by Ryan Tang
He had on a pair of frame-less glasses, and his hair was cropped short in the style of Old Earth's military. The Captain had never been in the military, and neither had his Officers. The old captain, the one who'd been put in charge of the Distant Star, had been an ace pilot in one of the Paragon Wars, but it'd hadn't helped him very much when the Captain decided he should be in charge.
He'd bested a military man before, so perhaps he really should have been in the military. And besides, it always helped to give people a frightening impression.
The Captain stretched out a massive hand to shake with Lews.
"I'm sorry. What's your name again?"
"Lews."
"What are you doing here, Lews?"
The boy shrugged.
"Just wanted to watch the stars. What are you doing here?"
The boy giggled.
"Are you here to sleep in the vent too?"
It was a nice idea. The Captain joining the people who he flew across the skies. If Lews were ever a captain, he'd do something like that. Nobody ever saw the Captain or his Officers, and that seemed wrong.
The Captain cackled jovially.
"No. I have a very nice room. Why would I sleep in the vent?"
The Captain had come to the vent because, over the years, he'd begun to consider pushing people overboard to be part of his Share. After all, the Share meant there wasn't enough for everyone else. By getting rid of passengers whenever he felt like it, he could keep the Share going on forever.
The Captain was a big man, and so were his officers, but they couldn't stand against thousands of people. He had to keep the numbers under control. He had to make them think of something else, something other than the Captain and his Share. If he kept them worried about falling overboard, they'd be too busy to do anything else.
The thought of keeping the number of people on his ship under control made the Captain feel giddy. The Earth Sphere kings had forced him and everyone he'd known into exile to keep the numbers low on Old Earth. Here on the Distant Star, the Captain got to act like a king himself.
"So what did you come here for?"
The Captain turned and double-checked the door to make sure it was locked.
He didn't want his Officers to come running in. He knew they were all gunning for his position. Out of the Shares he gave them, his Share was always the largest, larger than all of theirs combined. He knew they hungered for his position just like he'd once hungered for it.
He and his Officers had agreed never to interfere on Matters of the Share, but his kills weren't officially part of the Share. He wasn't sure they'd understand that the Captain was doing what was best for all of them.
The Captain took out a space helmet and carefully placed it around his head. The Captain's head was like a boulder: he had to get the helmet made special just for him. He'd bought the helmet twenty years ago, but he had it inspected and upgraded every single time the ship docked for repairs. The Captain was nothing if not a diligent man when it came to Matters of the Share.
"What are you..."
Lews was a weak boy, but he was smart.
He saw the answer at once.
Why would the Captain put on a helmet, if not because he thought they'd be exposed to space soon.
Why had the doors locked, if not to keep people from seeing what had happened?
Lews turned to run, but he was weak, and the Captain was strong. Lews was just a boy, and the Captain was a grown man.
The Captain giggled.
Sometimes, people figured it out.
That was one of the best parts of the Share.
He lifted Lews back. His two big arms wrapped tightly around the boy's legs. Lews screamed and struggled, but there was nothing he could do.
The big man swung Lews like a baseball bat, hurling him right at the windowpane, hard enough that he'd smash right through it.
The Captain let out a happy cry.
"Boom!"
The young boy twisted and stretched out his foot. He wasn't very strong, but at that moment, he moved with an accuracy few could ever match. Indeed, the Captain certainly hadn't expected it. Lews jerked his foot up and kicked the frame as hard as he could.
He went flying out of the Captain's arms to the other side of the vents. He escaped the Captain and his hopes for his Share, flying toward the door on the other end.
The Captain cried out and sprinted forward. Lews grabbed the locked door and started pounding on it.
"Help! Help! Someone help! The Captain! The Captain is throwing people overboard!"
The Captain screamed in rage as the door opened.
Lews leaped for freedom and smashed into a massive chest.
There was a loud crack as his nose broke.
The boy howled in pain. The person he'd crashed into looked down at him. Lews frantically blinked the stars out of his eyes.
It was the First Mate.
"Help! Help! Help! The Captain! The Captain tried to throw me overboard!"
The First Mate laughed.
"Oh. So that's what you've been doing!"
He kicked Lews back toward his Captain, then stepped outside and locked the door.
The Captain swore.
"What the hell did you think you were doing? Why would you shout that? What's wrong with you? I'll owe him for that now. I'll owe him big."
Lews stared at the locked door.
The First Mate too? He'd learned in school that the Captain and his Officers were heroes. This had to be some kind of bad dream.
It was no dream.
The Captain picked the boy up and threw him through the window.
Lews fell overboard.
____
The young boy twisted and stretched out his foot. He wasn't very strong, but at that moment, he moved with an accuracy few could ever match. Indeed, the Captain certainly hadn't expected it. Lews jerked his foot up and kicked the frame as hard as he could.
He went flying out of the Captain's arms to the other side of the vents. He escaped the Captain and his hopes for his Share, flying toward the door on the other end.
The Captain cried out and sprinted forward. Lews grabbed the locked door and started pounding on it.
