A woman posing as a legitimate meedee had approached her, asking questions as if she were really interested, and my mother, being the way she was, had stopped to at least tell the woman that she would address the questions in her statement.
And the woman had rushed her.
Security shot her when she was within a meter, but she was on a time bomb.
She was the time bomb.
And now there were funeral arrangements, and advance security details, and the obvious expectation of more meedees once the ship docked.
My father was sending ahead a platoon of jets on a Charger APC to work with the Marines and pollies on station, for both the investigation and the logistics of our arrival, and the security details for the funeral. Because he didn’t trust Grandmother Lau to take care of things. He told me Sid had requested to go and he’d granted it.
“How could you do that?”
He said, “Because Sidney asked. And I believe he needs to do something or he’ll—”
“Be killed. Over there.”
His voice was gentle and I didn’t want to hear it. “He’s not a target.”
But it was the pattern of things.
“Who did it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Pirates again? Are they still mad at you?”
His mouth tightened. “Suicide isn’t their style… Ryan… please.”
I didn’t know what he was asking.
I said, “When we find out who did it, I want them dead.”
He stared at me for a second, as if we were time-delayed. The two of us on the couch with the thrum of the moving ship all around, and the further we went the sicker I felt, and the angrier I got.
“Promise, Dad.”
He reached over and stroked my cheek briefly, then let his hand drop. It seemed like metal nails drove down my throat and into my lungs.
He wasn’t going to make promises he might not be able to keep. He never had.
“You should go and say good-bye to Sidney,” he said. “I’ll be here when you come back.”
I banged and buzzed the hatch at Sid’s quarters until he opened it, bleary-eyed. The Send chattered behind him from the comp. The same cycled shit. My mother’s face from an archived ’cast, the exploded hallway with a swarm of pollies choking it up. The speculations: pirates. Anti-peace factions like the Family of Humanity. Even though terrorist groups rarely targeted specific individuals. That was more the realm of governments. I dragged my gaze to Sid’s duffel, packed and ready to go.
“No,” I said.
“I’m going to make sure they don’t screw it up.”
“There’s no point!”
“I’m going to see you there. When you come in with your father.”
My body felt full of splinters. They stabbed behind my eyes.
“You need to stay here,” he said. “You’re safe on this ship.” He picked up the duffel. When he looked at me his eyes were red and dry. It was his bodyguard face. Except for the eyes.
I hadn’t been without him for the last seven years. It might’ve occurred to him too. Before he left he pressed his lips to the top of my head, as if I were a child.
I waited for the news to hit that Sid had been killed in another assassination attempt or freak accident, but it didn’t come. Captain S’tlian and the Caste Master sent their condolences, Jos said, and I stayed completely off the Send. I didn’t even feel like talking with my grandparents and I didn’t trust myself to speak to Shiri.
My father didn’t rush Macedon back to Austro like he had the last time. He kept Musey busy translating his intentions to continue the negotiations, despite everything. Maybe he needed to do that, like Sid needed to be busy and I needed the music turned up and my solitude uninterrupted. In the hours between leaps I sometimes sat with Evan in that dusty stairwell, in silence, because Evan seemed to understand that crowds and words were cumbersome and annoying.
Soon enough we arrived on Austro and my father came in from a long shift on bridge, looking like he had made that double leap from deep space on foot. He sat me down at the kitchen counter while he drank a cup of hot caff, and told me that as soon as we stepped out of the military dockside our faces were going to be transcasted. And then everybody would know that I hadn’t been on Austro. Not that it mattered now.
“I can handle it,” I said, even though I had no idea if that was true.
“All the arrangements have been made,” he said. “It’s being held in the Universalist Chapel in Module Three and we’re leaving in two hours. The meedees will probably not accost us, out of respect, but they will ’cast.”
“You said that. And I said I can handle it.”
He sipped his caff. “All right,” he said. “Better get ready then.”
I slid off the chair and went to do that.
I thought the captain would wear his dress uniform, but he didn’t. Whatever protocol was, he emerged from the bedroom in a black suit like I wore, no rank or insignia or anything otherwise military. I followed him out, in silence, all the way down the rackety lev, doubly loud because we were in dock and the drives were quiet. It seemed to echo my nerves.
On maindeck we picked up a jet escort of six, nobody I recognized offhand except, surprisingly, Musey. Hartman’s unit, including Dorr and Madison, was on Austro. I made eye contact with Jos and he acknowledged it with a bare blink. He was an excellent sniper, I knew, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d asked the captain to be on the detail, negotiations or not. The captain would want his best jets with us.
I felt better with Musey at my back.
But that went away when we stepped down the ramp, off ship, and headed toward the tall dockside doors. My father walked beside me, we were flanked on all sides by jets, but the dread embedded in my gut and began to chew. My hands shook, but I didn’t want to put them in my pockets in case I’d need them free for a quick movement. I tried not to breathe too fast, even though we came up on the exit at a brisk pace.
My father paused and he gripped my wrist.
“Stay behind my shoulder,” he said.
“All right,” I answered, a bit hurriedly. And took a long breath.
