“With what’s been on the Send lately? I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Tim.” She sipped her red wine.
They liked to talk around the fact of his father. Mom Lau had predictably blown up (in private) at the captain’s actions, but by the time she had to make a statement on the Send, she’d acquired her proper face.
My husband has been a successful deep-space captain in this war for over a decade. I trust his judgment, especially where it concerns his own ship, and so should the Hub.
“New Year’s isn’t for another two weeks,” Ryan said. “Things’ll die down by then.”
“What’s wrong with spending the evening with your family? Your grandmother will be here.”
LO Lau. That was supposed to be incentive?
He made a face. “I don’t like the way she always blames me for the messed-up state of the universe.”
His mother stared at him. “Don’t be absurd.”
“In absentia of the captain. You know it, Mom.” His vegetables had gone soft on the warming center of the plate. He hated gooey vegetables and mashed the peas and string beans with the flat of his fork until they looked like guacamole. “She gives you a headache too. I don’t even know why you bother to invite her. She doesn’t like us. She hasn’t liked you since you married the captain, isn’t that right?”
He was pissed. He didn’t know exactly why, but lately all he had to do was look at his mother and he wanted to—
Jump off a balcony, or something.
Push her face into the salad.
His mother glared at him like she was halfway to throwing something at his head.
Sid nudged his ankle under the table and widened his eyes at him. This wasn’t helping, he meant.
But it was true. It was all true. It was so true it was pathetic.
“Your grandmother,” Mom Lau said, “to whom you owe respect, is your blood.” And if that wasn’t bad enough, she added, “And mine.”
Unlike Admiral Ashrafi and Dr. Hannah Ramcharan.
It was a good thing their families were separated by stars and planets.
“She went to Earth when I was there, Mom, and didn’t once contact me. Tell me why I owe her anything.”
Sid stepped on the toe of Ryan’s right shoe. “About the flash,” Sid murmured. “Song…”
She still looked at Ryan, one hand on her wineglass and shards of chandelier light in her eyes. “It’s not a good idea. I want you here.”
“Well, I don’t want to be here. So I’m going. Sid’s going to do his Marine thing and we’ll have fun. You can ward off Grandmother’s insinuations with vodka and caviar. Thanks.”
“He means to ask politely,” Sid said, kicking his foot this me.
His mother didn’t believe that. “All you’ve done since coming back from Earth is go to parties or hole up in your room, Ryan. You won’t register with Austro University to finish your courses and I’m tired of you just flopping around the residence with no thoughts of the future.”
He looked up at the molded ceiling. White angel images and curlicues swirled above his head.
“I don’t ask for much, Ryan. This isn’t a large thing to do—it’s being with your family and talking with my friends. Considerately.”
Her friends. Not his friends.
She knew he had no real friends.
And she wanted Sid around for it. They never did anything in public but they still liked to orbit each other.
Except Sid was only twenty-seven and he preferred flash houses too. Of course he would never say that.
“Mom. I’m going to that flash. Don’t try to order me around.” He finished his wine and got up from the table.
“Where are you going?” she and Sid asked.
“Away. While I can.”
“Sit down,” his mother said, meaning it. Her eyes were hard.
Sid got up too, depositing his napkin on the table. Ryan was sure they exchanged looks, but he had his back to them. The cook stood in the dining-room doorway with a platter of fruit slices for dessert. Ryan took the other entrance into the living room, going for the foyer.
“Ryan.” Sid followed him.
“You’re my bodyguard, not my keeper.”
“Hold on, at least. Take your jacket. I won’t stop you, but I’m coming with you.”
He breathed out. He took the jacket Sid offered him and tried not to hit Sid or the other Marine that stood by the doors like a statue. The third Marine that they lived with must’ve been in the security office, monitoring traffic outside of the residence.
Everywhere he went people watched. Except for in his bedroom and bathroom. But if he stayed there all the time he was going to go crazy.
