Then the students across the street launched a few rocket-propelled explosives over the high walls and into the embassy compound. Half the building went down. They’d heard it five blocks up and Ryan ran back to see—barely, through the dust—the guts of the embassy hanging to the ground, as if a giant had taken a large bite out of the cement and marble. Structural veins swung loose, blocks of stone fell in cloudy avalanches, rolling over the carpet of bodies thrown wide from the impact. People had been in the front quad, arriving or leaving for the day. Hub Marines had stood at the entrance portico. Now bodies lay scattered near and far like squashed insects on a summer sidewalk, red imprints in his memory. Empty vessels even emptied of blood, like spilled secrets you could never retract. One of them might’ve been his grandfather; he didn’t know Grandpa had gone to a meeting across the city.
Sirens ripped the air.
He couldn’t look away. A shout rose from the bottom of his throat like bile, but all he could do was cough.
Fanged heat bit through his skin and clothing, made him choke. Fire and black smoke licked the belly of the bruised sky, burning images into his eyes. He was drugged by the stench of melted steel and burnt flesh. The world slowed to a nightmare crawl. His heart clawed at his chest. Dirt and ashes blew around his face, suctioned to his skin, went into his eyes until the tears ran out and stung.
He saw torn uniforms on ragged bodies.
Grandpa.
He tried to get past the blockade of emergency airwings but the pollies grabbed him, then Sid grabbed him, dragging him off his feet to keep him back. Meedees were on the scene as if they’d had precognition of the event and they captured his face, his soul, and sent it out to deep space so even his father saw.
And everywhere he went his horrified face scrolled forever on high rolling holoboards and wide flashing Send reports. He saw that face in the mirror.
Ryan Azarcon. His famous smile and his designer eyes. Austro’s Hot #1 Bachelor.
It was all bob. Everything was bob. Even Tyler was bob and this Silver was bob but he reached for it anyway, loaded the injet, pushed it in his arm, and unfurled his mental sails, sliding back on the couch for that first time, a virgin in this one thing. A virgin with his legs spread and both feet flat on the floor. It hit him hard and it hit him sweet and for an hour he forgot about everything, even his name, just like Tyler had promised.
Someone tried to open his door. It rattled, then there came a polite knock. “Ryan?” Sid’s voice through the door. He wouldn’t open it with his keycode unless Ryan didn’t answer.
“Uh, yeah.” He had gravitated to his bed from the floor and lay on it looking up at the blue ceiling, letting the last vestiges of the sail slide from his fingertips. Everything was colorful and velvety. His shirt was made of blue elastic material that wrinkled like silk between his fingers, then flattened out again to a perfect sheen. It waved up on his stomach from the way he’d lain down so that he spent some time inspecting the smooth ridges of his ribs. He’d lost weight in the past year. He used to have more muscle, not a lot, but the kind a small-framed person developed from regular activity—like trying to beat Sid in the powerball decacourts. He’d also taken up winter sports on Earth and slid himself down mountains every season. But that had stopped after Hong Kong too.
Everything just—stopped. Frozen on that image in his head of cartoon massacre that was all too real to dismiss as vid magic.
He’d smelled the charred bodies. It had gone up his nose and into his mind like cult indoctrination.
“Ryan?”
“Yeah, I’m there.”
He pulled himself up, one side and then the other, and shuffled to the door. He squinted at the code display. It took a few pokes on the pad to unlock it.
Sid looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“I was sleeping,” he said, rubbing an eye.
Sid slipped in and shut the door. “Your mother wants to know about the party.”
Her New Year’s Eve bash. Her second New Year’s Eve bash, to appease their Chinese ancestors, and because Austro needed no excuse to throw consecutive station-wide parties.
Happening in a couple weeks, February 17 if the shop windows were correct. Ms. Mom Lau always did things ahead of time.
Oh, yeah.
It was the Year of the Rooster. Wake up. Cock-a-doodle-doo.
He started to laugh.
“Ryan?” Sid’s eyes narrowed.
