Among The Stars (Heinlein's Finches Book 2)

by Robin Banks

  “Alya? What if he’s off world?”

  “Shit. Then the com may or may not reach him. So if we don’t get our answer we can’t even know if he got this. Isn’t this fun?”

  “Hilarious.”

  Alya perches in her seat. I know I should tell her to get some rest, but I also know she can’t right now.

  I settle myself down in the co-pilot’s seat, close my eyes, and try to listen to some music in my head. My brain is playing the same four chords, over and over again. It’s fucking annoying. I’m trying really hard to get my mental radio to play a tune, any tune, when an ungodly yammering on the com makes me jump out of my skin. Alya’s just as startled. It takes her a few seconds to snap out of it and adjust the setting so we can receive the message.

  Raj looks as tousled as hell. His hair is a lot longer than when we last saw him. He looks tired and pissed off, too, but his voice sounds more concerned than anything.

  “Alya? What the hell? I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks. Are you ok?”

  Thus commences the most frustrating conversation I’ve ever witnessed. There’s a time delay of over twenty minutes between us sending a message and it arriving, and the same again to get a response. We don’t have time for this and every communication risks getting picked up by somebody. We have to try and tell Raj what we need without saying it, in as few messages as possible. And that’s on top of the situation being awkward as hell. Without the time delay, at least it’d be over quickly. We don’t even have that blessing.

  “Raj, I am so sorry. I really am. I swear, you can spend as long as you want telling me what an asshole I am. Gods know I deserve it. But this is not the time. We’re safe, Luke and I, but Kolya’s children are in a spot of bother. You remember what you said you’d do for our dancers? If you could do that for Kolya’s children, that would be a huge help. Oh, and it’s urgent. I’m really sorry to come at you like this, particularly after everything, but it’s an emergency.”

  She shuts the com down and looks at me, her eyes huge in her face. “Do you think that was ok? Did it make sense?”

  “If it didn’t, he’ll ask. Made sense to me, but I know too much.”

  “Right. Gods, this is killing me. What the fuck is he doing up at…” she checks her monitor “…two in the morning?”

  “Don’t complain. This is stressful enough without the wait.”

  “I just thought I’d have a chance to think about it for a bit.”

  “That may be a bad idea. This isn’t the kind of situation that improves for looking at it.”

  “Point.”

  The wait seems to last forever. When the message finally arrives, Alya stares into space for a few moments before shaking herself off, mumbling “here goes,” and playing it.

  Raj is still looking tousled, but now he also looks confused. “Ok. I think I get you. I don’t have the least idea what the fuck is going on, but that’s nothing new. Uncle Kolya’s children are always welcome to visit. His entire family is. As soon as you confirm that that’s the plan, I will make the appropriate arrangements. I still need to talk to you, though. When you can make time. And I don’t want to tell you off. Well, a bit, maybe. I have news. Good news. But I understand this comes first. Please let me know if I’ve got you right. I look forward to hearing from you either way. I have missed you.” His face twists then, before he catches himself and croaks “Let me know. Ok?” and turns the recorder off.

  Alya looks at me. “Well, shit.”

  “This is good, isn’t it?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. But it’s sure different. Are we really doing this? Really? We can’t undo it. I’m not having the poor bastard fly all the way to intercept us if we’re not going ahead with this.”

  “No. Sure. Can he even do that? I mean, distance- and time-wise.”

  “Yeah. He could. Let me work this out.” She messes about on her monitor for a few moments. “Worst case scenario, he’d catch us in four days. One day away from Dione. Fuck. He’d probably get to us faster. I don’t know what he flies, but I imagine it’s not a tub like ours. It’s doable. Like, immediately doable. Are we doing it?”

  “Unless you came up with a better idea in the last hour.”

  “As if I’d been able to think.”

  “Ok then. We can finalize the details when we’re out of here. Gods, this seems to be happening too quickly.”

