Among The Stars (Heinlein's Finches Book 2)

by Robin Banks

  “I bet you do. Wanna take one of the dogs with you?”

  “It wouldn’t be the same. And if he saw that, he’d find a way to fuck it up. What am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to calm down so you can think clearly. Then you’re going to realize that you still have the advantage.”

  “What? How?”

  “That guy needs to get plastered before he can let out his inner asshole. You do it all the time, totally straight.” She nearly smiles then. “Come on. Let’s shut this place up and I’ll walk you over.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Come here.” I wipe the worst of the mess off her face. “You look like a very sad clown.”

  “You’re a good friend, you know?”

  “I try. I don’t get much practice.” That tugs at the hole in my chest. Thankfully I’ve got to bend down to secure the stable doors, so she doesn’t see my face. By the time I’m done closing up, I’ve got myself under control.

  As we walk towards her house, I put my arm over her shoulder. “And another advantage you’ve got: me. There’s two of us and one of him.”

  “Him and twelve boys, you mean? Eleven now. Whatever.”

  “Nah. The boys are paid to be his henchmen. I hench for you for nothing. For us it’s personal. It changes the game completely. And we’re mean, and we’re tough.”

  “I’m not so tough. He already beat me once.”

  “Did he? Didn’t sound like that from what you told him.”

  “That’s not really how it went, though.”

  “It could be. It sounded like a good story.”

  “But it’s not true.”

  “It’s as true as the one you tell yourself. The one where you lost. You made a bad call and trusted the wrong person. So what? That was ages ago. Now you know better. Are you going to fall for him again?”

  “Oh hell no!”

  “There you go, then. You’re older and wiser and all that. Mostly older. You need your beauty sleep. Hours and days of it.” I push her through her ATR door. She looks tiny and terrified. “Do you want me to come in?” That makes her look even more terrified. “Ok. Forget I asked.”

  “No, it’s ok. I don’t think it’d be a good idea, is all.”

  “You know I’m not hitting on you, right?”

  “Yeah. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to get in the habit of using you as a security blanket.”

  “Ok. Fuck off then. I’m tired.” She leans over to give me a quick hug, then shuts the door in my face. I knock on it, bellow at her to lock it up, and go to find my bed before the alarm goes off.

  Sean is lurking right by her ATR. I nod at him as I walk past. I’m glad I saw him and I braced myself, because his voice would have made me jump otherwise. I’ll be fucked if I let him know he’s spooking the shit outta me.

  “That’s how it is, then?” He walks out of the shadow and follows me down the path. He’s staggering now, clearly off his face.

  “Yeah. That’s how it is.”

  “What if I don’t like it?”

  “That’d be too bad, I guess.” I climb up my bunk steps, get in and lock the door. Apparently he doesn’t like that, because he starts screaming.

  “Is that what you’re going to do? You’re going to hide? Come out and handle this like a man.”

  I’m not the least tempted to oblige him. I ignore him until he starts to pound on my door. I get up then, because this is turning into a fun time. I open the door. When he climbs up the steps to get in, I shut it in his face so he nearly falls backwards on his ass. That sets him off pounding even harder, so I do the whole thing again a few times, until I get bored of that game. I leave him hitting my door and screaming abuse. In a fight between bare knuckles and a pressurized door, my credit’s on the door. The banging is a bit annoying, because I’d like to get some sleep, but he’s either going to have to cut it out or he’s going to croak it eventually when they turn the air off. Either’s fine by me.

  The life support alarm doesn’t make him budge, but shortly afterwards one of the boys comes to coax him indoors. He gets yelled at for his troubles. Better him than me.

  Everything looks better in the morning. Alya seems a lot more like her normal self, just getting on with the work, no jitters and no crying. I’m really glad to see that. I’m nearly as glad to see the back of Sean’s hands as he’s giving the boys their chores. His knuckles are split to bits. That’s gotta hurt. I probably shouldn’t relish that, but I do.

  Alya catches me smiling. “What makes you so jolly today?”

  “I was unusually brilliant last night, is all.”

  “When? You escorted me home minutes before curfew.”

  “Brilliance doesn’t have to take long. Not for someone of my talent.”

  “Are you going to tell me or what?”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Gloating?”

  “Fair point. Sean decided he wanted to pick a fight, so I matched him with an opponent of the same intellectual caliber. Fair fight. Sean lost.”

  “You did what?” She looks aghast.

  “I got him into a fight with my door. Boxing, mostly. Check out his hands, next time he comes by.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “He was spoiling for a fight. I wasn’t. So I let him fight my door instead. The door won.”

  She shakes her head at me. “You’re extraordinary, you know that? I know people twice your age who’re not half as collected.”

  That makes me feel weird. “Thank you? I think.”

  “It was a compliment. None of this seems to bug you. I’m spinning out like mad and you’re just so cool about it all.

  I shrug. “It can’t get much worse.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Not really.”

  “It makes things simple. I like simple.”

  The memo comes three days into our stay. Great timing, as we have to action it the following day. It’s brutally simple. Our route has been altered. We’re going to twice the number of sites and we’ll stay there half as long. Instead of having an on-planet move every week, we’re going to have two. Easy as that.

