A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 4

by Sharon Lee

  —Gehrling’s Middle History of the

  Inhabited Galactic Sub-Plane, Third Terran edition

  Geral was alone, as he often was. This time was different because he was doing squad work solo instead of with the whole squad. Famy Binwa’d called him sudden.

  “We got a big meeting for only Full Staff and Seniors, no cits allowed. Secret, too, you can’t mention it. You’re covering for Security. Get to it!”

  Another drill, he’d figured, but once his ID read as present in Service Squad’s corridor, Binwa’d said, “Not a drill this time, Geral. You’re mobile structure security! Watch yourself, there’s been trouble!”

  So he went careful. The logs did show trouble—odd trouble. Bar fights gone to flash-riots, followed by attempts to enter Admin without permission. Sabotaged cameras. Yeah, the cits weren’t pleased with Admin changing anything—heck, people would argue and fight if their old veeds disappeared and no chance to stuff ’em into personal holdings, much less work shortages and menus gone thin.

  Down here in the inner structure, though, he ought to be fine, no real chance of riot or change to threaten him. Binwa’d sounded tense, like Geral might not be up to the job.

  It didn’t help Geral that he’d been raised like he was fragile, him being a good birth in a bad Standard Year. In fact, him and Luchee being the only pair born across three hundred and ten days—and before-hand some doubts he’d be born at all.

  Once he was born they were careful of him—after him there were three years in a row with no births, period. They said it was the famine that did it, but then the cheese planets got back in gear after their little civil war and things got back to regular. Kids was born station-side again—they used fertility drugs and had a bunch of twins and triplets—so there were always a pack of youngers that he didn’t quite fit in with.

  The Seniors, it was known, kept him in reserve as a special case, ’cause he had good blood, since it was the ’fusions that let them get to their proper ages and the ’fusions that kept them safe during the thin-food. They’d been so close-knit that cousins were sisters and little brothers nephews. They tested him and never tapped him, but they kept his mother close. She had the blood and had survived his birth sturdy, even in those bad times.

  His mother—he hadn’t seen her for almost a Standard Year; she’d gone up deck and was living in Senior Pod, where the Seniors had their own medico and kept their own shifts. The last time he’d seen her, he’d been on ’cide clean-up. She’d been in a hurry elsewhere and had stopped when she saw him, nodding a greeting.

  “Looking good, Geral Jethri. Don’t join no rowdies, and don’t think you need a way out,” here she’d gestured to the ’cide site, “’cause you’re set. I’m good for years and you—you’re in the right orbit. You got the blood, so they’ll hold on to you like they hold on to me. The Seniors need you! I’ll see you about, I bet.”

  That orbit had brought him here, after all, with him having not spoken to her again.

  He patted the metal turnwheel at the master seal between open corridors and the utility tunnels. He tested the seal with a gas sniffer. He looked for little hidden messages. His comm unit was on channel, so he spoke to it.

  “Seal three checks out, Binwa, got the veed. No hosties, no notes.”

  No reply for the moment, but Famy Binwa was always a tad slow in the Control room, more afraid of making a mistake than—

  Mud, ought to use the correct form, shouldn’t he? Things were spelled out proper on Security Detail, especially for Binwa, who was a boss because his ma was and not so much ’cause he knew what he was doing.

  Silence went on. Binwa got touchy, but not like he was a bad sort—they’d talked many times about how things might change now that the curl of the dust the system’d been stuck in for three hundred Standards was drifting out. Lately Binwa was always on duty when Geral was, like they were going to be paired on the low shift forever, like kids being left to deal while the adults did something for adults.

  “Please repeat, Squad,” Binwa finally insisted.

  Geral translated this time, from the start, his voice sounding odd in his own ears, which meant Binwa’d just turned the recorders on and his mic was live.

  “Attention Internal Control. Squad Forty Security Update. Seal Three is tight. No hostiles. No anomalies.”