We stopped at the doors. One of the jets in front of us muttered something into his commstud and the doors to the station concourse began to open.
Even before they were fully apart, the bursts of cam lights went off in our faces, like muzzle flash.
Pollies, Marines, and jets all made a fence line on the walk-route to the private podway that was our destination. Behind them were the authorized meedees, and behind them, far back and cordoned off, was the public, craning for a glimpse. Above all our heads a stream of wallvids scrolled our own images back at us.
I looked up to avoid the immediate, consecutive glares of the lights and got caught in my own gaze. Someone had mounted a 360 cam up on the edge of one of the screens (the airborne cams were forbidden on the route). I saw myself walking close behind my father’s right shoulder, surrounded by black, and we were in black, a fast-moving body of darkness. My father’s face, plain for all the galaxy to scrutinize, was a pale mask. Mine looked dazed, my eyes too large and too blue, the ends of my hair so obviously fake and yellow, washing out the color of my skin.
For a second I felt as if I were up on that screen looking down at myself looking up, and I paused, blinking, and stared ahead at the Marines. Maybe Sid was here.
A hand went around my back. I thought it might’ve been Musey but my father suddenly pulled me smoothly against his side and held on, forcing me to keep pace with the group.
The executive tunnel came up, but the crowd didn’t diminish until we were through the doors to the small, white platform where our scarab-shaped pod idled, alone.
A squad of jets was there already, and quickly opened the doors and guided us in. I sank down against the deep, plush gray seats, and folded my arms against my stomach. My father gripped my shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. Muse
y and three of the jets piled in next to us, while the other two went up front. Once the door slid shut all the noise outside dampened and we sat suctioned into silence.
I wiped my eyes. Stress tears, nothing more.
I didn’t object when my father’s arm found its way around my shoulders. It was something to lean into so I wouldn’t slip to the floor of the pod; it steadied the small shivers that threatened to collect into uncontrolled shakes.
Halfway there, and no incident yet. I still couldn’t breathe fully.
Musey had a pickup in his ear and seemed to be listening to something. But he didn’t say anything, so I supposed they had it all covered. I tried not to pick a thread loose from my sleeve cuff.
The pod finally stopped and we climbed out, jets first, then my father and I. It was a short walk through an empty corridor to the three mirrored executive levs. More station Marines surrounded us until we were safe inside. Even though they must have secured the compartment and probably the lift shaft all the way up to Module 3, I didn’t breathe out until the doors opened on our floor.
It was quiet here. The privacy of the rich—carpeted halls, pale painted walls, and molded ceilings—ultimately a thin skin, because just outside the heavy, carved doors were more meedees, lined in the public corridors all the way to the Universalist chapel and its stained-glass portico. Artificial light overhead filtered through the shapes of stars and moons and deep blue spacescape, the four panels all connected by a thread of gold that represented the human soul.
My mother hadn’t been particularly religious except on holidays, and even then she vacillated between traditional observance, ancestral, and the most common on Austro, which was Universalist. She would’ve liked the aesthetics of the place, though.
It was like a vid premiere as our heavily armed entourage marched briskly toward the portico, flashes chasing our heels. Some young voices from the civilian crowd yelled, “We love you, Ryan!” It made me look, surprised, confused that anyone would shout such a ridiculous thing, especially now, but I didn’t stop, not with my father on one side propelling me along and Musey behind me making sure I didn’t balk.
Once inside the chapel I heard my father breathe out, then catch himself, as the doors shut behind us and we were suddenly engulfed in the quiet of the sanctuary.
Tall arches bent above us, fluted steel with warm brown, faux-wood jackets. Heavily carved images of pointed stars and round, ringed planets decorated the higher beams, trickling down to more abstract lace patterns and historical leaf motifs, all intertwined like the gold thread on the glass. Wide pews, velvet seated in bloodred, pointed the way up to a slightly raised dais that was backed by a blue glow and blended speakers to project the music.
It was peaceful and vaguely morbid in its emptiness (the other guests hadn’t been admitted yet), and at every exit stood an armed jet.
Sitting on the dais was a sealed, silver casket tube.
I stood frozen at the bottom of the aisle, my father’s hand around my arm, the soft music a sudden heavy pressure in my head.
Then a door to one of the private side rooms opened and a dark-haired woman strode out. For a split second I thought it was my mother and twitched in shock, but as she came farther into the cone of sconce light I saw it was Grandmother Lau. Her black hair lay flat against her skull in a long sheen. She was shorter than me even in heels but didn’t give the impression of needing to look up for anything.
“You have nerve to come here,” she said to my father, her face a pale sculpture of anger.
“I have a right, Yvonne.” His hand slipped from my arm.
“Yes, your precious rights. They caused this. And even this—” She gestured to a jet. “Armed guards in a place of worship.”
“Would you rather a security risk?”
“You are the security risk. You even dragged her son into it.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, looked past her shoulder at the casket.
She spoke out of sorrow. It was on her face in high relief.
“Yvonne,” my father said. “Not here. Not now.” He put a hand between my shoulders to guide me to the front row.
“Captain,” she said, before we could walk past, “what will make you stop? Ryan’s death next time?”
