Local Star

by Aimee Ogden

  “Your dad must have given PubWel a break,” Triz shouted over the crowd. PubWel, the monitors of public welfare, must be politely looking the other way tonight. Or possibly they were at the bottom of another bottle themselves, instead of spending the celebratory night politely realigning the Hab to the norms of perfect eusocial behavior.

  Casne’s laugh rolled warmly down Triz’s cheek. “Quelian just wishes he got to run public welfare like it’s part of his wrenchworks, but that’s not exactly how it goes, you know. He’s a civilian tribune, not the god of Justice.”

  “I still don’t think he’ll be doing much to tamp down on tonight’s activities. Nothing like having your prodigal daughter return in star-studded glory to convince a man that maybe she’s done all right for herself after all.”

  At that, Casne only grunted. Triz knew Quelian had been upset when Casne ran off to join the Fleet. But she couldn’t imagine how he could hang on to that old anger now, with all Casne had done. She let the subject slide and ducked her head into Casne’s shoulder to avoid the spray from a freshly popped bottle of fizzy-slosh. At Casne’s squawk of dismay, she cackled a laugh. In answer, Casne picked Triz up around the waist and wiped her wet, sticky face off on Triz’s already-mussed worksuit, ignoring Triz’s squalls of protest. Together they staggered, shrieking with laughter, into the minilift doors as they opened. Triz stepped on someone’s foot—not Casne’s.

  Triz turned and looked up into Quelian’s dubious face.

  “Baba!” Casne said to her father, reaching uncharacteristic heights of joviality before Triz could croak an apology. “We were just talking about you.”

  “I got all the Swarmers inventoried,” Triz cut in, crushing a foot—Casne’s—on purpose this time. “Started drainage on the worst one and started two batches of algae cultures incubating, so they’ll be ready for you first thing in the morning.”

  “Ready for me?” Quelian’s frown didn’t deepen, exactly, only shifted somehow. He was much fairer than Casne, whose looks took more after her mother, but there was a certain . . . stubbornness these two shared. When Casne and Triz were teens, he’d taken on a role as one of the habitation ring’s tribunes, expecting to transition away from the wrenchworks entirely once Casne came of age to take over. Then she’d gone and run off to be a Fleetie. Overworked and overtired as he was these days, he didn’t seem quite as eager, somehow, to hand off the ‘works to his daughter’s guttergirl-partner. “I assume you’ll be in somewhat later than first thing yourself?”

  “Baba.” Casne’s perfectly cheerful tone sheathed steel. “Has Triz ever slacked off a day in her life?” She pursed her lips. “Where are Daddy and Damu and Mama?”

  “I queued up to handle the tab while the others took your mother home.” Now a touch of humor tugged at his mouth. “She drank enough brandy tonight to drop a Tolvian martyr.”

  A flicker of guilt over missing time with Casne’s family made Triz’s shoulderblades jump. They got to see Triz plenty, more than they wanted, probably; better to let them have their one-on-one time with Cas.

  “In fact, it’s probably just as well you excused yourself when you did,” Quelian went on. “All three of them send their regards, Triz. Veling said to remind you that you’re invited to dinner tomorrow night.”

  These “family” dinners hadn’t stopped, as Triz had half-expected, when the quadfamily’s only daughter had gone off to war. Having grown up a guttergirl in another Hab’s recycling engines, Triz found any meal she didn’t have to fight for to be a gift; she was embarrassed and pleased to still be included when she was outside of Casne’s shadow.

  They wanted her to be a part of their extended family, so why was Triz so hesitant?

  Quelian looked between Triz and Casne once more and sighed, looking not a little martyr-ish himself. “Enjoy yourselves, then. I’m sure you will.” He shouldered his way out into the Arcade crowds as others finally nudged Triz and Casne forward and into the minilift.

  “Gods,” said Casne, and sighed. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. You know how he is.”

  Triz did know. After Casne had first invited Triz to join her and her wife Nantha in their marriage, Triz had tried calling Quelian ‘baba’ too. Once. The look he’d given her could’ve slagged plastiglass. “Didn’t your parents want to see you tonight?” she asked, now that Quelian’s dour mood had kindled a trashfire of guilt in her belly.

