Local Star

by Aimee Ogden

  He stopped so hard Triz ran into his side. “My niece is studying the alien intelligences on Golros. She and her outpost were there when the Ceebees launched their terraformers. If the Fleet hadn’t gotten there when they did, well . . . ” He waved one hand beside his head. “Makes my skin crawl having them locked up here till Quelian’s replacement can get here.” Triz didn’t know what that meant, but Belas was still talking. “If Justice started in with the hearings this morning like they’d planned, I might’ve been clear of the lot by eighteen-hundred hours. It’s not as if there’s a lot of uncertainty at play. Rocan has shown who he is in more ways than I’d care to count.”

  He leaned in conspiratorially. “Now, I know their implants are disabled, but I don’t trust that lot as far as I can throw them under five G’s. The Ceebees have plans within plans. Even when they’re sleeping, they’re cooking up new ways to get what they want.” He gently tugged her hand free of his coat. “Well! Never you mind all that. As far as my job goes? Oh, silly Belas, didn’t check the schedule for permissions when a heartbroken wife came a-crying to him.”

  Triz felt a flush of red heat color her cheeks. “Oh—we’re not married.”

  Belas shrugged and smiled gently. “Silly Belas.” He reached to fob a door into another, smaller ring, but it opened first.

  The person who hurried through, head down, was Lanniq, ashen-faced and mouth-pinched. Were Fleet friends not getting their visits turned aside the way civilians were? Or had he been called in for his testimony?

  “Lanniq,” Triz called, and he jumped. She wanted to ask him what he knew about Casne’s case but found herself blurting instead: “Are you all right?”

  “Sorry, Triz. Can’t talk right now.” He gave her a tight-lipped smile, not meeting her eyes, and kept walking. He was definitely not okay. Triz swallowed a polite goodbye. An even worse theory popped into Triz’s head: maybe Lanniq was one of the ones urging Casne to confess. She watched him go until Belas tugged her forward and into the centermost part of Justice.

  The cells of Justice formed the inside ring of the Hab level, each cell a pie slice that narrowed nearly to a point in the middle. Belas dropped a chair in front of one cell, which made its occupant sit up on her cot. Triz tried not to look too hard at the other cells, but found herself staring anyway. In them, people sat or slept with missing eyes or limbs, with transparent gel wraps clinging to the empty space where a section of skull or skin should have been. The Ceebee prisoners were deprived of certain enhancements, the ones with offensive capabilities, as Belas had said. Justice fried their nanobots with a fixative pulse when they were captured.

  “I’ll be down at the wallport if you need me,” Belas said, and Triz jerked her attention back to him. “Hurry. I don’t know how soon Counsel will get back.”

  “Thank you.” Triz tried to put all her gratitude into those words, but they broke apart under the weight. She slid into the chair he left for her and looked up into Casne’s face. Only the barrier of the cell lay between them; it shimmered in the same shade of dismal gray as the floor, the cots, the walls; even, it seemed, the wan lighting. Weary lines carved their way between Casne’s brows and around the corners of her mouth. Triz wanted to reach through the barrier and smooth them out, to reshape Casne’s mask of exhaustion into one of quiet, tranquil slumber.

  Triz swallowed hard. “Hi, Cas.”

  “They told me I wasn’t allowed to see anyone.” Casne’s voice came out thick as day-old algae starter. But that wasn’t true, was it? Hadn’t Lanniq just been here? Who else would he have needed to speak to but Casne? But before Triz could press her on that, Casne went on the offensive. “What did you do to get in here, Triz?”

  “Nothing!” Triz changed the subject before Casne could worm the lie out of her. “I wanted to see if you needed anything, or if you—if there was anything I could do.”

  “I’m all right.” An instinctual response. Casne’s mouth tightened. “They won’t let me talk to Nantha, either.”

  “I just spoke with her a little while ago. She’s all right.” A look of bleak understanding passed between them. “Your quad sends their love too.” That, at least, bought an unqualified smile from Casne. Too bad it wasn’t the unqualified truth. “Casne, what’s going on? Nothing I saw on the port makes any sense.”