He had a bloody right to take a walk if he wanted, dammit, without having to worry about what people thought or what people might do, or if it pleased his mother or not.
“This isn’t a good idea,” Sid said, watching him like he was going to explode any second.
But he didn’t explode. He opened the door and walked out.
“She doesn’t understand,” Sid said as they rode the lev down to the bottom of the executive tower. “You need to tell her about Earth. About London.”
Ryan folded his arms. “Just shut up, okay? You’re here because you have to be, not because I want to talk. Better yet, why don’t you go back upstairs and bang her while I’m out?”
Sid grabbed his shoulder, twisting the red silk of his jacket. Ryan shoved at him and both of them ended up slamming into the mirrored lev walls. He got a swipe across Sid’s cheek but Sid jammed a forearm up under his chin and shook him once, hard.
“Settle down!”
His head rang. The doors opened. Three people stood there waiting, and stared. Their eyes darted.
He broke from Sid’s grip, pushed him aside, and strode out. Fixed his jacket and shoved his hair from his face. At least no meedees were waiting in ambush, but he’d give it time. Footsteps came up behind him and Sid slipped a hand around his right elbow, firm.
“Don’t do that again. You don’t run off from me in public, understand?”
His heart was thudding in his ears. He stared at the crowd going past him to offices and shops, flowing around the tall fountain that poured noise and water into its faux-stone basin. He wanted to disappear among it all.
It could all disappear so easily. Stations were vulnerable. All a symp terrorist or pirate had to do was muck up one of the many systems critical for supporting life. Sid had run it down for him years ago. Cut the heat and freeze people; slip a toxic gas into the ventilation system; cut oxygen so people would die of asphyxiation or carbon monoxide poisoning. Mess with the gravity. Plant a bomb near the energy towers.
And that would be it. Bodies everywhere. A dead puckered station for the Send to memorialize.
He had nightmares of it.
Sid squeezed his arm. “Ryan.”
He looked up at his bodyguard. “I only want one thing, Sid. And you can’t even do that.”
He didn’t mean the flash.
He started to walk, knowing his bodyguard would follow, and ignored the frozen hurt that impacted Sid’s face just as sure as if he’d hit him.
They didn’t get far before a Send holoboard scrolled a story about his father’s recent activities. What they knew of it, which was just enough to create sufficient flak and piranhalike interest. People started to stare—from café tables lining the concourse, from small square public playgrounds surrounded by security and filled with nannies and their charges. The station was alive one way or another, on gold or blueshifts depending on where you worked, and the Send never went to sleep.
Neither did meedees. Sid saw them coming from branch corridors and propelled him around the fountain’s wall-side, away from sight. He sat there behind some variegated greenery while Sid stood watch.
Alone, at least, though sound traveled through the leaves.
“Sources from the Dragons-Rim military depot, Meridia, say that two Komodo-class pirate ships attac
ked Captain Azarcon’s Macedon from around the dark side of the Meridia moon. The spacecarrier sustained heavy damage, including substantial fire on their bay doors and escape pods, through which the pirate outriders boarded the Earth-Hub ship. This perhaps comes as no surprise to many that have been following the captain’s career of late. Captain Azarcon has gone on record declaring pirates an equal menace to EarthHub’s security as the sympathizer Warboy and the strits themselves. For the past few months, EarthHub Standard, he has targeted pirate ships, caches, and sinkholes—while relegating normal patrol routes along the Demilitarized Zone to other Hub ships. Does this give the Warboy and his strit benefactors free rein on our deep-space routes and free access to our deep-space stations? Later we will be speaking to EarthHub Centralist First Minister and presidential candidate Judy Damiani about her views on the captain’s latest—”
They knew how to write those scripts, all right. Mention the Warboy and that moved everyone’s mild interest into paranoid defense. The human sympathizer captain, stritified more than any other human symp in the galaxy (if you believed the Send), had been terrorizing deep space and half of the Hub’s Rimstations for more than a decade. The fact that particular symp was still flying free incensed Centralists— everyone, really—although it was more than rhetoric to the people living in the cross fire.