Oh, bad. Bad if he got caught. So he stifled the giggles, sniffed and went to his guitar and picked it up, plucking a few strings at random. “I’m going to die if I have to sit trough her friends again, Sid. Don’t tell me you want anther few hours of”—he pitched his voice—“Isn’t he so handsome? What a nice young man. Fetch me that wine, would you, nice young man?”
Sid didn’t look enthusiastic about the prospect. He might’ve loved Mom Lau, but her friends were another matter. “I was thinking. Miyasake—remember him? He’s a friend of your father’s—he told me last week that his flash is open to us if we wanted.” Sid grinned.
Ryan smiled back and stopped fussing with the guitar, wrapping his arms around it instead, like a lover. “You’re beautiful. I’d kiss you if it wouldn’t make my mother jealous.”
Sid and his mother were sleeping together. They had been since before Earth, since he was fourteen in fact. It was a scab on his and Sid’s friendship and the more he picked at it, the more it bled. And the deeper the scar. So he’d learned not to pick at it—too much. Even though he doubted the scab would ever fall away. It was a permanent mark on his inner skin and maybe Sid saw it when they were together. When had they not been together in the last seven years? It got to the point where people who didn’t know why Sid followed him around would ask if they were a couple. It had stopped being funny after Sid and Mom Lau got together and Sid started to get impatient with misunderstandings.
Maybe Sid had learned to overlook the scab. At least Sid seemed able to sleep in off-shifts, and sleep with Mom Lau without a complaint. So good for Sid, good for Mom Lau who complained about the captain’s absence, and good for Ryan that he didn’t make himself bleed with anger, otherwise he’d drive himself mad just thinking about it.
Five years of them and maybe he was getting used to it. Being pissed all the time when he had to look at them twenty-four seven was just too much effort. Half the time he hated them for it, but then he just couldn’t be bothered for the other half. Sid was good-looking, young, and accessible.
His mother was good-looking, young-looking, and accessible. His father was one of the most feared captains in the Hub fleet but both of them seemed capable of overlooking that fact too.
The sex must be outstanding.
Ah, dammit. Sometimes he couldn’t control his thoughts in a sail. They buffeted his brain and he just rolled with them.
He couldn’t remember if Sid had said anything in the last five minutes. Sid was looking at him a bit suspiciously.
“Ryan, maybe I should take you to the doctor. You really need to—Are you still not sleeping?”
Sleeplessness made him silly. So did Silver, but he didn’t tell that to his bodyguard.
He was zoning again. He smiled at Sid and held out his arms, holding the guitar by its neck. “Cuddle with me, Timmy. I don’t think Mom would mind.”
He still liked to tease Sid about it sometimes, just so Sid didn’t mistake his bodyguard job for a parenting one.
Sid said, half serious, “Shut up with that, okay? So this is the plan: I convince your mother about the flash and you behave.”
Behave? That was funny.
He let his arms drop and pouted. “Be my prince, Sid. Please? I can’t live another day without you.”
“Turn on your comp, your grandmother’s on comm for you.”
“Ugh, LO Lau?”
Grandmother Lau was the Austro-Earth Liaison Officer. He didn’t like her as much as Dr. Grandma Ramcharan on Earth, Admiral Grandpa’s wife.
Sid frowned at him. “You don’t
say that to her face, do you?”
“Of course not. Please.”
“It’s the admiral’s wife. Go on, she’s waiting.”
“Well, you can leave first.”
Sid walked out, all Marine about it, shutting the door. He did that when he was offended or fed up. Ryan laughed so hard he had to sit down. He missed the edge of the bed by a hand span, but saved the guitar on his lap.
He had to compose himself. Before Grandma saw him and recommended more shrink sessions.
He set the guitar on its stand and went over to the desk for his mobile comp, where he’d left it last shift. He hooked it behind his ear and slid down the eyeband. In seconds his optical implants (a sweet sixteen birthday present from Mom Lau) connected to the activation icon and he dived to the red cross symbol that was his grandmother’s avatar and blinked an open code to it. Dr. Grandma’s face bloomed in his field of vision, live, all the way from Earth, darting in coded quantum teleportations of light across the span of space, only a few moments lapsed.
