Starfall

by Melissa Landers

  While Kane rested in his upper bunk with one arm folded behind his head, he casually peered around the room to gauge the miners’ health. Most of them seemed tired, but so would anyone after a ten-hour shift. The real clue was in the trembling of their hands and the sweat glistening on their foreheads. By his estimate, the temperature inside the dorm was a perfect seventy degrees. Knowing the disease was airborne, he inhaled through his nose to check for unusual scents. All he smelled was a crew in need of a shower.

  A while later, he closed his eyes and drifted to sleep, thinking how backward it was that he hoped to wake up sick.

  The next morning he awoke with the room alarm. Yawning, he blinked against the early rays of dawn filtering through the windows. He noticed right away the air smelled sweeter than last night, similar to the fragrance of candied almonds at the harvest fair. He checked himself for symptoms, but if anything, he felt better than the day before. His head was clear and alert, and his muscles practically coiled with energy when he jumped down from his bunk. He bounded toward the community washroom on springy toes, feeling like he could leap over the moon if he pushed hard enough.

  And he wasn’t the only one.

  All around him, men chattered and laughed, high-fiving each other with hands that were steady and strong. Their foreheads were dry, their eyes bright. The mood was more like a party than the beginning of a workday, and several of the miners who’d ignored Kane now ruffled his hair and delivered welcoming slaps on the back.

  If this was the sickness, bring it on.

  After a breakfast of protein biscuits, he spent the day hauling boulders of ore from the cave to pallets outside, where they were lifted by hovercraft and carried to a refinery about a mile away. His boots dragged by the end of his shift, but returning to the dorm to scrub his face and hands gave him an energy boost that carried him through a night of gambling and arm wrestling with the men.

  The next morning he felt even stronger, so vigorous that he awoke before the alarm and decided to sneak outside and check in with Cassia. Once he’d reached a safe distance from the dorm, he pulled the com-button from his pocket and held it to his lips.

  “Cassy? Are you up?”

  A moment later, she replied with a groan. “It’s the ass crack of dawn.”

  “I know! Isn’t it awesome?” He faced east to watch the sky awake with smudges of crimson and marigold. “When was the last time you saw a sunrise?”

  “I don’t know, but it hasn’t been long enough.”

  “Go outside. It’s spectacular!”

  “You’re awfully peppy for someone who’s not a morning person.”

  He smiled because it was true. “I only slept for two hours last night, and I feel amazing. I don’t know what these guys were complaining about. There’s no outbreak here.”

  “Are you sure? The reports said—”

  “Maybe they looked rough at first, but not anymore.”

  “Kane, that’s part of the pattern.” Her voice took on a note of concern. “People get better and worse, remember?”

  He wanted to reassure her, to make Cassia feel as happy as he did. “I promise I’m fine. Just keep your head down for a few more days, and we’ll have what we need.” A carefree sensation swept over him, making his limbs go light and airy. He started to laugh because he knew everything would be okay. They would cure their people, Cassia would forgive him, and they’d live together in simple bliss. Their future was as clear to him as the hand at the end of his arm. “I love you, Cassy.” He imagined the stunned look on her face and he laughed again, twice as hard. “I love you so much.”

  She didn’t answer, but that was all right. She loved him, too.

  “Talk to you soon,” he said, and disconnected.

  By the next sunrise, Kane was eating his words.

  Metaphorically, of course. Because the thought of eating anything—even words—was enough to send him stumbling to the toilet, where he puked so hard his stomach nearly turned inside out. Then he did it again. When there was nothing left inside him, he groaned, hanging his head over the rim while every pore in his face opened up and oozed sweat. He couldn’t tell if his skin was hot or cold, but he shivered and ached all over like he had a fever.

  Had he actually wished this on himself?

  He dragged over to the sink to rinse out his mouth, which left him with barely enough strength to return to his bunk. The lower cot was empty, so he collapsed there instead of climbing up to his bed. His muscles seemed to have decayed overnight. He knew he should replace the fluid he’d lost, but he didn’t want to drink. Besides, he didn’t think he could make it to the toilet if he threw up again.