"Help! Help! Someone help! The Captain! The Captain is throwing people overboard!"
The Captain screamed in rage as the door opened.
Lews leaped for freedom and smashed into a massive chest.
There was a loud crack as his nose broke.
The boy howled in pain. The person he'd crashed into looked down at him. Lews frantically blinked the stars out of his eyes.
It was the First Mate.
"Help! Help! Help! The Captain! The Captain tried to throw me overboard!"
The First Mate laughed.
"Oh. So that's what you've been doing!"
He kicked Lews back toward his Captain, then stepped outside and locked the door.
The Captain swore.
"What the hell did you think you were doing? Why would you shout that? What's wrong with you? I'll owe him for that now. I'll owe him big."
Lews stared at the locked door.
The First Mate too? He'd learned in school that the Captain and his Officers were heroes. This had to be some kind of bad dream.
It was no dream.
The Captain picked the boy up and threw him through the window.
Lews fell overboard.
____
"Wait!"
The girl cried out in confusion.
Alex smiled encouragingly. She wanted the girl to feel free interrupting.
"Yeah?"
"Why didn't the First Mate help him? He should have helped Lews!"
She pronounced the name like "loose," just as Alex did. When she asked her class to read the book out loud, some of them pronounced it like "lose." All the characters in the book had funny names, four-letter words that were unlike any others she'd heard before.
Scholars vigorously debated whether or not The Familiars was about the Mad Nobles. Alex still w
asn't sure. The story's morals had nothing in common with the way the vicious tyrants had ruled the Earth Sphere. But the boy in the corridors, the pale boy with golden skin, had called himself Falo. Even his pseudonym - Fred - had been four letters long. Alex suspected that it wasn't a coincidence.
Alex chuckled.
"You know, I used to wonder about that too. When I asked my mom, she laughed and said that evil people always circle the wagons."
"But that doesn't make sense! Even if he was evil, he should have told everyone! The Captain said the First Mate wanted to take his position! If he let all those people walk in on the Captain, they would have gotten rid of the Captain!"
Alex used to think the same way.
But now she knew better.
"It's a good observation. And the Captain got lucky. His First Mate might have tried to seize power. But I've seen the opposite happen too many times before."
When Macob, the former Governor of Diligence, found Alex and Emile in his master's office, he'd told Governor Steel right away in the hope of currying favor.
"The thing is, the most important thing for the Captain and his Officers is the Share. That's how come they're all big and strong when people like Lews are small and weak. So it's true that the First Mate had a chance of becoming Captain, but what if people started suspecting the Officers?"
She imitated an angry citizen.
"The Captain was going around killing people! How didn't you notice?"
"Huh."
The girl nodded thoughtfully.
"Compared to the risk, he wanted to play it safe and keep his Share. To the First Mate, killing Lews was just a Matter of the Share, just like what the Captain thought."
"That sucks!"
"Yeah, it does."
Alex sighed and thought of the wealthy families of Diligence. The plants, refineries, and greenhouses had viciously competed against each other for business, but as soon as Steel was deposed, they'd sabotaged the colony's equipment then fled together. She wondered where Macob and the other wealthy citizens had gone. Perhaps they were the ones who'd contracted the traitor. It still made Alex uneasy how cleanly the situation on Diligence had resolved itself. Steel and Sooner had fled, closely followed by all their supporters. There hadn't been a battle like there'd been on Plenty.
But maybe the battle was still to come.
The girl shifted.
"Everything okay?"
Alex pushed the thoughts out of her mind and returned to the book. She had to focus on reading to this girl. She deserved it. It was probably the first time anyone had ever told her a story.
And besides, delving into The Familiars was like taking a warm bath after a day of rebuilding the colony. The grime was slowly disappearing from her mind. She wouldn't have suspected Diligence's wealthy business owners if she hadn't been relaxing. Thus far, Leanne had made every contribution to the investigation.
"Yeah! I'm fine! Let's keep reading."
____
The voice was Lews's own.
It rang in his ears, indistinguishable from the sound of him talking to himself, save for the incredibly critical fact that his mouth was still shut.
That was confusing enough.
But even stranger was the tone and pace of the words. Lews was a quiet and melancholy boy. He'd never heard his voice speak so many words at once before. He'd didn't think he'd ever been so excited before. Maybe right after he and Amno were able to grab the second and third bowls of stew. The first time it happened, before people started picking on him.
"Thanks for coming!"
"I've been waiting for you!"
"We've all been waiting for you!"
"How did you even hear me calling?"
"They said I had to bond with someone first...you shouldn't have been able to hear me."
"How did you know to jump?"
"How did you know to come out and meet me?"
"It's so amazing you heard me through the ship! They didn't say who I was supposed to bond with...but then you came flying out! Maybe we're meant to be together!"
"Are you nice?"
"Hello?"
"Are you dumb?"
"Oh god, they were all depending on me."
"I messed up. Oh my god, I messed up. They're never going to let another one of us escape. Everyone was relying on me and I messed up."
