Tin Star (16 page)

On our hands and knees we tried to separate out our things.

“Why call the hocht?” I finally asked.

For all of the bruises still left on my body, my feelings were what hurt me most.

“It was Els who called it,” Caleb said.

“Els?”

“Yes,” he said. He looked uncomfortable. “Els thought that a hocht would be the best way to see what you were made of, to see if we could shake you into helping us.”

“And you and Reza agreed?”

“She didn’t consult us,” he said. “She signed me up and then told us. Reza and I were against it.”

“If she had the grievance with me, she should have fought me,” I said. “That’s the way a hocht works.”

But I knew why. Els didn’t pay attention to the way things worked. She paid attention to the way that she could get things to work for her. She didn’t sign up Reza, because Reza would surely win against me. It was cunning and smart of her to force Caleb and me into the ring. It would look like an even fight.

“You could have said no,” I said.

“Sometimes it’s just easier to do what Els wants,” Caleb said. “I think that’s why Reza and I are alive. We followed her when the ship was disintegrating.”

“She said you both saved her,” I said.

“Els has a habit of misremembering things. I think it’s because she grew up dirt poor and had to hustle her way into the Earth Imperium Alliance.”

I could not argue with that. Survival made us owe in strange ways.

“How did I measure up?”

“You didn’t. Look, Reza and I should have come to you right after. We don’t want you to think that we have anything against you. And I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“I’ll live,” I said. But I was touched by the apology. It seemed sincere.

“The three of us, well, we’re at odds on how to get ourselves off of here or what we should do. We’re supposed to be the youth branch of the Earth Imperium Alliance. That’s why I left Earth. I thought that was Earth’s best chance. But things have changed. This voyage. The explosion. Things that don’t add up.”

“What things?”

He turned to me, as though perhaps if he spoke it out loud I could make sense of it for him.

“Earth was torn between joining the Imperium or staying undeclared.”

“But they joined the Imperium,” I said.

“It was that or be unprotected,” he said. “Mined, taken over, depleted of resources, and abandoned. What would you choose?”

Earth had so long been in a struggle to rebuild itself after the droughts and the pandemics. To have it all swept away by the Imperium would be devastating.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“The Imperium means life,” he said. “We are protected. We have trade. Things look bright. Brother Blue was right there to sweep in and save us.”

I made a face at Brother Blue’s name.

“But not everyone feels like that,” I said.

“No,” he said. “There are people on Earth who believe that the best thing would be to resist the Imperium and now they are back in control. And I couldn’t understand that before. I made my choice, but what if it was the wrong side?”

I had no response to that. He took a handful of wires from the ground.

“Those are mine,” I said.

“I could use these,” he said. “I’ll owe you one.”

“Fighting me was not the way to win a favor,” I said.

But still, I tried to calculate the worth of the wires against the promise of him owing me one. He didn’t know their real value, and I could tell that he just needed wire, any kind of wire. But before I could say no, the strobing lights stopped. I tilted my head, straining to listen. There was nothing. We were through the shower. The all clear signal started.

I had to get myself in position to mingle with those emerging from the shelters. I didn’t have time to say yes or no. I went my way, Caleb went his. He’d made off with some of his stolen goods and half of my wire.

I wondered what he needed these things for.

I didn’t quite make it into a nook before I was caught by one of Tournour’s people.

*   *   *

Tournour looked at me as I sat in the brig. He had my bag of wires and a few of the gears that Caleb had taken that had accidentally made themselves into my bag spread out on a table in front of him. He looked disappointed. His antennae kept folding up and down as he looked me and the items over.

“Stealing?” Tournour said. “It’s not your style.”

“Those aren’t mine,” I said.

“I know they’re not,” Tournour said. “They belong to a very irritated shopkeeper.”

I was in the brig. Caleb was not. He likely hadn’t gotten caught. I had two choices: I could rat him out, or I could protect him. I wanted to rat him out. I wanted the wires and the worth that they represented. But Caleb would never be able to get Tournour to let him go. He’d be tried and he’d be guilty and he’d be in the brig for months. I could strike a deal and be gone in no time at all.

