Star's End

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  She walked to the edge of the embarkation lobby, a few meters away from me. Dropped her trunk. One of the soldiers slapped her on the back as he walked past, said something that sounded like good luck. She scanned the starport, looking for someone.

  Looking for me.

  She stood with one hand on her hip, her fingers tapping against her side. She kept sweeping her gaze back and forth, and I wondered if that was how she looked when she was on duty, when she was casing the perimeter. I couldn’t move.

  And then her eyes stopped on me. For a moment, she took me in like a soldier, looking for rank and identification tags, friendly or hostile, military or civilian. I’d seen that look a thousand times the last month, from a thousand different soldiers. But then her expression changed, became complicated and unreadable, an expression I’d never seen on anyone, soldier or otherwise.

  “Esme?” she whispered.

  The starport seemed to spin around. The voices of the crowd turned to radio chatter, distant and indistinct. I nodded, my mouth too dry to speak. I didn’t know what to call her anyway. Not Mom. Not Harriet. Certainly not Sergeant Oxbow.

  Then my mother laughed, that sharp, masculine laugh I’d heard so many times in holos. “God,” she said. “You look so much like your father in person.”

  I felt like I should apologize for that, but instead I smiled, gave a weak “Hello.” We stared at each other. Up close she looked older, her skin leathery and lined, her hair brittle. The Coromina Group had the secret to long life, but eternal youth wasn’t something you’d ever find in a soldier. That was what an Alvatech general had told me once. “At least not on the outside,” he’d said, winking.

  “God, I’m sorry,” my mother said. “I don’t—I’m not used to this kind of stuff.” She gave a sheepish grin and picked up her trunk. “I was hoping we could talk, though. Get to know each other. You can only do so much through holos.”

  “Yeah,” I said, although I wanted to tell her that even those holos had been enough, that when I sent them to her, I would be exhilarated for days. I wanted to tell her that I’d kept all of the holos she’d sent me, still tucked away in the same lockbox I used when I was a little girl. That I’d treasured them so much, I’d been certain she had woven in extra messages just for me. I wanted to tell her that even now I watched them sometimes, in those hours when I couldn’t sleep, her holographic ghost casting watery light across my room. The confession built up behind me but I didn’t let it break free.

  “I hated that I couldn’t respond to them quickly.” She paused, studying me. “It always bothered me that we had to go through all those loopholes just to talk to each other. But you know. Andromeda Corps policy.”

  “I understand.” I smiled weakly. “It’s a policy I approve of too. Wouldn’t want our soldiers’ locations being broadcast to everyone in the galaxy.”

  She laughed. “You sound like your father. Did you feel that way when you were a kid?”

  I heard a hopefulness in her voice, a sort of childish naiveté. A sharp, sudden pain erupted in my chest and disappeared. Part of me had always believed that she didn’t really care about my holos to her, that she sent messages only out of a sense of duty. Soldiers have duty; it was a quality that translated to mothers, too.

  “No,” I said. “It drove me crazy how long it would take to send things.” I was grateful that my voice didn’t crack.

  She beamed.

  “I booked us lunch at the Veiled Garden,” I said. “It’s on the edge of Undirra City. I know you have to get back to your squadron pretty quickly, but I did get special permission from Commander Sky to drop you off at the base.”

  “Well, listen to you,” she said. “You must be pretty high up on the ladder, to get Commander Sky to break up his squadron like that.”

  “Everyone knows I’m Philip Coromina’s daughter,” I said.

  I immediately regretted it—I was Philip Coromina’s daughter, but not Harriet Oxbow’s? But she only shook her head and laughed and said, “Oh, I bet they do.”

  “The car’s waiting.” I gestured toward the exit. “I can call the driver in here if you’d like him to carry your things.”

  “I’m not some visiting dignitary. I got it.” She hoisted the chest up on her shoulder, and together we wove through the starport toward the revolving glass doors leading outside. The heat blasted across us we passed the threshold, steamy and humid. My mother let out a low whistle.

  “Good God,” she said. “I’m going to have to get used to this.”