"They need a hero, and I picked a dumb one."
Being called dumb shocked Lews out of his silence. Nobody had called him dumb before. They only ever called him weak. And like a lot of weak but smart people, Lews put extra pride in his intelligence.
He spoke without thinking.
"Hey! I'm not dumb!"
The words echoed in his ears.
Indeed, Lews wasn't dumb. So he immediately realized how strange it was that he could hear himself. It was just as strange as the person talking in his own voice, chattering endlessly in his ear.
Lews shouldn't have been able to talk in space. There was no air. And it should have been cold. Lews didn't feel cold at all. He felt nice and warm.
He was proud of himself for figuring that out. He'd figured out a lot very quickly. It'd only taken him moments, but he'd figured out that the Captain was pushing people off the ship.
Lews craned his head this way and that, but the Distant Star was long gone.
"You can talk! You can talk!"
"You say you're not dumb, but are you smart?"
"I need you to be smart. I've got the brawns I need you to bring the brains."
"Are you smart? Are you smart? Are you smart?"
Lews spoke again.
"Yeah. I'm smart."
The boy blinked.
His mouth was just sort of mouthing the words. He wasn't actually speaking out loud. It was all in his mind. He was talking to the excited version of himself, the one that wouldn't shut up, in his mind.
"Prove it! Prove you're smart!"
He concentrated and listed out the words without opening his mouth. It was like thinking very loudly.
"I figured out about the Captain. It's the Captain who's been pushing people overboard."
Lews thought softly, just to test.
"Who are you?"
But the voice didn't answer.
Lews frowned. If Lews just thought to himself, the voice didn't know. But if he let the voice know on purpose, then they could talk.
He switched to thinking loudly again. A new realization about the Captain struck him like a lightning bolt.
"It's his Share! He's pushing people off so he can keep taking his Share! And he's evil! That too! But it's because of his Share!"
The Captain and his Officers kept taking half of every meal. That meant a lot of hungry mouths, and it wouldn't hurt for the Captain to get rid of as many as he could.
Lews learned in school that the Captain had flown the Distant Star for 25 years. If he pushed off two people every month, then he would have pushed off 600 people.
For the first time since Lews fell overboard, the voice paused.
There was a brief tickle in his head.
"Okay. Wow. Okay."
"Bad stuff. Bad stuff."
"You guys are jammed, not as bad as us, but still jammed."
"And that big guy! Whew! Wow! What's up with that big guy? Evil! Evil!"
"Hoarding everything for him and his friends! That's kind of like what they do to us! Evil! Evil!"
"Okay. Okay. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten that. No. I definitely wouldn't have. Who am I kidding here? Okay. Maybe you are smart."
"Maybe?"
Lews was offended.
"I am smart. I am smart. I just wish I wasn't weak."
If he was strong, he could have taught the Captain a lesson. If he got rid of the Captain and his Share, then there'd be enough for everybody.
The voice responded at once.
"You aren't weak anymore."
"Now, you're strong."
"With me, you're strong."
"That's how it always was. The old wa
y before he locked us up."
Lews clenched his fist together.
The voice spoke with so much confidence that Lews thought strength would surge up his arm.
But it didn't. He felt the same as before. He felt like the same boy who got beaten up all the time. Come to think of it, he'd just gotten beat up three times in a single day.
He got his spot in line taken.
He got beat up by his little sister.
And he got beat up by the Captain.
He suddenly thought about Amno and felt sad. He craned his head for the ship again, but it was gone now, long gone, and he had no way to return to it under his own power. He was just drifting through space.
He hoped the Captain stayed away from her. He hoped she liked the Paragon. He wished he'd just given it to her. She wanted it so bad she said she wouldn't eat. And it really was unfair that she'd never met their parents. At least Lews had known them for a while, until they fell overboard.
He shook his head.
They didn't fall overboard. The Captain probably killed them too. Lews opened his mouth to ask the voice in his head how he could get his revenge on the Captain, but then he shut it again. He didn't want to go back to the Distant Star.
If he tried to tell people about the Captain, nobody would believe him. The First Mate had locked the door. And if he tried to fight the Captain himself, he'd just lose. Lews had spent his whole life losing fights. He was just a little boy, and little boys get scared of losing all the time. Any desire to fight had been beaten out of him.
His only two friends - Denn and Amno - were in danger. Lews knew that deep in his bones. But the boy didn't want to think about it right now. He locked the thought in the back of his mind and pushed it aside.
The voice in his head didn't hear any of his soft thoughts. It was still rambunctious and cheerful.
"Can you help us?"
"We really need your help."
"And you're strong now. You're strong with me."
"We'll be able to beat him. We'll beat him and his familiar together."
The last line wasn't excited. It was tight and anxious.
"How am I strong?"
Lews clenched his fist again.
"Look. Nothing happens."
The voice laughed.
"If you were weak, you would be dead by now."
"We live in places your kind cannot go."
"We were meant to walk where you never could."