  The alarm sounded, and he gripped his head, cringing as the noise sliced a white-hot trail through his brain. No one’s feet hit the floor, except those running to the washroom to lose the contents of their own stomachs.

  From nearby, the foreman slurred, “Outta bed, men,” while lying limp in his cot.

  Kane didn’t know why, but the order made his anger erupt. In the time it took for him to draw a breath, his head was hot with fury. “You get out of bed, asshole!”

  “Shut your face!” came the response. “Or I’ll feed you my fist, you little pissant!”

  But neither of them moved. They were too weak to fight.

  It went on like that for days.

  Tempers flared; no one could sleep. Anything Kane managed to swallow came right back up again. He stopped urinating because there was no water left in his body. He wanted to call Cassia for help, but he didn’t have the strength to reach inside his pocket, let alone find a private place to talk. The aches and fatigue were awful, but not half as crushing as the feeling of despair that settled over him by slow degrees, as if a pillow were descending from the upper bunk to suffocate him.

  And he was suffocating.

  Deep down, he knew nothing would be okay—not ever again.

  Cassia would never forgive him. She didn’t want a life with him, and she certainly didn’t love him. All the times he’d kissed her, she’d probably been thinking about someone else, maybe General Jordan. That was who she really wanted.

  Kane’s eyes burned with tears that wouldn’t come. His chest and stomach were sore from dry heaving. Everything hurt, even the hair on his head, and soon there came a point when he wanted nothing more than to die—anything to make the suffering stop.

  Then one night a man wearing simple black fatigues and a gas mask that covered his entire face appeared inside the dormitory. He was tall and broad with a band of thick pink scar tissue across his throat.

  Kane’s spirits lifted. Necktie Fleece was here with the cure.

  “Gentlemen,” Fleece said in a dull voice distorted by his mask, “I understand you’re in a lot of pain. I’m here to fix that—and to offer you a life beyond your wildest fantasies on a planet where there are no rules. It’s called Adel Vice. If you go there with me, an honest day’s work will buy anything you want.” He raised his hands, priestlike, toward the ceiling vents. “Including this.”

  Kane glanced up.

  He didn’t see anything, but he heard a faint hiss and detected a familiar scent of sugared almonds. The smell was much stronger now, so thick it coated his tongue. He pulled in a lungful of air, and an instant jolt of euphoria rocked his body. The pain was gone, replaced by a pleasure so intense there wasn’t a name for it. Nothing—no girl or drink—had ever made him feel this good. The ecstasy nearly crippled him. All he could do was arch his neck and give himself up to the rush.

  But then the crash came, as swift and violent as striking the ground from a treetop. He cried out in panic, already empty and aching for more. In his desperation, he finally understood that this was no disease, at least not the infectious kind. He wasn’t sick, and neither was his mother. They were addicts.

  And he didn’t give half a damn.

  He would trade every cell inside his body for one more breath.

  “This is just a taste,” Fleece announced. “I have more
on my ship—tanks and tanks of this sweet air—enough that you’ll never feel sick again.” He held up an inhaler that Kane recognized as his salvation. “Any man who comes with me can have it for free. All you need to do is line up at the door.”

  From inside the shuttle, Cassia leaned forward and peered through the windshield’s telescopic panel at Fleece’s ship, which was docked outside the mouth of the cave where Kane worked. Or where he used to work. He hadn’t left his dormitory in days. No one had.

  She didn’t care what he’d said during their call—something was wrong. He’d acted too happy, almost manic, and that wasn’t like him. Neither was his declaration of love. As guarded as he’d been with her since the fight, he never would’ve said it first. So instead of relying on him to tell her when Fleece arrived, she’d moved the shuttle to the ridge above his camp and had kept watch ever since.

  Now she was ready.