  The gates of Casne’s face slammed shut. Her expression might as well have been cut from steel for all the give in it. That wasn’t the Casne Triz knew, but that fit the pattern of the past day. “I don’t think I’m allowed to talk to you about that, Triz, not with an ongoing investigation. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know what I did at Golros and I stand by it. And that’s all I can say to you, really.”

  “Sure. Fleet business. I understand.” Triz didn’t understand at all. “How long until your . . . trial?” Just saying the word out loud hurt.

  “I have to face trifold Justice,” said Casne, a little tiredly. “A Fleet tribune, another from the Watch, and someone the civilian court at Centerpoint will send. They’ll take a week to get here, or so I’m told.”

  “A civilian tribune?” Triz shook her head but didn’t manage to shake off her confusion. “Why wait? We have six of those here on Vivik.”

  Casne’s shoulders dropped a few centimeters. “Only one with enough experience markers to hear a war crimes trial. And he had to recuse himself for reasons of partiality.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Of course Quelian couldn’t hear Casne’s case. Triz’s arms wrapped around herself. It was good Quelian was required to recuse himself; less good that any concerns of partiality might not go the way Casne thought. Casne had been far away for most of the anger her departure had provoked, and Triz had never been entirely sure how much of Quelian’s disappointment bled through port calls and family messages. She’d be damned if Casne had to weather Quelian’s disdain now, with all the rest of the meteor shower currently pelting her. “Is there anything I can bring you? Or do?”

  “Prove the evidence was faked, figure out who did it.” A humorless smile pinched Casne’s lips. “Maybe get me a promotion for my troubles?”

  “Oh, is that all.” Triz’s throat dried up, and she forced a smile. Fleet rules be damned, Casne put her confidence and her trust in Triz. “Failing that, I could try to smuggle you in some of your damu’s biscuits. Belas likes me—by which I mean, he likes you. I bet he’d let me.”

  “Just ask around. There were dozens of Swarmers attached to the Dailos alone, array techs on the other whales. Everyone’s got eyes.”

  “Give me something to go on,” Triz begged. “Who you think is behind it! Or why it’s happening.”

  “I can’t, Triz. Really. I already said that.”

  Triz’s hands twisted in her lap. “You can’t tell me anything. But did you tell Lanniq while he was here?”

  Casne’s stone-smooth expression creased into a frown. “What? When?”

  “Ah! If it isn’t the Hero of Golros,” a new, sickly voice said.

  Triz jumped. Casne looked past Triz’s shoulder and her eyes narrowed.

  The man they both feared was being marched down the corridor between two guards. Triz felt her shoulders tense into iron knots. Rocan.

  He felt for his cot, then took a seat and smiled at Triz, who blanched at the sight of him. She knew that face, even with both eyes replaced by hollow sockets. He’d ported a video when he put out his own eyes and replaced them with optimized electronic replacements. Unlike most of the rest of her creche class, Triz had never watched it and never wanted to. “Perhaps when they forge the medal of honor, they’ll weld a pair of restraints on directly, just to save some time and effort.”

  Triz’s mouth worked soundlessly a few times. She managed to sputter: “What is—what is he doing here?” Of all the people Casne could be imprisoned with, why did it have to be Rocan Dustald-3 Melviq, the very man whose movement Casne and the Fleet had worked to annihilate over the past months? No one had more of a reason to punish Casne—and now, no one had a better chance o
f access to her. Triz’s hands flexed at her sides. “You shouldn’t be locked up in here with monsters like him. They couldn’t hold you on one of the whaleships instead?”

  “Indeed! It’s frankly barbaric that a visiting head of state should have to suffer the company of a known war criminal.” The holes in Rocan’s face held Triz’s attention; even deprived of his implants, he seemed to be staring at her, boring holes through her to match his own. “Apparently, our settlement of clusterward space has been ill-received in the Confederated Worlds.”

  The guards guided Rocan into a cell and sealed the barrier behind him. “Citizen,” said the senior officer, turning to Triz. “Casne Vivik Veling isn’t authorized for visitors at this time.”

  “You destroyed two Habs and an Arcology to take Hedgehome!” Triz ignored the guard. Her lip curled in disdain. “You almost exterminated the native intelligence on Golros.”