  “Trying to get rid of me already?” Casne’s elbow dug into Triz’s ribs as the minilift spat them out on the second level of the Arcade, where most of the eateries and, more importantly, drinkeries were located. “They were waiting for me as soon as I offloaded. We had dinner while you were slumming it in the wrenchworks. Which, by the way . . . why were you doing that exactly? Mama told me she couldn’t dislodge you out of there with a crowbar and a bottle of brandy. Wasn’t the same without all six of us together. We even had Nantha on the ‘port.”

  A flush crept up Triz’s neck, and she let a little space come between her body and Casne’s. It was always nice when Casne talked about her like she was really one of them, and still awkward too, because she wasn’t. “I wish Nan could’ve been here too. To celebrate all together.”

  “Nan said the same thing.” Casne arched an eyebrow. “But I bet if Fleet Admiralty tried to unplug her from her calculation matrices right now, she’d claw her way right back into them. With those three inbound deployments, the navigators are up to their necks in math about now and she lives for that stuff.”

  “Says the Tactics number-jockey.” They both laughed, and Triz ducked her head in embarrassment. “Anyway, your parents deserved to have you to themselves.”

  “Well, you’re basically part of the family. More than basically, if you ever get around to formalizing it, which by the way, Nantha and I are still waiting for you to say yes to.” A snort. “Besides, if you’d been there, maybe Mama wouldn’t have done so much damage to the brandy on her own. Oh!” Casne let her hand slide down Triz’s arm until they only clasped fingers so they could slide one after the other through a flock of Fleet engineers and their admirers. “Speaking of the wrenchworks. That must have been Kalo’s Swarmer on the blocks down there? Did the Hero of Hedgehome tell you about how he took out an entire Ceebee orbital installation on one good engine?” She laughed, and the sweet sound drew Triz in close again. “I guess not, seeing as you’re not still down there getting your ear bent.”

  Not this again. Triz grimaced. “Kalo and I don’t have a lot to say to each other these days. Shitting stars, Cas, you know that.” It had been Casne who introduced her to Kalo. Triz knew just how much Casne wanted them to hit it off, wanted them to have a gon.

  “Well, yeah. But Nantha and I always thought . . .” Casne pulled Triz into the shuttered doorway of the bakery. “He hasn’t told me what happened between you two yet, either.”

  Triz raised her eyebrows into Casne’s expectant silence. “Okay? You know I don’t care if you keep sleeping with him. I don’t even care if you want to bring him into your gon instead of me.”

  “Triz.” Casne grimaced at the magnitude of that lie. “You know you don’t have to wait till you find a fourth, right? We love you and we want you to be part of our gon. I know you like the idea of a quad but a triad is a good start. Or finish, for that matter. Now, later. Whenever.”

  “I know that.” Triz rested her forehead against Casne’s strong shoulder. It felt good, and she didn’t have to meet Cas’ eyes. She knew Casne and Nantha both cared for her, that whatever triad or quad or pent they ended up with would be a beautiful thing. And she also knew Casne and Nantha had been together for about a million turns, and as a triad, they would be Casne and Nantha (and Triz), not Casne and Nantha and Triz, and she wanted a partner of her own to bring to that table. Both so she wouldn’t feel that tiny bit of extra distance, and so Casne and Nantha wouldn’t realize it was there and feel guilty about it. They would always have their own history from before Triz, their private, personal language of Academy stresse
s and first Fleet assignments that Triz had learned to understand but never to speak. Some people were suns, some were moons, and some were just rocks who soaked up others’ light and warmth. Triz was not a sun.

  “All right. As long as you know.” Casne rocked a bit from side to side, making Triz dance with her. “So do you want me to throw someone at you? Not another Fleetie then, but—”

  Triz’s face scrunched up; she pulled back a bit to frown up at Casne. “Why would I care if it’s someone from the Fleet?”

  “I thought that’s why you and Kalo—never mind.”

  She hated how well Casne knew her, and she loved it too.

  “Well, do you want me and Nan to ruminate on that one?”

  “No! I mean, maybe. I don’t . . .” Triz sighed and rolled her face to the side. Her forehead found the damp heat of Casne’s neck. “I just need time to—to figure things out. All right?”

  “Sure. Yes. Sorry.” Casne rolled them side-by-side back into the cheerful fracas of the Arcade; her arm lingered around Triz’s neck. “Let’s just have fun tonight. You remember my friends Lanniq and Saabe, right?”