  She saw the dormitory’s rear door swing open, followed by a line of men walking outside into the night. She could tell from Fleece’s energetic stride that he led the way. The others shuffled along behind him, cupping their hands to their faces as they walked. That was a good sign. It meant they already had the inhalers with the cure.

  She tapped the panel to zoom in, watching for Kane as she started the shuttle engine. Her heart lurched when she spotted him, an inhaler pressed to his lips. He stood at the very end of the line, the perfect distance from Fleece, who was now guiding the men onto the Origin’s boarding ramp without bothering to look behind him.

  Cassia gripped the wheel and lifted off the ground, keeping Kane in sight as she descended toward the ship. When she noticed Fleece disappear inside the cargo bay, a prickle of hope stirred inside her. Without him standing guard at the ramp base, he might not even notice Kane was missing. Her fingers trembled with nervous energy.

  So close now.

  The glow of three moons helped her see well enough to maneuver the shuttle into position. She touched down behind an ore collection bin near the ship. A few of the miners glanced her way, but they stayed silent and plodded onward. Right before Kane reached the ramp, he turned his head and locked gazes with her. She waved him over while opening the passenger door. If he hurried, they might actually pull this off.

  But he didn’t move. He just stood there watching her.

  “Come on,” she yelled, pointing wildly at the door. “Hurry!”

  He took a puff of his inhaler and leaned toward the shuttle. Just when it seemed he was about to come to her, he looked away and moved his feet in the wrong direction, going up the metal ramp instead of away from it. She watched in disbelief as he continued all the way inside the ship.

  What was he doing?

  Her pulse pounded. She kept waiting for him to come out, but he never did. The ramp retracted, and she leaned aside, peering into the cargo bay to see if he planned to jump through the hatch at the last moment. That didn’t happen, either. The hatch sealed, and the Origin fired up its thrusters.

  She shut the passenger door as gusts of dust and pebbles sandblasted the hull. The Origin lifted off, and she did the same, careful to stay in its blind spot. There had to be a reason for Kane to go inside. Maybe his inhaler was empty and he needed another. Or maybe Fleece had used threats to lure him on board. If Kane hadn’t muted his com-link, she could ask him, but regardless, he would escape through the waste port as soon as he could, and she’d be there to catch him.

  She kept pace until they reached the first orbiting moon. Then the ship opened up its thrusters and zoomed beyond the atmosphere. She punched the accelerator, but even at full power, the shuttle was no match for a ship of that size. With each minute, the distance between them seemed to double.

  She used the telescopic panel to watch the Origin’s waste port, ready and waiting for Kane to appear. A quiet voice inside her head warned it wouldn’t work, but she told the voice to shut up. Kane knew what he was doing.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  As the miles stretched on, the Origin’s lead grew wider. Panic set in when the telescopic panel flashed an error message: TARGET NOT IN RANGE. The ship was so far away that if Kane expelled himself now, he would die before she reached him—assuming that had been his plan in the first place. She wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Her throat swelled and pressure built behind her eyes, but she refused to quit. She followed the ship until it was a pinpoint in the distance and, eventually, until she could no longer see its fuel trail. Even then, she cut the throttle and floated in black space, staring through the windshield for a full five minutes in case the ship reappeared.

  Only when she couldn’t avoid it any longer did she stop lying to herself.

  He was gone.

  She slouched in her seat as the dashboard lights bled into a wet blur of color. Numbly, she felt along the control panel until she found the radio switch.

  “Captain,” she said, and cleared the thickness from her throat. “I’m in the shuttle, and I don’t know where I am. Can you run a track and intercept? I’m in trouble. I lost—” Kane. She broke down before she could say it. “Renny, I’m lost,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Please come and get me.”

  During the voyage, Kane learned to see Necktie Fleece in a new light.

  The hangman became a deliverer, the tormentor a guardian of comfort. Kane both loved and hated the man because Fleece could administer pain with the crack of his knuckles and then take it away with a sweet breath of rapture.

