Home in the Stars Box Set

by Mason, Jolie

  Requiem

  by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Under the wide and starry sky,

  Dig the grave and let me lie.

  Glad did I live and gladly die,

  And I laid me down with a will.

  This be the verse you gave for me:

  Here he lies where he longed to be;

  Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

  And the hunter home from the hill.

  Chapter One

  Taarken Prime hadn’t changed a bit in twelve years. It was still a backwards planet; quaint, old fashioned customs, ridiculous lack of services, and terrible food. She stood in harsh sunlight near time for the mid-day meal thinking nothing much had changed. The air smelled of spice and ship grease as she strolled her way through the market, one hand surreptitiously on her pulse iron. A funny name, she always thought, since it was made of indestructible alloy, not iron. In a nod, she supposed to Old Earth, pulse pistols carried the names of the old weapons like iron and shotgun. At least, they did out here on the rim planets.

  The market usually buzzed with traders till the dinner bell rang at the old spaceport cafe. There was a rhythm to trading towns everywhere, in any sector. Ships came in, did their business, and then moved out again. Taarken Prime was one of two habitable planets in the Taarken system, which is why it got the dubious honor of the Prime indicator. The other planet had little on it but mining scows and brothels.

  “Ari”, she heard behind her. It was Luca, her pilot and resident worry wart. “Ari, the chatter on the codex is gnarled. This planet has some issues.”

  “L, I grew up here, baby. This planet is why I have issues. Let’s just get the shipment loaded and move on out of here. The big work is in down space anyway.”

  This damn system was so small it could claim to be nothing but a weigh point on the way to Tartarus Colony. If it weren’t for the mines and the other mineral rich barren worlds within the system, everyone would keep going. Prime was the only planet capable of commerce and sustaining a real population, but the spacer mines were just beyond in the sweet spot on Secundia. The cold, cold rock out there in the Taarken System supplied multiple types of metals for construction of ships and structures, and Caden Carnes owned the whole damn thing.

  She sighed as his face drifted past her thoughts for a moment like cirrus clouds in the sky above the market. Chiseled jaw, like some stereotypical vid star, dark hair, the color of black space, and his hands had been so... “Ari”, she said. “Are you even listening?”

  She turned. Speaking of vid star looks, Luca Brine stole the whole show around her in the busy, dusty market off the space dock. Ari noticed a disgusting gorilla of a man leering at Luca’s backside, and caught his eye. Her hand dropped to linger subtly at her holster. What he saw must have convinced him to move on because all she saw after their gazes touched was a dust cloud.

  Luca’s angel face was a trial to Ari because she had the job of body guard, as well as captain of the Bell. Someone always had to be with Luca off ship. The girl drew men like manure drew flies, and most of them were the losers of the galaxy. She closed her eyes and dutifully listened to the next ten minutes of why Luca didn’t like Taarken. No one liked Taarken. The people on Taarken hated Taarken.

  “Luca, how bout you get Ra’dan and you two make sure that Callumite sample gets loaded properly? He’s over at the shipwright station. “

  Ari nodded, blond, baby curls falling all around her picturesque face. She walked away in the fitted uniform of the Bell crew, dark wine red and black, drawing attention from every lowborn ape and mud farmer along the market path. Ari sighed again. Ra’ddy would take care of her for a while. Luca wasn’t at fault for her looks certainly, but it sure as Hell made life hard for her in port.

  On ship, it was Ari’s world, and she was the queen. Messing with Luca would piss Ari off royally. Crew knew better than to piss off the queen. Land wasn’t her ocean. Only thing she controlled on land was when and how fast they blew off it.

  The crush of people around her had lessened marginally as she watched Luca make her way to the shipwright’s temporary tent. He’d take the whole stupid looking thing down at the end of the day and be back again next Mardi, which was market day. It was large and spired with stripes, so every ship owner could find him presumably. He was a pig of a man which is why Ra’ddy had to deal with him. The temptation for Aricka was to kill the little toad-faced monster where he stood, every time he brushed up against her or made one of his leering innuendos.