  Everything has been getting so ridiculously bad that this doesn’t faze me at all. It’s just another horrible thing on top of so many horrible things I’ve lost count. The only thing that surprises me about this is that Sean didn’t tell us himself. I thought he’d enjoy watching Alya’s reaction. I wonder if he thought that would have been pushing her too far. She would have probably told him to fuck off and quit on the spot. Instead she rants and raves at me, but when her rage is spent she just sucks it up.

  “We can do this. Travel time on ship is going to be the same. It’s only on-planet we’re gonna struggle.”

  “You’re kidding, right? It’s only twice the build-ups and pull-downs per week. We’re going to die.”

  “We’re not. We just need to be more efficient. I’ll figure it out. We don’t need to unload everything if we’re only in a place for three or four days.”

  “I don’t see it. I don’t see it working out.”

  “We have to make it work out. So we will. It won’t be forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “They think they can double their profits by moving around twice as much. They’re wrong. They’re going to find out about moving costs, bad sites, constant loss of staff, accident rates, and so on. They’ll have to learn the difference between income and profit. Then they’ll go back to our old route, which was designed because it worked. I know. I designed it.”

  “And in the meanwhile we just have to do twice the work.”

  “It won’t take them long, I bet you. They’re going to fuck Parcae up, compare it to last year’s attendance records, and see sense.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Parker’s an asshole, but he’s a businessman.”

  “So was Jameson. That didn’t do us any good.”
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br />   “Yeah, well. If Parker wants this show to go on, he’s gonna have to balance the books. The route he suggests will not. I give it a month.”

  I don’t feel that I have a month to give it, but I don’t tell her that. I can’t see the point.

  2.

  Three days of shows, pull down the night of the last day, move, sleep a few hours until the portabubble is up, build up, straight into a day of shows with no rest, three more days of shows, pull down, repeat until no longer funny. With a crew of two people doing four people’s work. We can do this. Alya keeps telling me that we can.

  She’s not just saying it: she’s making it happen. She reorganized everything we do so the packing and unpacking is reduced as far as practical. It means more slogging in and out of the ship while we’re on-planet, but we can deal with that. She’s thought all of that through. How she managed to find the mental energy to do that is beyond me.

  Two days that threaten to crush us, two days to recover. The funny thing is that the days we now class as our rest days would have been monstrous endeavors not two months ago. We’re adapting. We’re getting stronger, tougher, and faster. I can do stuff I never thought possible. I was worried about Alya. She’s not really built for this kind of work and nobody is built for this kind of stress. I thought our situation was going to crush her, but it’s not: it’s making her tough, tough enough to deal with this and gods know what else.

  She looks amazing. She's never looked soft – there are too many sharp angles in her body and her personality – but now she looks hard. Really hard. I could spend hours watching the play of muscles in her forearms, or replaying her expression as she faces a new obstacle or starts a new day. It's as if every part of her was getting honed for a purpose, and that purpose was kicking ass. She knows it and she's loving it. She is getting a real kick out of it. She’s the most defiant person I’ve ever met, and knowing that Sean is not managing to defeat her is filling her with a fierce joy. Unfortunately, that’s not leaving much room for actual thinking.

  There’s a slight hole in her strategy. In order to not let Sean win, she’s allowing him to continue to torment her. We’re proving that we can deal, we’re adapting to the pressure, but we’re also adapting to constant exhaustion, the complete absence of anything resembling a life, and the accumulation of small but persistent injuries. Oh, and to living in constant fear of the next bout of violence. There’s a strength in this, but I still feel that real strength would have us getting the hell out of here.

  Alya thinks she’s winning. I hope and pray that one day soon she’ll understand that she’s winning a dick-measuring contest that is sucking up our entire existence, that the only way to win this kind of game is not to play. But for now, here we are, making this work. On the surface, we’re triumphing over incredible odds and all that epic shit. In reality we are gritting our teeth and waiting for normality to resume, for Kolya to come back, for our route to be reinstated, for our next stretch on-ship, for anything that will let us take a break long enough to catch our breath.

  Mostly we just put one foot in front of the other. We don’t have the energy for anything else. Maybe one day we won’t have the energy for that, either. But for now, we endure.

  I think Alya half expects us to prevail because we’re in the right. We’re good people, we play by the rules, so, if there’s any justice in this universe, we will win out in the end. I don’t think she thinks any of that, but I think deep inside she believes it, or at least wishes it were true. I wish she were right. I know she’s not. Staying on the side of the angels just means that our arsenal is smaller than theirs.

  I think we’re on our third move, though it could be the fourth, when Alya gets a com from Kelly.

  “I hope it’s nothing bad. It must have cost her a fortune. She wouldn’t have gotten in touch if it wasn’t something important. Shit!”

  “Alya?”

  “Yes?”

  “Only way to find out is to watch the damn thing. Get on with it.”

  “But…”

  “Get!”