  From an expansive caged-in community room in the cargo bay, Kane and the others passed their days curled up on blanket pallets, listening for the cadence of Fleece’s boots overhead. His steps were heavy and slightly uneven, a telltale click-clomp-click-clomp that warned when he was about to descend the stairs. Then, like dogs conditioned to salivate at the ringing of a bell, the men would turn their eyes to the ceiling with a mixture of fear and anticipation. Fleece was their savior, their patron saint of bliss, and they worshipped at the shrine of air tanks he kept mounted on the wall beyond their reach.

  Fleece seemed to enjoy playing their pagan god. Each day, he punished and exalted them according to his will, bringing the flock to their knees with nothing but a lifted hand toward the release switch that would fill the bay with sugared air.

  But he wasn’t always merciful.

  Sometimes he teased them simply because he could, reaching for the switch only to pull back his hand and walk away while they cried out and shook the wire cage in anguish. These power plays were rare, but sporadic enough to keep their heads low in humility when Fleece or his crew visited the miniature pit of hell they’d created.

  Kane shivered and pulled both knees to his chest. He didn’t remember how long it’d been since his last breath of relief, but his hands trembled and nausea twisted his stomach. As he rocked back and forth on the floor, his mind punctuated the pain by flashing images of people he’d left behind. Mostly he saw Cassia’s face, though in vague, lightning glimpses that left him struggling to recall the exact shade of her eyes. He knew he should miss her—the others, too—but his emotions were fuzzy and distant. It wasn’t that he’d stopped caring. He just didn’t have the capacity to worry about them right now.

  Click-clomp-click-clomp.

  Kane gasped, cocking an ear toward the ceiling. He pushed to his knees and scurried on all fours to the front of the cage so he could be the first to fill his lungs if Fleece decided to feed them today. The other men did the same, a couple of them trying to shoulder him aside. But Kane was younger and stronger than the rest, and he used his fists to remind them of it.

  Defending his position, he knelt with his torso pressed to the chain link and craned his neck to peer at Fleece’s boots coming down the stairway. He would know those boots anywhere. He even saw them in his dreams. Knee-high, distressed black leather, unpolished with a deep scrape along the back of the left calf. He kept his eyes fixed on their scuffed tips until they stopped in front of the cage and turned to face him.
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  “Gentlemen.” Fleece greeted them as he always did, his voice dulled by the gas mask covering his entire face. “I have good news.”

  Kane didn’t care. He wanted Fleece to shut up and flip the switch. But he peeked through his lashes and pretended to show interest.

  “We’re almost there,” he continued. “Tomorrow you’ll be on Adel Vice, your new home.” He paused, spreading his arms wide. “Who’s excited?”

  Every man in that room wanted the same thing, and they all knew the best way to get it. They gave a chorus of cheers and whoops.

  “Excellent,” Fleece said, clapping his palms. “But before we arrive, it’s important that you understand how Adel Vice works. It’s a playground planet—an exclusive resort—and your job is to make our guests feel special. Some of you will do that in the kitchens or distilleries. Others will work in the casinos or lead tour excursions. But no matter what your role is, every one of you must abide by a single rule: you will say yes to anything a guest asks of you. The answer is always yes. Never no. Do you understand?”

  Kane nodded vigorously. Flip the switch. Please flip the switch.

  “Let’s see how well you were listening.” Fleece tapped an ear. “If a guest asks for a cocktail delivered to the pool, what do you say?”

  “Yes,” the men chanted in unison.

  “If a guest asks you to rub lotion on their shoulders, what do you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “If a guest asks you for a dance, what do you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “If a guest invites you to spend the night, what do you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s right,” Fleece murmured, though he still didn’t seem satisfied. He clasped both hands behind his back and paced the area in front of the cage. When he stopped, it was right in front of Kane. Their eyes locked and held. Fleece sharpened his gaze as if to test Kane apart from the others. “If a guest asks you to fight one of the men beside you, and tells you not to stop fighting until that man is dead, what do you say?”