  “It would seem too easy, too, if it weren’t so damn hard. I’m going to message him now, before I lose the courage.”

  About an hour later comes his response. “Ok. I hope to see you soon.”

  It’s easier for me to roll with it than to process it. “Alright then. What do we do now, just fly slow or something?”

  “I can’t really alter speed or course or anything else. I couldn’t justify it. It’d look suspicious. I cannot believe that asshole.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Good news. Did you hear him? He wants to talk to me about good news. If it wasn’t all my godsdamned fault, I could kill him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  “I know. I’m going to go and have a cry in private now, so I can pretend I’m still a badass next time I see you. Ok?”

  “Are you sure you’re ok with this?”

  “Well, my current options are deliberate psychological and physical torture at the hand of one of my exes, or unintentional emotional torture at the hand of another one. What would you do?”

  “Honestly, I’d take a vow of celibacy. Seems the better bet.”

  “Give me a time machine and I’ll fix everything. Or at least break it a different way.” And she walks off.

  The next two days are the weirdest of my life. I can’t believe that Raj is going to come. I won’t believe it until I see him – I just can’t. It just seems too unlikely. Alya and I haven’t talked about it. Not about whether it’s really going to happen, not about what it means for us, not about what we’ll be doing next. We do our work mechanically; we stare blankly at the odd threedee; occasionally we pretend to sleep. It feels like my last days of juvie, that sense of a cliff approaching. I may fall off it and splatter, jump right over it to fuck knows where, or take wings and fly off, but it’s coming at me and there ain’t no stopping that. I don’t feel so bad about it. I don’t feel much about it at all, really. Maybe after your world ends on you a few times you just get used to it, you just get strong to that kind of pressure until you can barely feel it. Maybe people were right and I’m a psycho.

  I can’t listen to music right now. Everything grates. I don’t know anything that matches my mood, and it’s not a mood that tolerates soothing or ignoring. Maybe that’s what I ought to do, what I’m here to do: write a soundtrack for the end of the world, so people could take comfort in it. Or I could just be here to shovel shit, fret, and watch one of the people I love the most walk slowly towards the chopping block.

  I wish I hadn’t called Alya a coward. I wish there was a way to take it back, to make it unhappen. She set her jaw to what’s coming, and only then I realized how big a deal this is for her, how much she’s still hurting. I guess we’ve both been too busy with all those other little issues to pay any notice to broken hearts and promises. The day that everything stops happening at us we may have a chance to deal with it all. I don’t know how long that will take us.

  I look back sometimes at the jumble of events, gains and losses, everything that was and that could have been, and I can’t make sense of it. All my certainties and dreams disappeared. When the dust settles, I have no idea what kind of person I will turn out to be. I don’t know if the me-then would like the me-now, either. I think about how I used to be, this wide-eyed kid who believed in brotherhood and true love and clawing your way upwards, and I can’t believe I was ever that naïve. Then I think of what the alternative is, what life would be if none of that was ever real, if truly there was no hope. I don’t think I’d want to live
with that and I’m not scared enough of dying, so I hope that damn kid was right all along and I just got walloped so hard that I’ve temporarily lost sight of that.

  Then it hits me all over again. Raj is coming, he said. Alya’s walking around as if her heart was close to rupturing. We could be saved, or not. We could find Kolya again and go home, kinda. And it all hinges on someone she horribly hurt out of fear, who horribly hurt her back and we don’t even know why. And this time I really don’t know what’s worse: waiting for answers or the shape these answers may take.

  When the ship’s sensors start clanging, I don’t know if that’s the soundtrack to an ending or a beginning or what, but it’s loud and startling and mildly terrifying in a bunch of ways. But Alya and I have thrown ourselves off that cliff already; all we can do now is cling to each other and wait for our landing. So that’s what we do.