  “Was it cold where you were?” I asked politely. “I know you can’t say exactly—”

  She laughed. “Sure makes it easier, you working with the company and knowing all the rules. But yeah, it was colder. It was autumn, actually. The trees all looked like they were on fire.”

  We didn’t have autumn on this part of Ekkeko. I’d never experienced it properly, only passed through that crisp, chilly air on business.

  The car waited for us at the end of the walk, the first in the line of CG taxis. My mother threw her trunk in the back and we climbed in. I’d already told John where to take us, so he pulled away from the starport without a word. Harriet leaned against the window as the starport flashed by. She looked like a little kid.

  “Never been in one of these, can you believe it? Andromeda Corps transports us in those fucking open-air hover cars. Abominations. They can’t get off the ground half the time. Everybody bitches about them, but what can you do?” She grinned at me. “We bitch about everything.”

  “I didn’t know that.” It was a stupid thing to say, but I didn’t want the silence to swallow us whole.

  We drove along. The starport was situated out in the wild, where it was easier for the shuttles to land and where people wouldn’t have to live in the clouds of exhaust particles the shuttles expunged from their engines. John veered off down a fork in the road that led us through the natural forest. I’d asked him to take the scenic route.

  “So, tell me about yourself,” Harriet said.

  I leaned back in my seat. Dappled sunlight flickered across her face and body, illuminating her like a painting.

  “Your last holo said you’d been bumped up to Genetics,” she said. “You work with the soldiers?”

  There was that hopefulness again, but I didn’t know how to read it this time. Did she think I was curious about her? Or did she want information about Project X?

  “I deal with military orders. I review them and make sure they’re filled properly.” I was too shy to tell her that I’d put in the request for her squadron to land on Ekkeko.

  Harriet nodded. “You like it?”

  No one had ever asked me that before. Not my sisters, not any of the staff, certainly not Dad. I realized I didn’t know how to respond.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I like it.”

  It was the expected answer.

  “Well, that’s good. No point wasting your two hundred years on something you hate, right?”

  “Do you like being a soldier?”

  The question spilled out. It seemed a natural follow-up, and I’d always been curious. It was the sort of question that would get censored if I’d tried to ask it in a holo.

  She gave me an odd look. “Yeah, I do. Makes some things harder, but—” She shrugged, and I knew she was talking about me, about giving me up.

  My chest started to hurt again.

  “So, where is this restaurant?” she asked, after a few moments had passed. “You sure this isn’t some OCI trap?”

  She laughed, but my cheeks burned anyway. “No, of course not. We should be there soon. I didn’t want to take you some place too far away from the ba—”

  “I was joking.” Harriet grinned at me. “Philip raise you not to take a joke?”

  He didn’t really raise me at all, I thought, but all I did in response was smile.

  We rode along in silence. The jungle crowded around us, a green blur outside our windows. Eventually, the car slowed enough that the trees became
distinct, great towering ohia trees spangled with feathery red flowers. Harriet gazed out the window like she’d never seen anything like them.

  “Just gorgeous,” she said. “We don’t spend a lot of time on the nicer worlds, as you can imagine. Hell, we’re lucky if they’re even fully terraformed when we’re dropped off.”

  She didn’t seem to be talking to me, really, just talking. The restaurant sign appeared, a holographic display projected against the trees so that it looked like an extension of the forest. THE VEILED GARDEN, it read in ropy, shimmering letters the same green-gold as the sunlight. My heart started to pound. What if Harriet didn’t like it? What if she thought it was pretentious? What if they didn’t let her in? She was still in her traveling uniform, red on black. I should have worn my suit. It gave me legitimacy.

  The car slid to a stop. The restaurant was built behind a holographic facade that mimicked the surrounding jungle. It wasn’t just a gimmick, though, but part of what made the Veiled Garden so elite—to eat there you had to know how to look for the restaurant itself, had to learn to tell the difference between reality and falsehoods.