  “Squad Forty, we confirm your voice match, we confirm your location, we confirm no hostiles, we confirm Seal Three is secure, we confirm there are no service reminder notes. Please move to next station. Veed feed as time permits.”

  He hadn’t found any hostiles so far. Hostiles in his early training had always meant Yxtrang invaders, but that was a scare tactic to help kids keep serious. His whole life, born and bred here, he’d never heard of an actual Yxtrang station invasion. So far as he’d ever seen, a hostie was a Security full-timer slurping toot or half asleep over a streaming ’venture veed.

  These days the threat was supposed to be Revolutionists, a secret group trying to change the way things on Spadoni Station worked and who was in charge. He’d never met any of them outright, though some of the tougher hanger-abouts might could be. They’d complain that things needed changing—that it used to be you was free to work at what you wanted or what you could, but now they were being sent to the cheese planets on contract, want to or no! Somehow it was Admin doing things wrong, or the Seniors who needed replacing to make things right.

  The Revolutionist talk had gained a lot of energy in the last quarter, what with Odd Things happening Out There. Out There being other sectors, sectors they were hearing more and more about because the dust was thinning so rapidly. Outside hadn’t been important growing up, except that it made the Seventeen Worlds allies because of the Envidaria.

  He’d read the Envidaria a bunch of times, and you could say he believed in it. To stop one world being the top spot like Liad tried to do, the Envidaria’d kept the sides even . . . and that meant worlds shouldn’t own all the ships, all the stations, all the commerce. Spadoni was ’sposed to be independent, her people free to work at what they could, while the trade org belonged to the planet system and most of the ships came from Outside. The Envidaria was supposed to make that work.

  He’d also read a bunch of the couldies about Envidaria, the idea. They were made-up things like The Secret of Lord Jethri, The Clouds of Spite, and yes, even a buncha the mances like Three on A Ship and The Master Firegemster. It was kind of funny seeing the images of Jethri on this very same station back when it was fresh-built, and knowing he, Geral, carried part of that name, and that he really did, if you squinted, look like Jethri. Stars in his blood, courtesy of his multi-great-grandma’s bunking with the man with the plan.

  • • • • • •

  Geral lingered in Corridor Nine, feeling a little homesick.

  He’d brought Luchee to the 9-9 storeroom for a kiss and some touches back when he was just Deck Plus, and even showed her Vent 77, the inactive space that was technically just a Three Seal since it had been a part of the temporary build-in docks meant for short term storage. Him and Luchee’d been of an age, and ’bout as poor, both born to mothers on station base pay. The mothers lived cubbywall to cubbywall, shared corridor frontspace, and on slowdown weeks they sat out front with everyone else, passing sips while the kids hunted stuff to turn in for credits at the recycle, being too young to trade blood for points. Once he’d been born and was proof her line was clean, that was the start, and after he hit puberty they knew he didn’t break his bones just by standing, or bleed forever, nor any of the other problems that had come along to stationers in the rough times a couple hundred Standards goneby.

  Him and Luchee, they’d got in a fight once, a fierce thing where they wasted some of that precious blood arguing about if it was good to trade blood in.

  “Points are good and you know it. Have to save a little extra,” he’d told her.

  She’d squinched her face up, looked those grey eyes straight at him. “You do it more than once and
it’ll go on your records. And then you’ll get stuck, just like your ma. She can’t go higher, ’cause Admin keeps her like she’s a crop down in ’ponics!

  “I see my own ma just waiting for the points to rack up and I’m not gonna live like that and neither should you.

  “I could just shake you sometimes for not paying attention!”

  Well, she did shake him, and he shook her back, and somehow they hit a gravity well frustrated with each other. And there was the blood, and needing to clean it up before someone called a safety on them for creating a hazmat situation.

  In the end they’d patched it up and kept hanging together. They promised each other they’d keep their blood and use all that extra energy to study. They even did some joint Informatics until their skills didn’t match any more. Luchee was good with maths, and she’d been set to student status, ’cept all the classes were always full of the C and B deck folks and no room for her, no matter how high her test scores were.

