Local Star

by Aimee Ogden

  Triz squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for Kalo to countermand that insane idea. No pilot alive could hit an angle that precisely, and no one at all could aim their own body at a flying starship at eight hundred klicks an hour. But instead, Kalo said, “Triz, when I tell you, I want you to exhale as hard as you can. Do you understand?”

  Her own voice sounded very far away when she heard herself say, “Yes.” Casne reached over the couch in front to squeeze her shoulder. Triz clenched her teeth at the sound of restraints releasing.

  “I’ve got control of this fighter. Don’t worry.” The Tiresh slid into place between the Scooper and the tunnel. A well-timed burst of the upper engine cut their inertia so hard Triz slammed against her restraints.

  “It’s going to be over soon, Triz.” Casne sounded like she believed that. So Triz believed it too. “We did it. You did it.”

  “ . . . Okay.” The Scooper was so close now. In Triz’s head a refrain roared: she’s not really going to do this. She’s not really going to do this. Kalo flipped a switch, and billows of frozen white gas erupted from the seams in the plastiglass. They bloomed out of the Tiresh like tiny nebulae. “Tell me when.”

  Casne pulled a lever and the Tiresh hummed. Over Triz’s head, a black cable unspooled. It struck home in the Scooper, and held fast; another brief spasm from the Tiresh’s engine’s bruised Triz’s ribs. It also broke the Scooper’s inertia and held it close in the boarding hook cable’s embrace. “All right,” Casne said, “we’re go in three—two—one—now!”

  “Now, Triz!”

  Triz blew out as hard as she could. Overhead, the plastiglass parted like a breaking window. Casne kicked out from her seat, and the Scooper was still so far away, except that it wasn’t at all, was it, and the plastiglass shell closed overhead, and black sparks tore at Triz’s vision, she couldn’t see to release another injection of coolant, but they’d stopped now anyway, Kalo only needed sub-min engine effort to collect Casne, or was it Triz who was out there, going hand-over-hand between one ship and the next, and what the shitting stars was he yelling at her about now, she just needed a little rest . . .

  Chapter Eleven

  Sound returned slowly. Raised voices, what felt like an icy collar pinned around her neck. Triz blinked her eyes open. Her head was pounding, and her mouth tasted like she’d been guzzling rotten algae. “I think I threw up,” she said, coughing. Those were Casne’s frozen hands on her shoulders, Casne’s body squeezed in alongside hers, Casne’s laughter in her ears. When she kissed Triz’s forehead, her lips left a burning-cold imprint. Triz’s head lolled to the other side, where Rocan slouched beside her in the empty gunner’s couch. Blood trickled down his face from the space where his eyes should have been, and his left wrist bent inward at a nauseous angle.

  “You did it,” Triz said.

  “Thanks to you,” said Casne, still drifting in the space just over Triz’s head. “Are you sure you didn’t miss your calling not joining the Fleet?”

  “We’ll get the Admiralty to start a new division.” Kalo sounded space-roughened. Triz would feel a little better about her own performance if he’d lost his lunch mid-vent too. “Combat Mechanics. It’s catchy.”

  Triz wanted to tell Casne she should sit down and buckle up like the respectable Fleet officer she was—but found she didn’t have it in her. She clutched Casne’s bloody, space-cold hand and pressed herself into the shelter of Casne’s cold body until it warmed against her. Together they stretched their necks and watched Vivik grow big and bright and blissfully closer on the face of the plastiglass.

  By the time they touched down, the regular lights in the wrenchworks had come back on, albeit not at quite their full intensity. Rocan had also come around, cursing and spitting at Kalo and Casne as they maneuvered him out of the Tiresh. “The Cyberbionautic Alliance will never accede to the hidebound rules of unmodified humanity,” he said, as they hauled him up by his elbows and dragged him toward the battered doors of the remaining lift, with Triz leading the way. “Nor will I. I will not stop, nor rest, until your memories are unwound from the fabric of the universe, until your genes unspooled from the common bindings of humankind. Until—”

  Triz turned around and struck him in the belly with the flat of her belt wrench.

  He gasped for air, staggered, and fell silent. A temporary solution, but sometimes temporary solutions were the best path to someplace more permanent.