Hatred begat hatred, as the old saying went.
Nobody ever shut up about it, as if talking about the war made it any better for anybody. As if talking about his father made the captain change his behavior.
Maybe it was better for people with agendas, like that vitriolic Damiani woman who fashioned herself one of the revered signers of the EarthHub Coalition. Meanwhile, Admiral Grandpa had told him that people in EarthHub Command suspected the Family of Humanity terrorist organization had ties to Centralists on Earth and elsewhere.
If he had to draw a map of all the layers of politics that weighed down his family, he’d run out of comp memory.
Sid knew. Sid was watching him every other glance, while watching the passersby, probably wondering when he wanted to leave.
He could leave. If there was actually somewhere better to go.
Back up to the residence meant facing off with Mom Lau again and he couldn’t look at her. Half the time he confused her, the other half he probably infuriated her. It went both ways, and he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her, explain anything, or even move from his misty spot near this Gaia-inspired stone fountain.
It hid him from most of the concourse traffic, but also drowned out a lot of the ambient noise.
So he didn’t hear the man approach, just saw Sid move suddenly in front of him and put out a hand to keep somebody back.
“Ryan!” the man called. “Ryan Azarcon, please, just a few questions.”
“Step back, sir.” Sid had a hand inside his jacket and the other on the man’s chest.
“It’s not about the transcast,” the man insisted. An old man who nevertheless tried to step around Sid’s tall body.
Ryan stood but didn’t approach.
Sid was a wall. “Step back, sir. I won’t ask again.”
The man held up his empty hands in a casual gesture of goodwill. “Easy, Corporal. I know you have his best interests at heart, but I’m not armed. My name is Arthur Pompeo, I’m writing a biography on Cairo Azarcon and I’d like to—”
Ryan said, “You’re what?” Which he shouldn’t have done because it gave Sid mixed signals. Let the man talk to him or not?
He’d heard of Arthur Pompeo. An old era meedee who’d shipped out with carriers (but never Macedon) more than two decades ago, at the height of the deep-space war. He wasn’t some earnest segment producer for the SendTertain. He had a mantle of award statues behind his name.
And, damn it all, he was researching the captain?
“Ryan,” Pompeo said, standing his ground despite Sid’s blocking shoulder. “Just ten minutes of your time, that’s all I ask.”
His mother would kill him. The captain would put a bounty on his head. He didn’t even entertain the thought.
“Sid, let’s go.” He walked around the greenery and headed back to the levs at the base of their tower.
“Ryan, listen to me, you can shed some light on your father’s actions. You can help him!”
“Not with your words,” he said over his shoulder. Sid walked close behind him, at a clip.
“You should know that your grandmother Yvonne Lau has already spoken to me. I offer you the opportunity to refute her.”
Bastard.
Bitch.
Ryan stopped, pushed Sid aside, and walked back. “What did she say?”
Pompeo’s pale gray eyes evaluated him. “Sit with me and we can go over it. And I’ll take anything you want me to have, on or off the record.”
Sid said, “Ryan, we’re leaving. Now.”
Ryan watched the old man. A war dog maybe as much as any captain. “Did you speak to my mother?”
“Not yet.”
Sid said, “You’ll have to go through her office, Mr. Pompeo, and we’d appreciate it if you didn’t harass Mr. Azarcon outside of official channels.”
Ryan thought, Mr. Azarcon can speak for himself.
“I’m available anytime,” Pompeo said to him, ignoring Sid. “Here’s my comm number.” He held out a finger-sized chipsheet.
Ryan knew he’d have to give something up if he wanted to know what LO Lau had said. And that was out of the question. Pompeo didn’t offer a talk out of any sense of fair play. It was all just to get his story.
And why should Ryan care what was said anyway? It was the captain’s problem. And the captain was in deep space.