  She presses the play button on her reader and Kelly’s face pops up. I haven’t seen anything that beautiful in ages. Gods, I miss that woman. She looks rested, though, and happy. I’m glad she’s not here.

  “Hi guys. I’m going to have to be quick. Credit, you know. Kolya’s doing well. He’s out of med bay now, just going in for check-ups. They reckon maybe three or four weeks before he can fly, six at the most. His medic is as stubborn as he is.” Kelly blushes fiercely, but carries on. “She’s nice. Really nice. Anyway. She got me a job here, as a porter. Turns out being a woman with muscles makes me locally exceptional. I might be tempted to stay on. Anyway, just wanted to let you know we’re all good. Kolya will be on his way as soon as he can. Hope you’re doing alright. Bye.”

  Alya looks at me. “Hang on. Does Kelly like… I mean… Is she…”

  “Yup.”

  “Do you think her and Kolya’s medic…”

  “Maybe? Good for her if they did.”

  “Huh. Yeah, it would be. I like Kelly. She deserves better than she got.”

  “Don’t we all? Gods, this is good news. I can’t wait for Kolya to be back.”

  “You’ve got to factor in travel time, too.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “Depends on our route.” She sighs. “We’re looping back around Anteia. If he doesn’t heal up quick, he’s going to struggle to catch up with us.”

  “But he’ll make it, right?”

  “Of course. Kolya would never let us down. Never. All we’ve got to do is hold out.”

  We’ve just managed to finish our umpteenth build-up. We can get some food, then sleep. I’m so tired I feel nauseous, but I know I need the energy. We’ve got shows in a few hours. Yippie.

  I stagger out of the stables, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light. For a few moments I think I’m seeing things because of the glare, then I realize that I’m not.

  “Alya? Get here. Now!”

  “What?”

  “Your house is smoking.”

  “What?”

  She races out and screeches. There’s smoke coming out of her ATR, from all kinds of places: grills, the panels at the top, through the open door, everywhere. It’s not thick, but it smells awful.

  She runs up to the ATR and rips all the cables and hoses off. The smoke starts to abate. She opens the engine compartment and the smell intensifies. She runs around the vehicles, checking it.

  “Fuck!”

  “What happened?”

  “No idea. Everything looks fried. Everything that was plugged in.”

  “What? Why?”

  “No idea. Some kind of power malfunction, maybe. I don’t understand. My fucking house is fried.”

  “Can it be fixed?”

  “I don’t know. I can deal with basic problems, but this… This looks expensive. I don’t need this; not now, not ever.”

  We’re still standing there gawping at that mess when Sean saunters over wearing a concerned look. “What happened?”

  “You tell me. Everything powered is dead.”

  “That’s unfortunate. When did you last have your vehicle checked?”

  “What?”

  “If your equipment wasn’t properly inspected and maintained…”

  “My equipment?” growls Alya. “My equipment’s a damn sight better than the crap you use. If anything needs testing, it’s your junction box.”

  “I’ll have our tech inspect it. Hopefully we won’t have to bill you for any damage.”

  “Touch that bloody box before an outside contractor has checked this mess out, and I’m going straight to the Patrol.”

  “And say what?”

  “I’ll start with two counts of attempted murder and take it from there.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “First Kolya, now this. If this was sabotage…”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. Things break down all the time.”

  �
��We’ll see about that.”

  “You’re forgetting something. If anyone had wanted to kill you, they would have done this when you were in there.”

  “What exactly are you trying to say?”

  He grins. “Just that your concerns are obviously unfounded. You’re easy to find. If anybody wanted to hurt you, it’d be the easiest thing in the world. Yet here you are, perfectly ok.”

  “My home’s fucking destroyed!”

  “But you’re not. Yet you go around talking about attempted murders. You want to watch out for that. It makes you sound paranoid. People are going to thing that you’ve got issues. I mean, they’ve already noticed. It’s obvious you’re not coping. Then again, nobody expected you to.” He shakes his head sadly and walks off.

  Alya stares at his retreating back, clenching and unclenching her fists. Then she closes her eyes, takes a few deep breaths, and visibly relaxes.

  “Luke? Do you think I’m paranoid?”

  “No. I think that fucker had your house sabotaged. Can you get them to sort it out?”

  “First I need to get someone to work out what’s happened. I need to get to the bubble, get a tech out.”

  “Can’t you send a com?”

  “How? My reader’s fried. Everything I own is fried.”

  “I have your spare.”

  “Not com-enabled.”

  “I have a reader too.”

  “Is it com-enabled?”

  “Don’t know. Shit. Sorry.”

  “Not your fault. I have to go now. Can you keep an eye on the place?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t let anyone near it. Please. If they did something they shouldn’t have, they’ll try to fix it before a tech can check it.”

  “No problem.”

  She goes off into the bubble and I sit myself between the ATR and the junction box. I could rest my back against the ATR, but then I’ll be comfortable, and then I’ll fall asleep.

  Must stay awake. Not a problem. I can sleep tonight. Hopefully.

  Alya comes back on her own. “The tech is going to come out this afternoon, hopefully before the first show. She sounds optimistic, but this is going to clean me out.”