  Aricka turned left toward a long narrow street. She hated having to make this stop before they left, but it had to be done. The street looked like nothing more than an alley, as it always had. Cracked facades of buildings slung together defined the narrow way. A hover-car wouldn’t fit through, but there was no need as the people in this particular community couldn’t afford one anyway.

  She walked more cautiously as she reached the left turn at the end. Hand on her iron again, she gingerly turned the corner to find the street exactly as she remembered. She blew out a breath she didn’t realized she’d been holding. Right off the docks, where all the ships roared off into the blue, she grew up in the district housing in front of her. The peel of the building’s exterior suggested they’d tried to paint it red at some point. In twelve years, she supposed that was true. A few old world touches had been added in curling wrought iron swirls, but the paint on those was peeling too. A bum curled up on a stoop, dirt on his face and clutching a bottle.

  Ari strolled down the street of rising housing development on either side and put her hand on the fifth door latch. She blew out another breath as she opened the door.

  Inside, the halls were dank and poky. Dust blew in every time the door opened, and no one bothered to clean it up much, just hose it down every month or so. No real point in it, she supposed. It would be an unending, thankless task.

  New Haven housing district stretched from where Ari stood now staring down the street from a dirty window, all the way down to the spaceport. She thought it might be a little cleaner than she remembered it, looking over the modern looking light poles lining the avenue. Those were new.

  Her brother lived up on the fourth floor, and the lift was forever broken, according to the sign that had been there when Ari left twelve years ago. It had yellowed with age. She climbed the stairs slowly. Her heart sped in her chest as she wound closer and closer.

  They talked on the comm occasionally. She sent money, but she and her brother hadn’t stood face to face in years. He might hate her for that.

  The big nine on the door held her attention as she approached nervously. She reached over and pushed a button. It beeped. She backed away. Ari wasn’t ready for this.

  “Hello”. She didn’t recognize the young voice.

  “Hello, It’s Ari. Aricka Badu. I’m here to see Arden. Your Da.”

  The door didn’t open immediately. She stood there waiting to see if her family even wanted to see her. She and Arden exchanged letters on the Codex, which was the only way to communicate in deep space, but it wasn’t the same as the trips home she never made anymore. Ari avoided Taarken like the plague, did very little business here in the last five years at all. She usually sent another of her haulers to handle this planet’s short runs.

  No one had come to the door yet. It was just possible they were tired of her empty promises to come home. The battered blue door finally clattered open loudly, as if someone had rushed to get there. Ari had been thinking seriously of leaving, that no one wanted to talk to the prodigal returned.

  Her brother’s shocked expression said it all. He’d never expected her to darken the family’s doors again. He hadn’t changed much but the gray in his hair. There was signif
icantly more. He wore coveralls of stiff blue. His hands were still rough from the work of the mines and huge like their father’s. His face pleasantly lined from joy and the elements.

  “Ari”, he said softly.

  “Arden. May I come in?”

  “Of course, of course.” He moved aside waving her into their flat. It hadn’t changed much, and she could smell the supper sizzling on the oven in the back.

  “I’ve come at meal time. I’m sorry. There just isn’t a lot of time. We’re scheduled to ship out tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “So am I. Tonight, actually.”

  Silence. Awkward, messy silence, full of unsaid things, stretched between them. She hated coming home. It’s why she never did it. There were so many secrets now she couldn’t help but be afraid to speak for fear one of them might slip out like a little mouse running for its nest.

  “So how are the kids?”

  He smiled. “They’re brats, but they’re ours. We own em outright, now.”

  She smiled back. “No more option to buy, I guess.”

  “Nope. Let me get Jace, you wanna see him, don’t you?” He spoke eagerly, excited to show the oldest to her once again.

  “Oh, Jace is here?” Her voice cracked rough around the words.