He turned to the side so abruptly she took a step back and put a hand on the edge of one pew. He was almost toe to toe and his voice didn’t rise above that distance. “Not now. And not in front of my son. Back the hell off.”
I couldn’t see his expression, but Grandmother Lau’s face seemed to stiffen and become fixed on her grief and anger. Years of accusation lined her eyes. She looked over his shoulder at me and I didn’t know what else she saw there but it made her turn and head down the aisle, past the jets who didn’t move; she had to walk around them.
We made it to the front row and sat. I leaned forward and put my head in my hands, feeling boneless and too warm. A headache started to spread from behind my eyes to the back of my skull. I wasn’t going to last the service; it was already beginning. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.
Someone touched my hair. I looked up and Sid was there, in his dress uniform and a somber little smile, though his eyes were dazed and distant. Not a scratch on him.
I stood and hugged him for a long minute as the sounds of the guests arriving broke through the silence.
No matter who spoke I couldn’t raise my eyes. They remained fixed to a point on the thick, patterned carpet between my feet, my hands clenched in my lap. I sat between my father and Sid and tried not to make any sound at all. Some part of my mind drifted up to the high ceiling, up there among the echoes of the soft string music and stifled sobs.
My father laid his hand on the back of my neck and didn’t remove it until it was his turn to speak.
Sid didn’t say anything, or move much, but I heard him sniffing and he lifted one hand to his eyes a lot. I didn’t care who saw or what they might think, I reached over and took his hand. It was as cold as mine.
I glanced up into his eyes. He was momentarily surprised, but he clenched my fingers and it eased the tightness in my chest just a little.
I didn’t really hear anything that anybody said, and in Grandmother Lau’s case that might’ve been a good thing. I felt her eyes on me. The service was a blur of saddened voices that reached to all my corners and settled, as if I’d never be rid of them. But eventually even my father sat down again and in that pause, when the crying from behind me carried loudest in the brief silence, I wanted suddenly for all of it to be over, to be alone, to hear finally that the people responsible were dead and burned to ashes.
I didn’t know if I could make the walk back to the ship, once again past those meedees.
“No rush,” my father said as we heard the crowd file out of the chapel behind us. The jets were going to stay, there was a platoon of security all around, so I stood when we were alone, just my father and Sid and I, and went to the casket to touch its cool surface.
They hadn’t laid it open because a bomb had killed her. Ripped her apart.
I sank to my knees, then just sat on the carpeted steps leading up to the thing that held my mother, the remains of her. It wasn’t even good enough to hold the scattering of my emotions. They all just seemed to race away like the spidery cracks in a sudden broken glass. One touch and the shards would fall around my shoulders and cut me.
Sid walked with us now, on my opposite side, with my father still on my left. We retracked all the ground from the chapel to Module 7, back toward the solid thought of home, the ship, and I never wanted to go somewhere so fast as to back inside my father’s quarters, away from the meedees. Now they yelled questions at us as we passed through the edges of the concourse toward the dockside ring, their momentary lapse of respect completely forgotten now that the funeral was over, never mind the grieving.
Who was behind the murder, did you know?
What was the current state of the negotiations?
What had Ms. Lau’s mother s
aid to you at the service?
Did you blame yourself for her death?
I was tempted to yell back, if only to shut them up, but our fast pace didn’t allow it and I couldn’t look up into the glare anyway. My father didn’t say a word.
Behind me Musey suddenly shouted, “Heads up!”
I flinched from Sid’s sudden grip on my arm as he yanked me back and low. I looked up and saw a balloon, a pale blue shape floating over the crowd toward our security team. Then all I saw was black as two uniformed bodies and Sid in his dark blue surrounded me and my father and shoved us along on an abrupt detour.
I glanced back at the majority of our security as the balloon suddenly popped, raining bright bits of confetti.
Then the shots started. They sounded like they had in the Dojo.
Somewhere at the back of my mind I knew what was happening. They’d seen an anomaly, and you didn’t take chances. Security had mapped out numerous safe points along our route in the event of an attack or some other threat and that was where we were going, at a mad rush, my father and I, Sid, Musey, and another jet I didn’t know. Walls blurred by, our feet pounded, and behind us the staccato crack of rifle report echoed up and down the deck.
“In here,” Sid ordered, dragging me down a side corridor, one I didn’t recognize on this station. But we were still on the main level.
A round shape rolled across the deck in our path. Sound whooshed to silence and my sight shorted out with a painful flare. Something hard banged my shoulder, then my knees, and my brain screamed signals that I was no longer on my feet. I scrabbled to get up even as a shadow emerged from the blurry edges of my sight. One of them seized my collar and dragged me hard across the floor, nearly choking me. I went with it since it was probably Sid or Musey or my father. All the noise fed back into my brain like static.
Gunfire went off close to my head. I jerked back on instinct, blinking, seeing a body fall in front of me, the one that had held me.
“Sid!” I leaned down, grabbed the person’s shoulders, and looked close through the sparking black spots in my vision—but it wasn’t Sid. It was another man, older, a stranger.
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