  “Triz.” Casne shook her head.

  Triz ignored her and keyed in a lift call.

  But she hadn’t yet finished when the lift doors shivered and ground open. The doors parted, and inside stood Quelian, flanked by half a dozen Justice officers.

  “Hi, Quelian,” Triz said as he stared at her in shock. “Sorry, we kind of made a mess of the ‘works.”

  Before Quelian could ask what happened, his daughter stepped forward and saluted. “Quelian Vivik Orist.” Casne’s cold formality to her father gave Triz goosebumps. “I stand to remand myself, and Rocan Dustald-3 Melviq of the Cyberbionautic Alliance to the wisdom of Justice.”

  Triz bit her tongue on an inappropriate comment about the level of wisdom currently on offer there.

  At Quelian’s nod, the Justice officers moved forward to flank Casne and Rocan. “Put the Ceebee in cryo,” Quelian ordered. His gaze fell on his daughter next. “Considering the current state of Justice, Captain Casne is remanded to her usual onhab quarters for the time being.” He gave them the location marker of Triz’s pairhome. When he finished, he looked as if he would have liked to say something else. Of course, saying things was never Quelian’s strong suit. Not saying the right things, certainly. He nodded once at Casne, and she returned the gesture in kind. Triz turned away from whatever understated familial communion was happening without her there, and found herself face to face with Kalo.

  “Come on, greasemark,” he said, and flung his bad arm across her shoulder. “My bootlaces are untied. Carry me out of here while the grownups figure this out.”

  Chapter Twelve

  After new evidence was provided by a pair of Ceebees left for dead by their lord commander in his ill-fated escape from Justice, a missive from Centerpoint waived the necessity for Quelian to recuse himself. The Ceebee lieutenants testified in the circular court at the crown of Justice, raising their voices to speak over the temporary air circulators brought in to work around the damage. A Ceebee agent in the Hab had handed off a biobomb packet to Lanniq. That agent had then fled Vivik for greener Ceebee pastures in the Webward Pearls or farther still. Lanniq was left to plant the packet on the surface of the Hab during one of his training flights. Upon detonation, it had opened a hole in Justice, and the microorganisms hadn’t been stopped before they wreaked havoc on the facilities of the Arcade. Every plastic surface had been consumed by the corrosion Triz had seen from the wrenchworks wallport. In Justice, too, there had once been circles of plastiprint benches in the spectator ring. Now, most of the gathered crowd stood. But they stood solemnly, and proudly, to listen as the ashen-faced Ceebees recited their confessions.

  A sedate pallor hung over the hearings, absent of the usual theatrics from the Advocates. Four civilians and two Fleet officers had been killed by the Ceebee plot. And then there was Lanniq.

  The crowds did not boo or jeer when the Ceebees explained the placement of undetonated missiles in the destroyed Arcology at Hedgehome, as an insurance technique against the expected Fleet reprisal. Only a few angry murmurs cut through as the junior Ceebee officer demonstrated the advanced techniques used to falsify the firing solution Casne had allegedly programmed. Finally, the Ceebee’s Advocate instructed them to demonstrate the final component in their confession: the backdoor exploit into Fleet personnel files the Ceebees used to find the best candidates to cause mayhem to the Fleet.

  Lanniq had been one such candidate, of course. Originally targeted for his wife’s position in Counterintelligence, they’d been able to wield his stray Ceebee nephew as a lever against him. The boy’s life in
exchange for Rocan’s freedom and Casne’s honor: a trade he had chosen, however painfully, to make.

  And of course, Casne Vivik Veling herself had been a gold mine of a find for them: not only was her father the only high-ranking civilian tribune in the nearest several systems, but they also shared an unstable family psych profile to boot. Casne and Quelian sat, mirror images of stone-faced statues, as the Ceebee witnesses and Justice questioners dissected their relationship. Of course, Casne wasn’t the only one who had been affected; two more earlier Interior Watch investigations were set to be reopened immediately based on the new evidence at hand as well.