  Him, the one Luchee was always getting out of scrapes—he’d been free to study how he wanted—station stuff, and the Envidaria—always interested as much in how the station worked as in how far he could go updecks in life. So, turned out, he could make a living doing what he wanted, and she couldn’t even go to school, nor get anything better than hour-work.

  Luchee and him had thrilled a couple times in the vent space in Corridor Nine but he gave it up after he’d stopped by to find her there not very dressed and with an older guy from up Admin Deck just as sweaty and calling her name like he was hurting, which still made him twitch to think about even if it was a few years back.

  She might have warned him, anyhow . . . but she hadn’t, and they’d got all disconnected over it, with her saying things was too complicated for her to talk about with him anymore, and levels he had no business to know—him being in the Service Squad and his ma still transfusing.

  She wouldn’t know him, then, and he got busy with his doin’s, so he forgot to miss her, ’til he heard she’d connected with a visiting spacer, and gone off as side-crew with no notice to no one. He figured that was luck for her and he did miss her, though by then he had a crew-grade sleep-unit, and didn’t need the cubby, anyway.

  “Squad Forty, this is Green Office.” Binwa’s voice in his ear jerked him out from remembering. “We have inbound ships and I have to check-mark all the security stations. No one’s covering the armory. I have keyed your unit in; I need you to go there and sit at the boards, it’s supposed to be occupied when ships approach.”

  “Green Office, Squad Forty is just one of me, and that’s supposed to be a three-crew location, according to training. I . . .”

  “This is also a three-crew location and there’s one of me, Squad Forty. We are in security lockdown mode because of that meeting. Go, lock yourself in, report. The hatch is set to your ID.”

  “I’m on my way. Does route matter?”

  “Squad Forty . . . call it a hurry, and I don’t care how you get there long’s you do it quick.”

  “Confirmed, this is a hurry and I’m on free route. Going.”

  • • • • • •

  The armory had opened to him, as Binwa’d told him it would. Geral rushed into the control area and was in front of the screen, helmet and gloves off, still sweating—and only part of that from the path he’d followed. He looked at the controls, familiar only from sim, and worried, thought of Luchee getting stuff right off and figured he could remember what he had to here.

  He was trying to get his balance back on account of the tween-deck utility shafts he’d run as fast as he could. The places where you could be caught in gravity errors where you got pulled in two or three directions from overlapping grav fields or where weak fields might let you dive down a metal tunnel for meters on end.

  “Squad Forty! Check that hatch!”

  Geral twisted his head.

  “Closed.” It had made a muffled thrum when he’d pushed it across hard.

  “Not showing good here!”

  He rose carefully, left leg and knee a trifle sore from a missed gravity slip. It hadn’t been there last time he was through . . . but that happened these days as the fabric of the station strained against its age. It should have been refitted before he was born, but there’d been the Troubles, after all.

  He twisted the handle and slid the hatch open an arm’s length. He hadn’t tested the pressure gauges and now his helmet sat at the second seat, with all his readouts . . .

  He pulled, sullenly, and yelled across the room as it slammed . . .

  “Now?” He forgot his formal again, but then so did Binwa, who was sounding strained.

  “Not sealed!”

  Geral pulled his weight against the handle, yanked it open, staring into the hatch mechanicals.

  “Mud and wind twists!”

  There were four pressure latches meant to grab and seat when the handle was rotated. One close to his hip level was fine and bright, and the one just above chest height was, too. The top and bottom latches though, looked like they had something in the way of that final click-seal, something printed in a very thin flex-sheet that fell into place after the hatch was cycled once.

  “What was that, Squad Forty?” Now Binwa sounded really worried.

  Fingers quick on the sharp metal hatch edge, Geral pulled hard, and out came the bottom strip, unfolding to near half his arm length. He stared, shoved it into a storage pocket on the duty-suit, reached to pull the other while . . .

