a child onto the street, obviously, and leaving me behind would have made them look bad. So they’d turn up, sign the papers, and as soon as we were out of the building they’d walk away from me. They hardly looked at me, though my mom always cried. I’d go and spend a day and a night enjoying the freedom of the town, and then I’d get myself caught.
As I got older and got more contacts, I stretched the time I spent out, but never long enough that I would have to get into scrapes to pull through. I had to time this last stretch just right. I knew exactly when I needed to get out. I’ve known it for months.
It was a brilliant system, really, and so simple. I don’t understand how nobody else had thought of it before me, not even Tom. Everybody was trying to make do outside, always getting into trouble and always ending up in juvie anyway, but for longer stretches and with actual charges against them. That kind of thing can mess your life up, big time. Tom’s rap sheet isn’t clean, but it’s not that bad, either, and it’s all stuff from a long while ago, before he met me. But me, I’ve spent four years getting looked after by the Fed and my record is practically clean. Anyone who takes a vagrancy charge seriously isn’t the kind of person you want to deal with, anyway.
That game is over now. After you turn sixteen, they don’t send you to juvie anymore: they send you to actual prison, with actual criminals. Tom may manage to survive there, though I think it’d cost him, but me? No chance. I have nothing to offer that would make anyone want to take care of me and I sure as hell couldn’t take care of myself. I’d be a food item. I couldn’t deal with that. So Tom and I had to think of a new plan.