  “Thorough,” noted Quelian, who looked odd to Triz in his red Justice robes rather than a stained jumpsuit. She wasn’t sure whether he meant the Ceebees’ work or that of the questioners. He didn’t look at his daughter, who sat just inside the ring of spectators. But her hard, dark eyes bored holes through the fabric over his heart. Triz, forced to watch from the distance of the spectator circle, opened and closed a valve clip from the Tiresh that she still needed to fix, to make her hands forget they weren’t holding Casne’s. She checked the back of the gallery from time to time, too, but Kalo never did manage to put in an appearance. In fact, Triz hadn’t seen him since she deposited him at the medical bay. As if she wasn’t worried enough already.

  Earlier, in private, the Ceebees had testified about Lanniq, and provided details on the location of his family to be passed on to those in the Fleet who could do something about the situation. His Ceebee nephew was still alive, they swore. The Fleet assured Casne that the young man would be retrieved and returned to his family in due course; that Lanniq had not died for nothing. That loyalty to family over Fleet was not an offense to be paid out in the boy’s blood. Triz had heard about that part of the deal only in passing, a few terse words between Casne and her father on the way into the hearing. For now, in public, they kept to the matter at hand, and finally, the three tribunes voted unanimously to void the charges against Casne. Beside Triz, Veling burst into tears, and the other quadparents were unable to contain a gleeful whoop. Casne looked up at the three quadparents, a half-grin splitting her face as the Fleet tribune told her to go join them. She didn’t wait for the guard to open the gate around the spectators’ ring, but leaped it with a one-handed boost and flung herself into her mother’s waiting arms. Triz’s face warmed watching them and she turned to go, to let Casne and her family celebrate together.

  But Veling caught her sleeve before she could retreat. “Where do you think you’re going? This family has a lot of celebrating to catch up on.”

  Now the warm flush in Triz’s cheeks felt close to superheating. Too bad she didn’t have a deft mechanic around to manually input some coolant. “I should let you have some time to yourselves,” she protested, tugging her arm free of Veling’s grasp.

  “‘To ourselves’ is supposed to include you, woman, so stop trying to wriggle out of it. You’re not a guttergirl anymore, and we’re not a churnpit you have to escape from before it crushes you.”

  “Aren’t we?” said Casne, and picked Triz up in a black hole of a hug. The sensation was not unlike struggling for air in the vented Tiresh cockpit, except warmer and with a much stronger sense of up and down. “Tea at Mirede’s. Come on.”

  “Our treat!” Veling insisted.

  The crowd thinned around them, and they started picking their way toward the nearest entrance. But Casne stopped and looked over her shoulder at the empty dais. Triz’s hand found her waist, and Casne turned back to her with a small, taut smile. “I’ll tell you what, Mama,” she said. “You and Dad and Damu go on ahead. We’ll meet you there in a little while.”

  Veling’s hands stretched out to squeeze one of Casne’s shoulders and one of Triz’s. “We’re a family, you know that, don’t you? All of us, and you. Nantha too. Whatever he does or says. With or without him.”

  “I know it,” said Casne, and Veling let them go. It was only after they’d parted way from the others that Casne leaned in to Triz’s ear and said, “And I’m going to do a better job of making sure you know it.”

  By the time they arrived in the wrenchworks, Casne looked a bit more rumpled in her dress greens than would have passed Fleet codes, and Triz was sweating. She combed her hair back into her braid with one finger and looked around the works. “Quelian? You down here?”

  A moment of silence, and Triz thought she’d guessed wrong. Before she could turn back to Casne, a balding head poked out of the office door. “What do you want?”

  Casne’s strength and solidity behind her shoulder made her feel brave: not the superficial sort of brave that warded off problems with a cutting quip, but something more enduring. She could understand, briefly and piercingly, how much it must have hurt when Quelian had that pillar pulled out from under the ceiling of his life plans. It didn’t excuse what he’d done or who he’d become in the meantime. But she understood it. She understood it to an uncomfortable extent. “Quelian,” Triz said, “come up to Mirede’s and have tea and dinner with your family before you lose them.” An indrawn breath from Casne behind her and Triz quickly amended: “Before you lose us.”

  Quelian huffed something like a laugh as he emerged from the office and crammed his discarded Justice wrap into a half-open locker. His jumpsuit was relatively clean, the sleeves still rolled down. “I lost the lot of you the day this one sailed off to the academy.”