  “I think you’ll find we have recorded evidence to show that it was our friend the Captain here who demolished the Arcology on Hedgehome.” Rocan counted on his fingers. “And the Habs were given instructions to evacuate; their choices to the contrary don’t rest on my shoulders. That sets us at a tie, although I’m disinclined to measure Golros’ so-called alien . . . ‘intelligence’ against the actual human lives ended by Captain Casne. And what more do you suppose the Interior Watch will turn up if they start going through footage of the previous combat she’s seen?”

  “Citizen—” The guard put his hand on Triz’s shoulder.

  She shrugged it off, jumping away from him. He didn’t want to hurt her or overpower her, and she used his reluctance against him, dancing around a chair in the corridor to buy herself another moment. “You can’t leave her in here with him!”

  “I didn’t kill those people.” Casne spoke to Rocan as if no one else were in the room. Her lips pressed bloodlessly together as she remembered the rules that compelled her not to talk about her case. She jerked her head side to side. “And your math doesn’t check out.”

  “Casne is a hero,” Triz spat, putting herself between the two cells, “and you’re the human in a robot suit who thought he could get away with stealing two planets out from under the rest of the galaxy. Don’t you dare compare yourself to her.”

  Rocan smiled. Unlike the wreckage of his eyes, his teeth were all too human, neatly lined up but faintly yellow for their years. “She’s more like me than she is like you, a grease stain someone forgot to wipe off the floor of the wrenchworks.”

  This time the guard’s hands closed around both of Triz’s arms. “Say your goodbyes, citizen. It’s time to go.”

  “Is that a Rydoine accent I detect in you as well?” Rocan pressed. “But not an upper Hab accent, I think. Was it the good captain who pulled you out of the recycling pits and raised you up to something like humanity? Or have you just attached yourself to her for the duration, like a watersys barnacle with delusions of grandeur?”

  “Shut up,” Triz said in disgust. The same words cracked out of Casne with a force Triz couldn’t have matched on her best day. The pure acid of Casne’s tone surprised Triz. It occurred to her that she didn’t really know who Casne was, couldn’t swear that the woman who flew for the Fleet and the one who sat down at Remembrance dinners in the quadhome were one and the same. Sometimes it hurt to remember that distance, but right now, she reflected Casne’s incandescent anger like a tiny, angry moon. She didn’t believe, not for a second, that either of those women could’ve destroyed a living Hab. “Shut. Up.”

  “I think we’re done here.” The guards steered Triz away from the cells, gently but firmly. She craned her neck, wanting one last image of her to leave with.

  “It’s okay, Triz,” Casne called after her. Triz planted her feet, pulling the guards up short. “The Fleet will do the right thing by me.” Casne might even believe that. Triz, on the other hand . . . “Just . . . look after my folks. This must be awful for them.” She leaned toward Triz, her forehead glimmering faintly where it touched the barrier. “And for you. This was supposed to be a happy visit.”

  “So we’ll have twice as much celebrating to do, once you’re out.” Triz put her full effort into a grin that quickly ran out of fuel. “Cas . . . if they do figure this out and let you off, is your career going to be okay?”

  “The Fleet will do the right thing by me,” Casne repeated, which was not at all the same as “yes.”

  When the door closed behind Triz and the guards, it felt like closing the recycling pit hatch on a burial.

  Chapter Four

  Triz drifted downward from Justice, first across the open escalators down to the Arcade, and then around each spiraling level, past the ‘shine sellers with their sputtering still and the sizzling griddles of fatty sausages and flatbreads, past strings of beads and squares of shimmering scalecloth. Usually, any spare time to browse the Arcade would be a welcome holiday, but right now, every step raised her blood pressure. Unbelievable, that everyone else went on with their lives while Casne was pinned in Justice above.

  And yet when she reached the lowest level of the Arcade, Triz gravitated to a lift and fobbed in a request to be carried downhab. The wrenchworks exerted as much pull on her as the local star did to the Hab. The wrenchworks was a place where she always knew which end was up. Everything was up when you hung out at the bottom of the Hab all the time.