  “Well, isn’t this tricky,” Harriet said, after we’d climbed out of the car. She squinted up at the holos of the jungle. “Guess that’s where the name comes from, huh?” John pulled away, the car disappearing into the trees. “Where the hell he’s going?”

  “There’s a parking area down the road. They don’t want to ruin the effect.”

  Harriet laughed. “I guess most folk can’t tell the difference, can they? Between the mirage and the forest?”

  “Can you?” I blinked at her in surprise, then immediately felt a twinge of disappointment, a twinge of guilt. I wanted to show her how sophisticated I’d become, that I could weave through the maze of holograms and drooping jungle plants into the Veiled Garden dining room. And yet Harriet, this gruff military woman, had seen right through it.

  “Oh, hell yeah. Dango’s MC pulled this shit all the time back on Beamish. Not a jungle, though. The world wasn’t quite done and the only landscaping were those ether trees they grow first for the atmosphere—you ever see them?”

  I shook my head and began edging toward the entrance. The false plants shimmered in the sun like they were wet with dew. It was hot out there, and humid, and the air was difficult to breathe.

  “They’re a sight, I’ll tell you that. Towering things. Thirty stories tall, some of ’em. Weird colors, usually, since they react to the soil—these were all yellow and sort of brownish red. ’Cause they’re not true plants, right? Can’t be, since you grow ’em without oxygen.”

  “Yes, I remember studying these with my tutor.”

  “Yeah, I forgot about your tutor.” Harriet shook her head. The holographic jungle rustled around us, moved by false wind I couldn’t feel. “Lord, you did grow up special.”

  “Dad wanted us to learn about the company in addition to all the normal stuff.”

  “I’ll bet he did,” she muttered.

  We came to the entrance of the restaurant, a solid glass door standing in the middle of the trees. No walls, no ceiling, only a door. Through it I could see the maitre d’ and the asymmetrical glass chandelier that threw off scatters of dots all through the dining room. Harriet smoothed one hand over her hair.

  Maybe she was nervous too.

  I pulled the door open and the cool climate-controlled air rushed over us. The maitre d’ plastered on a shining smile that matched the chandelier. “Ms. Coromina,” he said. Of course. I didn’t have to wear my uniform there. The sensors picked up on my identity when I passed through the doorway. I’d forgotten; not many restaurants did that, although it was becoming more common. “Oh, and a soldier, a sergeant of the Andromeda Corps. Welcome. We do appreciate your service in this time of strife.”

  Harriet gave a solemn bow. “Just doing my duty, sir.”

  And her job, although that was a truth no one ever acknowledged in polite company. I had been at the meeting the day that Dad signed over the payment to the Andromeda Corps. One and a half times their usual fee. That’s the problem with mercenaries: they’re trained professionals, and thus better than roping some innocent kid into war, but at the same time, your enemy can always pay a higher rate.

  The maitre d’ led us to our table, tucked away in an alcove reserved for Coromina Group upper management. One wall of the alcove was an enormous picture window so that we could see the spray of vegetation outside. The humidity had turned to rain since we’d gone into the facade, and drops splattered against the glass, leaving narrow trails that glowed green.

  “This is something,” Harriet said as we took our seats. The holo activated immediately, a calm woman’s voice explaining the prix fixe menu that I’d arranged for us earlier, images of the food flashing one at a time.

  “I hope you like everything,” I said. “Prix fixe is the best way to get a taste of all that Ekkeko has to offer.” As soon as I said it, I realized it was the same thing I told clients. This whole trip had been like a client meeting. The small talk, the walk through the facade-maze, this fucking table.

  “You get used to eating anything when you’re a serving merc.” Harriet stared out the window. I switched off the holo and arranged my hands on the table.

  “So, you were telling me about the ether trees.”

  “Ah, yeah.” Harriet turned back to me, grinning. “Well, we were on this half-formed planet; can’t tell you who it was for, unfortunately, but I can tell you we were up against Dango’s Military Corporation. Tricky bastards. They used holos like the one outside to make the ether tree forests thicker, then scrambled our Connectivity once we were good and mired. Pain in the ass while it was happening, but we sure learned a lot.” Harriet nodded at me and winked. “Might even throw out our own version when we’re up against OCI. Heard they’re using a house military, eh?”