  Her brother’s big body leaned around the door frame leading to the back of the house where the bedrooms were, and yelled for Jace. Feet stomping in a stampede was all she heard as five olive-skinned Badus barreled around the corner in varying size and condition. The little one was half-naked. The oldest followed more slowly, carrying the four year old under his arm like potatoes in a sack.

  She inhaled to steady herself. Jace had been six when she left. He was lovely. Eyes just like his father, she tried to breathe again and failed. “Jace, It’s Tanta Ari. Remember?” Her brother said it from far away, or so it seemed. Ari’s head felt a little light. The world spun around one teenaged boy, tall and dark like all the Badus. Slim and broad shouldered, like his father’s family.

  The boy was eighteen. Nearly a man now. He wore a simple white shirt folded up at the elbows and a large smile on his face of welcome and contentment. The child under his arm wiggled wildly until Jace put him down and tapped him lightly away on the backside. “Go on, Squirt”, he rumbled, then turned to her.

  “Tanta?”

  She nodded, suddenly unable to speak. He enveloped her in a crushing hug. Ari closed her eyes against painful tears and the memories of his smaller, chubby arms around her as she read to him, as she said goodbye at a space port, as she held him in a birthing room the day he was born.

  “You’re so tall.” She squeaked out.

  His big laugh vibrated her whole body as he squeezed one more time. She had to stop herself from clutching at him, keeping him there in the circle of her arms forever. She laughed, too, but it had more of a hysterical ring to it. Her brother watched her with concern, and perhaps sadness. She met his eyes sternly to let him know she could hold it together. He didn’t have to fear she was here to destroy the family he’d made.

  “You’re docked here? Can I see the ship?” Jace’s enthusiasm shone through clearly in each word.

  Her brother drew up stiff. “Jace.”

  “Of course”, she said weakly at first. “Jace, you’re welcome aboard the Bell anytime.”

  Arden looked annoyed, even as Jace hugged her again. “I can’t wait!”

  “Jace.” Her brother was angry now. “We talked about this.”

  Jace stiffened, standing taller before her. “No, Da, you talked about this. I said I want to ship out. You said I was too young. I still disagree. The legal age is sixteen, so there is no reason I can’t take a job off planet.”

  She felt so out of the loop. Years of living had passed and, here she was, playing catch up in the middle of two bullheaded men, as they squared off. “What’s wrong?”

  Arden waved his hand sharply. “He’s got space fever. That’s all.”

  “I’m a damn good mechanic and a highly trained tech!”

  “No one’s arguing that. I just don’t want you going off and never coming home again like...” Arden stopped and breathed in hard. Putting his back to the wall, he leaned there with his head down. He hadn’t meant to say it, clearly, but it couldn’t be unsaid.

  “Like me”, Ari said quietly. “He doesn’t want to lose you, Jace. The way he lost me.”

  Arden looked like he’d been punched. She moved toward him, feeling every ounce of regret twelve years could hold. “You didn’t lose me to space, Arden. No one did. You know why I left. You know why I stayed away.” She whispered the last part.

  “I know.” He took her hand in his, and this time, she couldn’t stop the single tear trickling down her left cheek. “Let me show you the roof garden. You kids stay here.”

  A chorus of protest erupted but quieted with promises she’d be back.

  Arden led her up winding stairs and out onto a fenced Utopia of growing things high above the dirty streets. Hydroponics whirred and spun. The wind generator whup-whupped in the breeze. The air still smelled of spices and ships, but, up here, it was cleaner, thinner, filled with soft desert florals. She breathed in the sweeter desert air to quiet the turmoil swirling in her midsection.

  “I’m sorry. I never meant to upset the apple cart. I just wanted to...”

  He met her eyes, hands on his hips. “You just wanted to come home. I know. We all do eventually.”

  She shrugged. What she’d wanted. Who knew what the hell she wanted?

  “He’s been wanting you for so long. Brinn and I could see it. Years, it seems like. He’s said he longs for space and adventure, but what he longs for is you, Ari.”