The arcing wire with its InterFace bud attached to the eyeband sent his own image across to his grandmother’s comp. He hoped he didn’t look high.
“Hello, Ryan.” She smiled, polished from the gray-lined hair pulled back from her face to her dark green suit tapered perfectly to her long frame.
He could tell from the tight smile that this wasn’t just a social comm. And she was in her office, judging from the high leather chair behind her shoulders.
“What’s wrong, Grandma? Is Grandpa all right?”
She dropped the edges of the smile. “Yes, he’s fine. He’s in London right now for a meeting.”
The pause came unexpectedly when they both lit on the same thought. London had memories, most of them unpleasant. Ryan scratched his cheek, glad that Sid had left the room.
“Ah… that’s good.”
She didn’t dwell on it. “He wanted me to tell you something before it hits the Send, since he’s caught up right now.” She leaned forward. “We got word a couple days ago that Macedon was attacked out at the Meridia mines. By pirates. She took heavy damage.”
A couple days ago. His father’s ship. That could mean this had happened weeks ago, out in deep space, in the Dragons, where time and ships in constant motion operated at a different relative rate from Earth or even Austro Station— any fixed object. Leaps cut the gaps but not enough to obliterate their effects. Meridia was nearer to the Dragons than the Rim, even though technically they called it a Rim colony. But it wasn’t Austro.
Macedon hardly ever came this far into the Rim. So if she was damaged, or killed, that would be it. He’d never see his father again and the news would be too little too late.
It was the last thing he expected to hear. Even though his father fought with strits, symps, and pirates, it seemed a done deal that the captain of Macedon would always win his battles. Because he always had.
Ryan took a breath. “Heavy damage?”
“She’s still spaceworthy, but she was boarded and it’s pretty severe. Your grandfather had sent Trinity and Arabia out for a rendezvous but they didn’t quite get there in time.” She stared at him as if she expected a wall to come down.
He didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like he could do anything, or like his father had even commed. His father hadn’t commed for months, station time.
Was she leading up to something?
A curious numbness began to spread inside of him. From the sail, maybe. Dregs of the bullet ran through his bloodstream.
“Is he—all right?”
“They lost contact,” she said, sounding almost apologetic. “He might be silent running or his comms might be out. Trinity says he leaped.”
“Leaped? In a damaged ship?” Even he knew that was just shy of insane.
Grandma laced her fingers on the desk, her worried pose, when she didn’t want to look worried. “He went after the pirates. One of the attacking ships was Genghis Khan.”
He wracked his brain. Ah. The Khan. The pirate captain of that ship—Falcone, was it?—kept the Send occupied almost as much as the sympathizer leader, the Warboy, did. Falcone liked to follow in the wake of strit and symp attacks and steal people and resources for dealing on the black market, when he wasn’t launching attacks himself and running the slave trade. Ryan’s father, the captain of Macedon, hated the man and that was no secret.
But still—it was madness. What was his father thinking, leaping in a damaged ship just to get some criminals?
There was dedication and duty, and then there was obsession.
“Why doesn’t the admiral—?” But he cut the thought before it could flower. He knew the answer already. Grandma knew it too; he watched her mouth tighten in chagrin. Grandpa couldn’t tell the captain a thing from Earth’s vantage, and in all likelihood his father wouldn’t listen anyway. That was part of the reason Hub govies looked on deep-space captains with such suspicion and nervousness. People with ships full of deadly weapons who chose what orders they wanted to follow made great warriors but mercurial subordinates.
All well and good if strits were kept in their place by such captains, but it wasn’t conducive to govie agendas sometimes. Or govie pride that hated to think they’d lost control of their star soldiers, or that anyone other than themselves was above the rules.
“The Send knows?” Ryan thought to ask, figuring what his mother must be doing now if she also knew.