  We stand in front of the cargo bay door waiting for the seals to open. I wish I were brave enough to grab Alya’s hand. I don’t know about her, but it would make me feel much better. The only reason I don’t is that I’m too much of a wimp to admit how vulnerable I feel right now.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but I definitely wasn’t expecting two rows of large, armed guys to storm through the door and fan out either side of us before freezing in a combat-ready stance, and Raj to be striding in through their middle like a hero in a cheap threedee, face set hard and blaster in hand.

  “Who else is here?” His voice sounds hard, too.

  Alya’s response is steady, but barely above a whisper. “Nobody. Just us.”

  “Are you safe? Are you well?”

  “Yes. Not entirely. But we will be ok. This isn’t about us, it’s about the animals. We needed to rescue them. Rescue ourselves, too, but we could do that on our own. Not the animals, though. We were all out of options. Thought to ask you. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  He takes a hard look at her and his eyes fill with fury. “You look like shit. When did you last sleep? Eat?”

  She shrugs. I’m starting to think that the guy could be less of an asshole, really. I mean, he flew over to get us out of the shit, but with all that’s gone on he could be a lot nicer to Alya. Maybe I’ll have to do something about it if this carries on. Then I look at him properly and he looks like shit, too. He’s got dark marks under his eyes, which are so full of fury, hurt, and relief that I have no idea which way he’s gonna go.

  What I hadn’t considered was the possibility of him going all ways at the same time.

  “For fuck’s sake, Alya! Ninety-four fucking messages I left you! Did you not think that maybe I really needed to talk to you? I was worried sick!”

  She shrinks into herself and her voice gets even quieter. “I’m sorry. I really am. I just couldn’t deal with it. We had a few issues.”

  “I heard. Uncle Kolya told me. Eventually. I sent him a com when I heard about you getting sold off, expecting no response because I know what he’s like. Instead I got a very nice message from a polite young lady, telling me she was managing his affairs while he was in hospital with a smashed-up head. Which nobody bothered to tell me about, because it’s not as if I’d like to know, would I? Why the hell did you stay on after all that? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I’ve had enough of this, so I wade in. “Look, it’s not that we don’t appreciate your help and we sure as hell need it, but if you just came over to scream at her then we’ll go without.”

  He looks about to scream at me, too, then checks himself. “No. You’re right. It was just… Shit, Alya. I needed to talk to you.”

  “I am sorry. I really am. I just couldn’t. It’s not a good excuse, I know, but it’s the only one I’ve got.”

  “And now that you need me, now you can bear to talk to me?”

  Alya’s eyes fill up with tears and Raj’s fury evaporates.

  “Please don’t cry. Oh, fuck it all. This is not the time. So we’re loading everything up?”

  Alya doesn’t look fit to speak, so I answer. “If you can. Be nice if it looked like we got boarded. We don’t have permission to take anything.”

  “You’re stealing the animals?”

  “Yeah. If you’ll help us. If not, we can’t, and that’s that. And we’re genuinely asking, not trying to put you on the spot.”

  He looks momentarily stumped, then his eyes get harder. “Fuck them. Let’s get this done. Just tell my guys what to do, ok?”

  “It’s just a case of rolling crates along and securing them, and taking everything worth anything.”

  Raj turns back to one of the guards standing right behind him. “You heard him. Start stripping the shit out of the place. Make my ancestors proud. Leave the animals for last; you’ll need to be told how to handle them safely.” The guy nods and speaks to the rest of the guards, and they all set off into our ship, prowling all around us, carrying off anything that isn’t bolted down.

  “Make your ancestors proud?”

  “Anteia has a fine history of piracy. How do you think we got us a planet?”

  “You’re really doing this?”

  “Of course I am. What else is there to do?”

  “Leaving us to it.”

  “To go back to that? Give me some fucking credit, ok?”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” whispers Alya.

  “No, I don’t.” His fury’s totally left him now. He just looks bereft. “Ninety-four messages, Alya. I only stopped because I figured that if I got up to a hundred I’d have to seek medical help.” He turns around to one of the guards going past him. “She can come out now. It’s safe.” He turns back to Alya. “You haven’t picked up any of them, have you? I had news.”