“They had fallen when I was taking the wires near the shop, I must have accidentally scooped them up,” I said. I wasn’t lying. That was exactly what had happened.

His antennae moved in a way that let me know that he knew I was not telling the whole truth, but that he was willing to buy it.

“So you’re remorseful,” he said.

“An accident,” I said.

“The shopkeeper is willing to let this accidental taking of his property go in exchange for all of the annoly wires you’ve collected,” Tournour said.

I started. That was too much. My entire forage would be for naught. I wanted to yell at the unfairness of it, but as I stepped up to the bars, their hum of electricity reminded me where I was and that if I didn’t play this right I could be there for a long time.

Begrudgingly, I nodded.

He swept all of the wires and electronics into the bag.

“Good,” he said. “Then there is the matter of your breaking evacuation protocols.”

I sighed. Perhaps I’d never get out of here.

“Three days in here and then you can go,” he said. “After all, according to station records, you were in Shelter 5. And my records show that there was only one Human who was not accounted for and failed to check into an evacuation center.”

He knew! Tournour knew that Caleb had been out there, too. But that was the way these things worked. As long as a Human had been reprimanded, everything was even.

22

After my three days were up, I went and found Caleb. He was sitting in his bin hard at work on a tiny piece of electronics. He was leaned over, lost in focus as he smelted something. Reza was reading a datapad. Els was nowhere to be seen.

I banged on the side of the bin. Caleb’s fingers slipped, and I could tell from his curse that he’d ruined whatever he was doing. Good.

“You owe me big,” I said.

He didn’t agree or disagree with me. He put his work down. He looked at Reza who shrugged and then went back to reading. It stung me to be brushed off by him, but I was here for an explanation from Caleb.

“Come with me,” Caleb said. “I want to show you something.”

I followed him, wondering where he could possibly be taking me. It was when we started to get closer to the more derelict parts of the station that I began to have a hunch. And when he jimmied the door open to the warehouse full of the mining robots, my hunch was confirmed.

“How do you know about this place?” I asked.

“I get restless,” he said. “I walk a lot.”

He brought me right up to my robot, the one with my face markings.

“This is the only one that turns on,” he said. “See the face? Someone knew that.”

He reached behind the robot and flipped a switch. The robot came to life. It was rudimentary, but it was moving.

“What did you do?” I asked. It came out like an accusation, but really I was impressed.

“I’m restoring it,” he said, “to be a companion of sorts.”

“You already have companions,” I said.

“I might not always have them,” he said. “I might not want to go where they want to go.”

“You’re going your own way?” I asked. That’s what he was doing at the docking bays. He had a plan to escape from here. “Where do you want to go then?”

He moved in close.

“Can I trust you?” he asked.

I stayed quiet or else I would tell him that I could not be trusted.

“If I were to speak to you with my heart, then I would say I want to go to Bessen. But it’s not there I want to go. And the reason that I would go to Bessen is not for the reasons that you think. I do not want to ingratiate myself to Brother Blue.”

“What are the reasons to go to Bessen if not that?” I asked.

“Love.”

“Love?” That was unexpected.

“A girl. Myfanwy. We spent the summer together, and then we were assigned to different ships. She was sent to help with the growing Earth presence and to help at the Embassy on Bessen. I was sent to coordinate with Earth from a colony. And well, now I’m here.”

“And you haven’t seen her since Earth?”

“No.”

“And you still love her?”

“Yes.”

He took a tool and adjusted a gear on the robot. The head moved up and down.

“Have you communicated with her?”

“No,” he said. “Communication is nearly impossible from this station.”

“Does she know that you’re here?”

“Yes, I assume she does.”

“And she hasn’t helped you?”