  “That’s the way you cast it for yourself. So you came out the tragic hero of the wrenchworks.” Casne spoke levelly, but Triz could feel the tension as each word snapped short between her teeth. “Poor Quelian. No one else understands how hard he has it. Me hitting the eject button out of here as a traitor, which, of course, made Mama and Dad and Damu collaborators.” Her hand found Triz’s waist and tightened. “And Triz here to take the place you’d made for me. You could never quite figure out whether or not you were glad of that. If the wound didn’t heal right, Quelian, it’s because you never stopped picking at it.”

  Quelian didn’t answer, just crossed the works to one of the Skimmers. “We’re behind as it is. The Fleet’s penny-pinchers aren’t going to give two shits if the Hab’s had a hole blown in the side of it when it comes to pay.” He paused with a tension spanner raised halfway to the Skimmer’s hull. “I’d need another sure hand with a laser drill to help me catch up in time.”

  That was an offer of her job back, if she wasn’t mistaken, in Quelian’s oblique way. Probably the most effort at an apology she’d see. She wasn’t sure it was enough of one. But it was somewhere to start. And life on the Hab wouldn’t be the same without her job. “Come uphab,” she said. “Everyone will be waiting.”

  “I will,” Quelian said, and worked the spanner into position. “Just need to get an hour of work done. Get a batch of plastisteel curing. Keep things moving along.”

  “I’d like you to be there, Baba,” Casne said, and the spanner froze for just a moment.

  Then Quelian nodded. The spanner moved again. “I will,” he said, and this time his voice was thick.

  Triz put her hand on Casne’s shoulder, and they moved back toward the lift. There was no hasty embrace this time, only Casne leaning her head to the side to rest it atop Triz’s as the lift mechanism whirred gently outside. Maybe Quelian would come and maybe he wouldn’t. Up to him, now. And up to them not to let him spoil the day in any case. There would be time to work over the engine of that relationship. And to consign it to the recycler if necessary, too. Triz could still work in the wrenchworks without having to particularly enjoy sharing it with Quelian. But she hoped that wouldn’t be the case.

  The lift exhaled them onto the lowest level of the Arcade, and Triz wished Mirede’s tearoom lay just a little closer to the lift depot because it seemed like everyone on the Hab wanted to stop to greet Casne and congratulate her along the way. They were close enough to the tearoom doors for Triz to peep inside when they were waylaid once more—but this time, the would-be accoster grabbed both of their s
leeves to spin them around.

  “Kalo!” Casne exclaimed, and shoved his shoulder. “Where were you earlier? It’s not like you to wait to show up till all the drama’s over.”

  “All due congratulations to my favorite ex-convict. It’s good to see you on the right side of Justice.” He pressed a kiss to Casne’s lips, then pulled back with a grin. “But I had a date that couldn’t be missed. With the technosurgeon.” He waved the fingers of his left hand, then further demonstrated their restored function by making a gesture that would have gotten him roughed up in at least three Habs and possibly arrested in another. “Happy to report all systems are back online. Which reminds me, now I’m able to do this . . .” He locked his fingers around Triz’s wrist and pulled her in close. “Triz Rydoine Cierrond. By the authority of Admiral Savelian Dustald-4 Edantha—”

  “What?”

  “—I hereby and thusly bestow upon thou the Doing Great Stuff Commendation for Valor Under Extremely Terrible Circumstances.” He pinned a small silver medal to the breast pocket of her jacket. When he let it drop down onto the coarse fabric, it didn’t quite manage to conceal a large grease stain. Kalo nodded in satisfaction as Triz canted her head forward to peer at it.

  “It’s the Alchemy Medal,” said Casne, leaning forward for a better look. “That’s the second-highest civilian commendation the Fleet gives out.”

  “Really?” Triz tapped the metal with one fingernail, liking the little ping it made. “Shitting stars. What does someone have to do to get the highest one?”

  Kalo turned to Casne. “Afraid I haven’t got anything for you. You know the Admiral’s insisting on pinning one on you himself, the whole ceremony deal. Dress blacks. Speeches. Drummers, probably.” He cackled. “Oh gods! I bet they’ll make you do the Fleet Prayer in front of everyone.”

  A strained noise escaped from Casne. “Can’t I just do another unplanned space swim instead? It would probably be more fun.”