  She wrapped her hands around the smooth rail of a hydro casing. “He’s eighteen. He doesn’t know what he wants.” They had something in common.

  Her brother turned toward her, leaning on the rail. “No, he knows. He just doesn’t know why he wants it.”

  Ari fought the urge to hit something or scream at the blue sky, and fear billowed from her like smoke, thick and acrid. What would he think if he knew his whole life was a lie?

  “The old man is long dead, Ari. No one can take our boy now. Jace is his own man.”

  “He’s a boy.”

  “He’s a man, and he wants to know you.”

  “I’m just Tanta. He thinks of me fondly. That’s all.”

  “Is that what you told yourself all these years? Look, we may have altered his memory, but we didn’t alter his feelings. He loves you, Ari! He loves you fierce. Maybe he should sign on with you. I’ve fought him like a bear on it. He is too young to go gallivanting off on his own, but he’d be safe with you.”

  She looked at her brother hard. He loved Jace like any other father would. For him to even say this took guts. She looked away and stared at the distant clouds stretching over the horizon.

  “I love you fierce too”, he went on. “None of this has been fair. Ari, now I have my own. I’ve had Jace. I know what it took to do what you did for him. I know how damn selfless it was, and I’ve lain awake nights thinking about this. Because, I’d have lost my mind. You didn’t. You just kept moving.”

  She laughed. “I haven’t gone anywhere, Arden. I’m still living in that night.” His hand suddenly covered and held her own while they both remembered. She’d tried to tell her own Da it wouldn’t work. Alec Carnes couldn’t be reasoned with. Da had been a dreamer, an idealist. He’d tried to reason with him anyway and gotten a hole blown right through his chest for it. Ari could still see the blood running freely across the Carne’s family’s very fine floor.

  “I tried to kill him, you know. Bastard beat me down handily and wouldn’t turn me in.”

  “Carnes? That doesn’t sound...” Her face screwed up in a confused expression.

  “Caden.”, he interrupted. “I tried to kill Caden. Wanted to beat him to death with my bare hands.”

  “Caden?”

  He nodded. “He thought it was only about our father, of co
urse. He still doesn’t know about Jace. But that night, the night you left us, I went looking for him. Found him in the stable and tried to beat the life right out of him. He got the better of me eventually. Took a minute.” He smiled a bit. “I asked him why he let me go. He said, Ari shouldn’t have to lose anything else because of him.”

  Ari swallowed hard. “I was so stupid then. Naive and stupid, from the first moment I met him.”

  “No, Ari. You knew it was all wrong, that you and Caden should have been left alone. That’s not stupid. It’s hopeful. For what it’s worth, as much as it pains me to say it, Caden seems to have missed you too.”

  “What?”, she said.

  “He’s given me a command. I think that has more to do with you than my excellent leadership skills. He asks about you. Just about any time he sees me. Probably keeps me around for that reason alone.”

  “You’re flying one of his spacers.”

  “Yeah, the Hag.”

  “That’s a big one.” She heard the distance in her voice. She’d maintained that distance for twelve years now. It was getting harder the longer she stayed on this planet. She kept herself from asking where he was, how he was, but only just.

  “Since he took over, the miners have been doing better. The whole planet is, really.”

  “That’s good.”

  Arden smiled broadly. “That was you. Loving you changed him. I can see that for what it is now. Caden Carnes was a spoiled child until the day he met you.”

  “I’m glad something good came of it all.”

  “Something else will.” Her brother pushed off the rail with both hands. “Let’s go tell Jace his Tanta is going to take him on a nice long trip. Then I won’t have to listen to his bitching anymore.”

  *****#*****

  Jace packed in record time, while Arden tried not to notice how fast Jace packed. Brinn cried as she bundled up a basket full of food. Ari watched it all in shocked silence.

  She couldn’t even process what was happening. Her brother had decided, and, though she had tried to talk him out of it, he’d pronounced it a done thing. Jace was on her crew. Silly of her really to think she was captain of her own ship.