  But when the lift doors opened, Triz found she wasn’t alone. Quelian had stripped the warped plastiglass from the cockpit of a Skimmer. The plastiglass reformed its original shape after an impact or even a puncture, but when overheated by the superheated blast of a plasma cannon, the substructure memory of its original architecture was destroyed. He’d begun to paint a layer of sealant on the cockpit frame to prepare it for the replacement.

  The soft swish of the lift doors closing behind Triz made him look up and push his goggles to his forehead. “Good, you’re here. Losing the morning’s got us behind schedule, and the bursar will want a discount for every day, every minute we delay in getting these things back to them.”

  Triz walked to the wallmount, picked up a wrench, and turned it back and forth in her hand. She was tempted to take the wrench to the discarded piece of plastiglass, but of course, the whole point of plastiglass was that it wouldn’t break except under a level of stress much greater than an angry mechanic could produce. “Is that what you’re worried about?” she asked. “Having to offer the Fleet a discount?”

  Quelian set the sealant hose aside and leaned on the nose of the Skimmer with both hands. His face showed no emotion, but a telltale flush of his forehead betrayed him. “What should I be doing? Tearing my clothes, screaming and wailing? Should I smear my face with mourning paint and say my prayers over the recycler hatch?”

  “She’s not dead.” Triz replaced the wrench and chose a bolt extractor instead, which she carried over to Kalo’s fighter. She remembered the conversation with Nan and the thought of Kalo calling her like he was practically a part of their family still burned her. The cold core at the heart of that fire whispered: Maybe they’d rather have him in their gon than me. No—she shrugged off that selfish thought. At least someone had remembered Nan.

  But she’d rather get Kalo’s Skimmer back in fighting trim and have him out of her hair sooner than later, especially if the alternative was him haunting her for the next week. The respiration cells on the shitting thing weren’t letting air flow through; Triz hated greenwork but even starfighter pilots needed to breathe. She climbed atop the Swarmer, just behind the cockpit, and began to work the paneling above the cells loose. “She’s in Justice. Stop acting like they’re the same.”

  “I’d ask you to stop acting like you can see stars between the two.” Quelian pounded on the Skimmer’s wing. The impact sent the sealant hose skittering away; it crashed to the ground beneath the fighter and he barked a curse. He dropped down heavily beside the fallen hose. “I know how you feel about each other.” The absence of the word love there sent supernova sparks up behind
Triz’s eyes. “But she’s not the same woman who left Vivik, and that’s something we all have to come to terms with.”

  Triz wrenched the paneling free, and a barked laugh came along with it. Now here was something she could do for Casne: throw herself on the grenade of Quelian’s anger. “That’s what this is all still about? She was never going to take over the wrenchworks. She never had the sense for a busted ship, let alone the ins and outs of every make and model that comes through here.” It felt good to say the things to Quelian that she’d balanced on the tip of her tongue for years. Maybe a little too good. Was her anger for Casne’s benefit or her own? She frowned and started working the algae cells free from their frame. “Isn’t that why you keep me around? Because you needed a spare?”

  “Don’t turn this around on me.” Quelian threw the hose back up over the top of the fighter but didn’t follow it up. “My daughter made her decisions. You not liking how they came out doesn’t erase them.”

  Triz’s tongue worked its way out between her teeth as she ripped off panels; now she bit it hard. “And you not liking them doesn’t make a war crime out of a rough goodbye!” Each algae cell she pulled free was brown, and their gelatinous enclosures were hardened from their usually soft state. Too dry? She flipped the frame over to check the intake and found it crusted over reddish-brown. Flakes fell away when her fingertips brushed against the ragged coating; she let the cell frame fall back against the Skimmer as she crawled forward and into the open cockpit.

  Her work gloves dropped into her lap as her bare fingers searched the smooth, cold interior of the plastiglass cockpit shell. Ah: there it was. Someone untrained in the arts of the wrenchworks might not have been able to find it, but yes, a small, irregular dimple marked the place where the plastiglass had slowly closed back around a puncture. Some piece of microdebris or shrapnel had penetrated the cockpit. She turned to kneel against the pilot’s seat; someone had scrubbed this side of the air return intake clean, but she could see more ragged crust peeking through from the other side. Her heart hammered in her ears. The knot of frustration tying up her guts over the past months unraveled: not in relief, but in a wild expansion that balled up in her fists and closed off her throat.