  “Of course!” Triz liked getting to spend time with Casne’s Fleet friends. A little glimpse of life out there in the black, without the unpleasant necessity of actually having to put a Hab behind her. At fifteen, she’d been rescued (though broadly speaking, proper rescues surely involved less screaming and biting on behalf of the rescued) from the bottom of Rydoine Hab, crammed into a spaceship, and pitched out into the void. No more dark familiar recycling caves, only the endless black, swallowing her alive. In her panic to get back, she’d managed to scratch a plastiglass viewport on the ship the Tolvian mendicants had chartered across the Galactic Web from Rydoine to Vivik. Even the other gutterkids had been a little scared of her, then.

  “Great!” Casne pulled her around the bend of the Arcade. “They’re at Edillo’s. Come on!”

  “Edillo’s,” Triz echoed.

  Hopefully, she’d changed enough since her guttergirl days not to embarrass Casne and her Fleetie friends in an upclass joint like that. “Okay. I’ll buy the first round.”

  The steward at Edillo’s had given up on his usual hospitality rituals; he couldn’t even contrive to pour drinks himself for the crowd of Fleet uniforms invading the normally quiet lounge. Instead, he sold Triz two bottles of spicewine at a severe markup while he hunched over the opening of his stock cubby. “Glasses?” she shouted over the background din, but he had already turned away to a pair of ensigns who were trying to open the taps drilled into the gnarled moonshine tree that formed the centerpiece of the establishment. When the steward cornered the ensigns and launched into a tirade about the history of the tree and the great-grandmothers who had planted it, Triz gave up. She retreated through the crush of bodies to the pile of cushions in the back corner where Casne’s friends had staked out space.

  Casne’s fellow captain, Lanniq Erron-2 Kett, was the most beautiful man Triz had ever met. His skin was a few shades lighter than Casne’s, and like her, he wore his hair shaved down close. His shoulders and waist formed very nearly a perfect triangle, and Triz found herself staring more than once while he recounted heroics from the battle at Golros. Too bad he was already firmly ensconced in a stable triad of his own, or Triz might’ve made a play for him. When he leaned in to take the spicewine out of Triz’s hand, his fingers were warm against hers, and he flashed her a lopsided smile. Maybe she’d make a play for him anyway, especially if Casne was too tired to come back to Triz’s place tonight. One small catch: he was a Light Attack pilot. But one night wasn’t a gon and after all, Triz told herself, no one was perfect.

  Then again . . . his smile had dropped off his face, even before he had the spicewine open. Triz remembered Casne had told her not to bring up his family tonight—something about his nephew falling in with the Ceebees, with no word from him since the battle at Hedgehome. That sounded like the kind of thing that would severely overshadow even a ringing victory like the one the Fleet just enjoyed.

  “We were just getting to the good part,” Lanniq said, by way of greeting. He got the sealer off the wine and drank a mouthful. No one asked about the missing cups. “But I don’t tell it as well as Kalo. Where is he?”

  “You don’t tell it as well as Kalo because you don’t do the sound effects. You gotta do the sound effects.” Saabe, a lanky lieutenant from the low-grav colony on Andeus, leaned in to reach for the wine bottle. E took a deep swig and gargled it violently, miming with eir arms a starfighter in flight. Casne elbowed em hard, making the bottle jump in eir hand; Lanniq rescued it and Saabe sat back, chagrined. “Anyway, old Pokey is probably spilling his heroic saga to the poor greasemark stuck with him in the wrenchworks. Maybe making time with them, too, if he’s lucky. He’s been churning heavy atmo since before Hedgehome, poor guy.”

  Triz stiffened. “Looked to me like the only thing spilling in the works was the entire flight assembly of ‘Pokey’s’ Skimmer. Do you cockpit jockeys know you don’t win a fight by collecting the most shrapnel with your fuselage?”

  “Lieutenant,” Casne said, a little louder than was necessary to cut through the background chatter. Saabe’s spine straightened as if by instinct. “Do you remember my partner Triz, who works? For my father? In the Vivik wrenchworks?”