  Alya’s staring at the floor at Raj’s feet now. She’s not crying, but she looks like she just can’t get hurt any worse. It breaks my heart to see her like that, and even more that I can’t do anything about it. I’d thought better of Raj, though. I’d thought he’d be more sensitive, more caring. I guess I’d hoped that somehow the whole damn thing was just some kind of giant misunderstanding, but people don’t propose to someone today and marry someone else tomorrow by mistake. The problem wasn’t that I was thinking the wrong stuff. I wasn’t thinking at all. Wishing, maybe.

  Whatever joy or relief I thought I might feel at getting our asses out of this meat grinder has been drained by the manner of it all. I suddenly feel the weight of these last weeks or months of exhaustion, fear, and pain land on me so fast and so hard that I actually stagger. Raj grabs me, which is good because I was going to keel over, but I wish he wasn’t touching me right now. Or ever.

  “Are you ok? What do you need?”

  “Just rest, I guess.”

  “As soon as the animals are loaded I’ll get two cabins ready for you. My guys don’t have the least idea how to handle animals and I’m not sure myself, otherwise I’d send you off right now.”

  He’s sounding so concerned about me after being such an asshole to Alya, and that makes everything ten times worse. It would be nice if people were consistently good or evil.

  Just as I’m sagging under the weight of that, Laika streaks into our ship and throws herself at Alya. I know it’s Laika, because she looks like Laika and behaves like Laika and makes those squeaky noises that Laika makes when she’s too happy to contain herself, but I also know that it can’t be Laika. I guess I’ve finally lost it completely and I’m hallucinating. Even though as hallucinations go this is a particularly happy one, it can’t be a good sign. Alya’s looking as disoriented as I feel, but she doesn’t have the option to stand there in disbelief. Twenty kilos of enthusiastically loving dog trampling all over you just don’t allow for that. Raj looks down at Alya looking up at him through a fluffy whirlwind and whispers “Ninety-four times I tried to fucking tell you: Alya, I’ve got your dog.”

  “But… How?”

  “Fucking Jameson rolled in on Anteia, having dumped the lot of you in a fucking quagmire, all proud of his business acumen, looking to crawl up dad�
��s ass and bringing Laika as a present for me because, and I quote, ‘he noticed how much I liked her’. The only reason I didn’t throttle him there and then is that dad still believes in obligations towards guests, though for this he might have made an exception. So instead I took Laika and threw Jameson off planet and made really, really sure that he knows he’s not welcome back. And that still didn’t feel anywhere near enough. I could almost excuse him selling the show off. Almost. Business is business. But taking your fucking dog? No way.”

  I thought he was pissed off earlier, but that was nothing. He’s standing there, braced and perfectly still, his entire being burning with a righteous indignation that cancels out everything else. He looks like one of those angels in one of Alya’s books, only he’s got a blaster instead of a fiery sword. I’m pretty sure that right now he’d be capable of things I wouldn’t even contemplate. Alya’s looking up at him as if she’d never seen him before, which I guess she hadn’t, not really, not like this. Then he breaks eye contact and drags himself out of whatever headspace he was in, and he’s Raj again, the Raj I know, regular human-sized and hurt and frustrated and happy and sad, all at the same time.

  “And just to make this worse, you, you godsdamn mulish woman, you decide to blank me out. He takes your fucking dog and I can only imagine how that must be for you, and I’ve got her and I can’t fucking tell you because you won’t godsdamn speak to me. I could have throttled you, too. Nearly flew over a billion times. What the fuck, Alya? Nothing I did called for that. I hope to never, ever do anything that would call for that.”

  I don’t get this, I don’t get any of this, but he’s looking at her clearly expecting an answer. If he really needs to be told, then there’s something wrong with the guy.