  “That’s what our intel says.” I didn’t want to talk about the war, but as a precaution, I reached under the table and activated the privacy shield. There was a reason this was the Coromina Group’s table. Harriet must have noticed it—the shield emanated a faint ripple of electricity, meant to be as nonintrusive as possible—because she gave me a sly, knowing smile. “We’re still not sure we trust it, though, so we’ve been scooping up private militaries when we can.”

  She laughed. “Oh, you corporate types are all the same. You just wanted to talk strategy.”

  My cheeks burned. This wasn’t how I wanted this to go. I had a million questions, about her and Dad, and why she left me at Star’s End, and about the patterns I’d seen in her message, but I didn’t know how to just ask because she was my mother but she was also a stranger. “No!” I said. “I just—I didn’t want to risk—”

  “I was kidding.” She leaned back in her chair. “I don’t mind if you want to talk shop. All we’ve been chattering about. Haven’t had a proper war in quite some time. Just a few skirmishes, some protection gigs.”

  “I don’t want to do that.” And to prove it, I deactivated the privacy shield. “No business talk at all. How does that sound?”

  Her eyes glittered. “Sounds good to me.”

  The waiter approached with our first course, two bowls of mango gazpacho. My face was still hot; I was glad the soup was cold. I stirred it around, poking at the chunks of fruit and cucumber. Harriet slurped at hers.

  “This is good,” she said. “Better than AC chow, at any rate. So, what should we talk about, if it ain’t military?” She peered up at me, and once again, I couldn’t read her expression.

  “I want to know everything.” I took a bite of gazpacho, sweet and spicy all at once. “Everything you couldn’t say on your holos. I mean—how did you and Dad even meet each other?”

  She looked at me for a moment, and I tensed, afraid I’d said something wrong. Then she threw back her head and roared with laughter. A couple of gray-suited CG managers at the next table over glanced at her and then whispered together. I shot them a dark look.

  “You
mean your father never told you?”

  I shook my head.

  She laughed again. “Sounds like him. He likes his goddamn secrets, doesn’t he?”

  I didn’t want to agree with her, not here, not out in public. But she didn’t seem to expect a response. Instead, she leaned back in her chair and gazed up at the ceiling, like the memories were playing out there. “Well. Let’s see.”

  I leaned forward, my gazpacho forgotten.

  “He’d rented out the AC to help with some security issues. For the Four Sisters.”

  I frowned at that. “What kind of security issues?”

  “Oh, typical corporate paranoia about rival companies.” She flicked her wrist dismissively, but she wasn’t looking me in the eye. A chill ran down my neck. “I remember floating around Ekkeko in the space station, looking through the windows down at the surface.” Her face had gone flat. She stirred at her soup. “Your father came to visit the station. Make the rounds. Stop by the bar.” She looked up at me then and smiled, and the flatness in her voice vanished. “He was handsome as hell, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “He still is,” I muttered.

  “Oh, tell me about it. With those rejuvenation treatments, he looks the same as the day I met him.” A laugh. I wondered if I’d imagined the weird little blip from earlier. Or maybe it was some soldier thing. A flash of PTSD that slipped through the treatments. The thought made me sad. “He came swaggering in like he owned the place—which I guess he technically did, at least till our contract terminated.” She chuckled.

  The waiter approached again. Harriet glanced over at him and let him clear our bowls away and replace them with the next course, small plates of broiled ocean fish.

  “So, he came into the bar,” I prompted when Harriet didn’t pick up the story right away. I’d never spent much time thinking about why Harriet and my dad had gotten together—it was a romance I couldn’t even begin to imagine, even though my curiosity had always been there in the background, the same as it had been with those strange patterns I’d picked up in some of her holos.

  “He did. This is damn good fish, by the way.” Harriet put down her fork. “He sat down at the best table and ordered a drink. We were all staring at him, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Why the head honcho was in the merc ship. But nobody wanted to go ask him.”