  “Oh! Shitting stars.” Saabe scrambled to make room on the cushions for Triz to slide in between em and Casne. “I didn’t recognize you without your, I mean, when you’re not—you and Kalo were, uh.” E jumped when Casne cuffed em amicably on the back of the head. “Sorry.”

  “It’s nothing. Just pass the wine.”

  She’d just raised the bottle to her lips when a four-note fanfare played over the bar’s speakers. The strangely upbeat tone covered the lowkey rhythm of the music beating a moment before, and the lights flashed on and off to match the beat. She didn’t recognize it as one of the Hab’s alarm codes. She took a big gulp before noticing the three Fleet officers around her had gone stiff. “What does that mean? What’s going on?”

  “It’s him,” said Casne, standing. She waited just long enough for Triz to catch up before shoving through the throng of patrons who now crowded toward the door out onto the Arcade.

  Thanks to Casne’s imposing figure, they made their way up to the railing that looked down into the lower levels. A moment later, both Saabe and Lanniq butted up against them. Triz wanted to ask again exactly what was going on, and whether they were likely to lose their prime seats in Edillo’s by the time all this was over, but clamped her mouth shut when the main lift doors below opened. The quiet swarms of revelers pushed back from the doors as a quartet of Fleet officers emerged. They must have boarded the Hab several levels down, at the umbilicus band. The Hab lights glared on their helmets’ visors, lending an eerie sheen of sameness to the group; on each shoulder, they bore the insignia of their home whaleship. From here, Triz couldn’t make out which it was; she didn’t think it was Casne’s home ship, the Dailos. When she turned to ask Casne, the hard look on her face stopped her short.

  More movement drew her eye back down. Another figure emerged from the lift, and behind him, four more guards. Only the man in the middle had his helmet off, and Triz gasped when she recognized him. “That’s him,” she said. “That’s Rocan Melviq.”

  “The one and only Lord Commander,” said Lanniq, as Saabe muttered, “He’s just a figurehead.”

  More theories came jumbling out of the two of them. “My cousin whose ex-partner works for Fleet Intelligence says the Ceebees still have another secret terraforming project underway,” Saabe said.

  “No.” Lanniq’s hands tightened on the railing in front of him. “They’re done for after Hedgehome and Chimon. The tide of this war has turned. I believe that.” He said it like a man who needed to believe it. Triz wondered again about the nephew who’d disappeared. Would he come slinking home now that the Ceebees had been routed, or was he on his way home already in a Fleet prison cell?

  Saabe cl
ucked and shook eir head. “That’s what they want us to think. But I’ll bet you a month’s sugar rations that they still have reserves hidden out there. Maybe somewhere webward of Golros . . .”

  Triz gave up on following the argument and returned to Casne’s side. When her hand brushing Casne’s arm didn’t dislodge her viselike grip on the railing, she prized Casne’s fingers up and clasped them herself instead. Casne squeezed once, then relaxed. “Look at him, Triz. He’s enjoying it.”

  Casne was right. As the anonymous Fleet officers marched Rocan forward, hissed curses and whispered disgust followed them. The Ceebee Commander wore a small, calm smile. “They’re taking him to Justice?” Triz asked, as his escorts directed him into the minilift. A bottle smashed against the doors just as they closed; a Hab security guard with his uniform jacket hanging open half-heartedly pushed his way through the crowd while a trio of cleanerbots zipped between legs to take care of the broken glass. “Why march him through the Arcade in the middle of the party? They should have at least left his helmet on.”

  “Civilians love a show,” said Casne grimly. Her expression thawed slightly. “Sorry.”

  Triz wondered if they’d sentence him to cryo until the hearings started. Practically a death sentence for a man who, rumor said, had bioengineered away his need for sleep. She shifted from foot to foot. “As long as this is the beginning of the end for the Ceebees.” She craned her neck as though she could see through the Arcade’s ceiling into Justice. “There’s something wrong with them. I mean, they think they’re entitled to wipe entire worlds and terraform them for their own use . . . Something about what they do to themselves must mess them up in the head. I can’t understand why anyone would want to mod their perfectly good body that way.”

  When Triz turned to the others, Lanniq was grimacing down at his own boots. Casne’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, then opened for a splash of the spicewine she’d had stashed under her arm. When she spoke, the wine roughened her voice. “Triz, you had your eyes done three years ago to fix your myopia. And what about Nantha's reassignment?”