Where he couldn’t get harassed except by strits and pirates, but maybe he preferred them, over all, to meedees.
Never mind his family, who got the brunt of people like Pompeo.
Never mind them at all.
Because Mom Lau could handle meedees, that was her job, and Ryan Azarcon was incidental to that equation.
Talk to your father, his family liked to tell him.
But just not over the Send.
He didn’t take the chipsheet. He turned his back on Pompeo and felt the old man’s annoyance all the way up to the apartment.
Sid must have worked some sexy voodoo on Mom Lau during their sleepshift because she approached Ryan at breakfast next shift, dressed for her day in a subdued cream-and-chocolate-colored outfit, her demeanor equally subdued. She brought her caff to the table nook under the high umbrella of fake morning light, and sat across from him and his slate, which he liked to read while he ate so people didn’t talk to him.
“Ryan,” she said, smoothing a long lock of dark hair from her cheek and resting an elbow on the gray tabletop. “About New Year’s Eve…”
He tried to remember if he’d moved his injet with its half a capsule of Silver from the airvent to under his mattress. Sid would be doing his goldshift inspection of the premises right now.
“… I think it’ll be fine if you went to the flash with Sid, but only if you promise not to ditch him.”
She wasn’t joking.
“I won’t ditch him, Mom. Maybe I’ll get him laid, you know, to loosen him up.”
She frowned, then hid it behind her mug.
“Besides,” he said, “I planned on going anyway. Just so you know.”
He wouldn’t be controlled as if he were twelve again. Time his mother caught up to that fact.
She looked into his face. He thought she’d argue with him or verbally knock him down, but instead she just seemed kind of tired.
Wistful.
He caught her looking at him like that sometimes, ever since they discovered he was now a head taller and she could no longer comfortably put her hands on his shoulders.
He looked down at his slate.
“Tim told me Arthur Pompeo approached you last shift,” she said, without addressing his declaration of emancipation. He wasn’t sure if that annoyed him or not. So he just a
nswered her. “Yeah. Ambushed.” He tapped his slate to flip the screen. On it was the tour schedule of one of his favorite music artists. Of course Austro would be a stop.
“Don’t give him any quotes,” she said. “Let me handle him.”
“Maybe you should be telling Grandmother Lau.”
“Oh, I’ll be speaking with her this shift.” She leaned back and crossed her legs.
His mother had married the captain against LO Lau’s explicit wishes. LO Lau hadn’t liked the captain’s attitude. If you think he’s a bastard now, you should’ve seen him when he was younger, Grandmother Lau had told Ryan on his nineteenth birthday. No respect whatsoever for superiors. Grandma Ramcharan had said a different thing: He only rejects people he thinks deserve it.
The marriage had taken a certain amount of rebellion on his mother’s part, but she paid for it now. LO Lau barely spoke to them and used her busy work schedule as an excuse. But it seemed she had time to speak to meedees like Arthur Pompeo.
The look on his mother’s face now said it all. The captain was her territory and no matter their arguments in private, Mom Lau didn’t want their problems in the public sphere.
“Does this mean you’re uninviting Grandmother Lau for wei-lu?” He couldn’t help it; he smiled from under his brows.
It was difficult for her to resist his smiles; he’d learned that early.
She laughed, stood, and rubbed his hair as she passed him toward the zap counter where the breakfast omelet sat, fragrant from warmth. She’d picked up that gesture from Sid, who messed up Ryan’s appearance at every opportunity.
“Don’t push it, Ryan. She’s still my mother and I have to respect that.”
He bit down lightly on the tines of his fork and watched his mother’s attention shift as Sid walked into the kitchen. Her smile widened and the affection in her voice didn’t go away when she greeted him. Like a girl.
Grandmother Lau’s defiant daughter; she’d been that long before she’d been his mother.
She didn’t seem like his mother when she lit up for Sid, who was nearly twenty years her junior, despite the fact they looked the same age.
Burndive Page 4