And what was going to happen the moment he stepped into a public place.
“We got tipped that it’s going to be ’casted in an hour. A leak on Earth’s end, I don’t know, but your grandfather’s pretty angry.”
He would be. He didn’t like deep-space operations to be on transcasts. Unfortunately, Captain Azarcon was a favorite among meedees and the more he blew them off, the more they scrabbled after him.
“Why does my father do these things? Doesn’t he realize how it looks?” The irritation came through without his logical consent, and he couldn’t stop it. “Taking a beat-up ship into a leap just makes him look crazy. Kill his crew with it and he’ll be court-martialed. I don’t get him, Grandma.”
Killing himself would be—
Selfish.
The thought angered Ryan. Beyond reason.
“Sweetheart,” she said with a little sigh, “sometimes I don’t understand him either. And I’ve known him since he was eighteen.”
His father was adopted. Maybe that explained why the grandparents were sane and their son wasn’t.
“Did you tell Mom?”
Please say yes.
But Dr. Grandma shook her head. “I thought it’d be better coming from you.”
His grandparents didn’t like dropping info about the captain on Mom Lau because it usually ended in virulent argument. With the captain inaccessible, the admiral often got the brunt of his mother’s frustrations.
So they dumped it on him. They said they wanted him to take more emotional responsibility. Whatever that meant.
Denial wasn’t healthy, Dr. Grandma had said.
Yeah, he’d answered. But it works.
They couldn’t force him in some things, so they urged him in others.
Talk with your mother, they said.
He had to deal with Sid and Mom Lau.
Stop avoiding your father, Sid said.
His father who didn’t have the decency to be around, or not to leap a damaged ship after pirates. So now what choice did anybody have but to worry and to blame?
Better not to know. Better not to wallow in it.
He said, Leave me the hell alone.
He just wanted to forget.
Dinner was always a sit-down affair, if Mom Lau wasn’t working, in the dining room with the teardrop chandelier giving a golden glow. It warmed the gloss-striped, Wedgewood-blue walls. No Send (especially now), just soft music from the unit in the living room and little sounds from the kitchen as the cook prepared the dishes, then brought them out to the table.
Sid always at
e with them as long as Mom Lau was there, sat usually on her right side, and Ryan slouched across from Sid on her left and played with his fork, looking at the two of them. Sid wore an expensive pale brown shirt that matched his eyes and smiled a lot at Mom Lau. They did that all the time now since he and Sid came back from Earth. They didn’t even bother trying to hide it around him anymore. Three years away was too long for no bed business, Ryan supposed.
Sid caught him watching and leaned back in his seat. He had the good grace to look a bit bashful.
Ryan mouthed to him, Flash. And stuck his fork into his sirloin steak.
Sid owed him. Sid had better be convincing. He wanted to go to that party instead of suffering at home in wei-lu with a boring brigade of his mother’s friends, and Sid had better do his job or he was going to make Sid’s life difficult.
“Song, about New Year’s Eve,” Sid said. “I was thinking I could take Ryan to a flash house instead. He’ll be bored here and I can run a team to scope the place beforehand. We’ll make sure it’s clean.” He didn’t mean clean like the apartment core, all open door chic, that new style bally-hooed on the TrendSend; he meant clean like no assassins clean.
“Do you think it’d be safe?” Mom Lau asked Sid, except she called him Tim. Tim, do you think it would be safe for my endangered nineteen-year-old son? Endangered like all those fuzzy animals on Earth with exotic eyes and woebegone faces.
Never mind he’d never been violently accosted by anyone in his whole life, not even by panhandlers on the ped-way or protesters on the steps of Parliament, back on Earth. That thing at Hong Kong hadn’t been because of him or even his grandfather. It was just because of the Hub in general. Like the dock bombing a few years ago, that sympathizer protest. Isolated incidents, mostly.
“I’ll make it safe. He’s just going to sulk if he’s stuck here,” Sid continued, the real reason Mom Lau would agree to let him out of his box. Nobody liked an insolent son around their colleagues.
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