  “Problem spot, hold comm,” he managed, and emphasizing that helped him pull the tattered top strip down to shove it, too, into his pocket.

  “Jonimo!” He slammed the hatch hard, and this time the click sounded like a solid thunk, all right, and . . .

  “Jonimo?” came the worried voice and then: “That’s got it!”

  He sat heavily at the console, pulling a frayed yellow strip from his suit.

  “Is that code, Squad Forty?”

  Geral gasped a short laugh, wiping sweat from his forehead.

  “Kind of is, Binwa. Haven’t you ever done a suit-walk? Jonimo is what you say when you jump off the station, to tell your squad you’re free in space.”

  “Never been off-station. Never been on a ship, either,” Binwa admitted.

  “Anyhow, looks like the hatch was blocked from tight seal. I mean on purpose—I’ve sent you veed of it!”

  “Yes. I should have expected this. This is part of it all, I’m afraid.”

  “Part of what?”

  “Things happening. Comm channels I can’t get to, and ships incoming but no one’s talking to me. There’s a Conference going on and I can’t get feed on that, either. Security’s tampered with, locking me out! I don’t think they trust me, Geral, I see what they’re up to!”

  He sat; the board demanded ID.

  “Binwa, you have to approve my biometrics, it says.”

  “Yes. They left me alone here and now I invoked Catastrophe Ops. I’ll confirm you as Security, Acting Squad Leader. I got the key. Heck, I’ll just make you Shift Security Leader. Sensors on!”

  Geral paused, the sound of Catastrophe Ops bouncing around his thoughts, making him a little worried.

  “I’m looking into the camera, straight-face, and got my left hand on the pad.”

  “I see this, Squad. Takes a moment—give me your full ID, number, and names.”

  He did the numbers and letters first, then said “Geral Jethri Quai-Hwang.”

  “Moment, Squad.”

  The screens lit up, followed by a shockingly loud click as something mechanical thunked in the walls near the hatch.

  “You are live, Security Leader. Right now, there’s you and me, and then there’s the rest of the station. You’re Security Lead. You can do almost anything. Wait, I need to take care of something. It may be a few minutes.”

  Probably has to go pee, Geral figured, he’s like that when he’s nervous.

  Geral was used to waiting, but not to having this much information in front
of him, open to him, with the time going from one minute to many.

  But yes, he did see, there on one screen all the pressure points on the station, on a zoomable map-grid, and there, on another, the status of the doors, the pressure variations, water and fluid flow, the gravity variations. Also, all the reports, everyone’s shift status, security stations, medical alerts, a blinking yellow triangle showing a guard status—

  Two names he knew quite well, under guard in the hospital, on pregnancy watch. Tifney and Pettipi! Both of them? Both of the twins under guard? Both due multi-births?

  He rolled the idea around in his head, remembering how they’d coralled him on First Orbit’s Eve, the pair full of energy and inviting him to a quiet shindig, offering up a touch of vya and, after the vya, a long night on a bed full of them and them alone. The following shift-month they’d collected him individually a time or two—and then the Admin shifts changed and his moved to match Famy Binwa’s. He’d wondered what happened.

  The blood. They’d wanted his blood, that was what. And when they’d tested pregnant . . .

  There was dread in his gut and he couldn’t quite swallow it away.

  • • • • • •

  Binwa didn’t tell him what took a few minutes, but Geral knew it was far longer than that. He’d drilled down, peeking into private records, including the two women in hospital expecting multiple births. He found his own record, eventually, full of notations like “loner, no strong friendships, tractable if left to his own pursuits,” but the cross-references to Senior Resource and Admin Alert made him worried, and the multiple notes over time—Transfuse only to Seniors and Blood Resource—worried him more.

  Other areas didn’t open to him—but yes, the Seniors had their own shifts and apparently they’d added his mother to their number, for her records were all behind a security wall he couldn’t breach.

  He’d closed that file, tried to understand the rest of the boards in front of him, including the 3D station situation board.