“Myfanwy is the reason that I look at the sky. She is the reason why I love the stars. She is the reason for my ambitions. I won’t rest easy until I see her again. And I know that she loves me. I know it in my heart.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

He looked at me sheepishly—as though he were a bit ashamed of himself. I wondered what it would be like to love someone that much. To me it seemed to love someone that was absent would be like loving the notes of a song. They could envelop you and make you feel, but those notes would never be real. Then again, what did I know of love? I couldn’t remember the last time I had loved anything or anyone. And I had certainly never had feelings for someone in a romantic way. But then suddenly I thought of Reza and wished I were somewhere alone with him.

“So where do you want to go then?”

“The Outer Rim,” he said.

Once again, he’d surprised me with his answer. I’d thought perhaps he wanted to go back to Earth, or to the Human colony he’d been assigned to.

“You’re running?” I asked.

He evaded the question.

“Why do you want to go to the Outer Rim?” I asked. “Why remove yourself from the center of the action?”

“This has always been about how to save Earth,” he said. “Earth needs help to extract herself from the Imperium.”

“Then join with Earth Gov. Show them that you are on their side,” I said.

“They won’t have me, and I’m not sure that they are the right alternative,” Caleb said. “Besides, Earth Gov is old-fashioned in its way of thinking about being a world in the galaxy.”

“Agreed,” I said. “It’s bigger than that. The Imperium needs to be taken down.”

Those words could get us killed, but they were true. The Imperium was strangling the galaxy. Perhaps being so far out had protected the Yertina Feray from feeling the full effect of the Imperium, but it was still choking us. There were fewer ships who docked here, which meant fewer trades and fewer goods. The administrators left behind may not have been a military presence, but the amount of datawork to get anything done had all but paralyzed the functionality of the Yertina Feray. And then, while no one said it, there was a distinct lack of certain Minor Species. And every ship that did dock brought rumors of colonies and planets of those missing Minor Species that suddenly went dark.

“If I find Minor Species willing to strike down the Imperium from the Outer Rim, then perhaps…” Then he stopped. His shoulders slumped. He became quiet. “But I’m not a leader,” he said.

“Aren’t you?” I asked. “A youth officer in the Earth Imperium Alliance? Isn’t that why you were selected to help a colony make the change over to integrating with Earth?”

“No,” he said. “I had no interest in becoming an officer. It just happened. I’m smart enough, but not the best. I’m lazy. I like to be comfortable. Els is a leader. Reza is a leader. But I’m not. I prefer to follow orders.”

He seemed so sad and small, just a poor boy in love with a girl at the other end of a galaxy. Too frightened to actually go to her side. Too frightened to take the fight to Earth where it would demand too much of him. I felt sorry for him.

“I’ve watched you, and
you
are a leader,” he said. “I observe the way you weave through this station. You command respect.”

“So I did measure up at the hocht,” I said.

We both laughed.

“No, because you do nothing with your potential. You waste it. You don’t choose a side. You believe in nothing,” Caleb said.

“I believe in myself.”

We were silent for a while.

“I need parts,” he said. “That’s why I was out during the storm. Right now the robot can only walk and use its mining tools. I know I owe you, but I’d owe you even more if you’d help me get the parts I need to finish fixing it up and help me get out of here.”

I looked at him trying to see down to the very bottom of him. I could not find a lie. He looked as though he were telling me the truth.

“If I go my own way to the Outer Rim, I’m not going to want to be alone.”

I put my hand out to touch the robot. The metal, though cold, somehow seemed warm and alive. Perhaps because, in its small way, it seemed alive to me since it was the only thing that knew all of my heart.

I liked seeing it move. I had always wanted it to be fixed.

“Don’t ever get rid of its face,” I said.

“I won’t,” he said.

“I’ll get you parts,” I said. “But I can’t help you leave. If I could do that, I’d go myself.”

“Thank you.”

I tried not to think about how much I would miss that robot if Caleb ever actually managed to leave this place. The odds of that happening were so remote that it seemed fair to bet that the robot would never go.

23

There were rumors that the station had not gotten off so easily from the meteor shower and that significant damage had occurred to the communications relay. Tournour and his officers kept the peace, but due to increased dissatisfaction their presence was more marked since the meteor shower. They even had their tiny two-shot phase guns clearly on display as a show of power.