by Kelly Jensen
Gael’s thoughts were doing odd things. Running and screaming inside his head, colliding with nightmares, and falling into exhausted heaps. Words just weren’t going to work for him right now. Bram didn’t look much better, and why should he? At no point in their communication had Gael mentioned a sister—because he didn’t have one.
He searched the girl’s—Aavi’s face for clues. She smiled up at him, but her eyes sparked with something else. Fear. No, terror. And he could see how much the smile cost her. She looked about as brittle as he felt.
Gael pulled her arms from around his waist, but kept hold of her hands. “A-h.” The word cracked in his throat. He swallowed. Coughed a little. “We’ll just be a minute.” Tugging on Aavi’s hand until she started to move, he guided her outside the safety barrier. “Who are you?”
“Your sister.”
“No, really, who are you?”
“Aavi.”
A growl built low in his throat.
Aavi spoke before he could let it out. “I know you didn’t kill the man I was with, but I’ll say you did.”
“Burning sun!” This was not the scared girl he’d considered robbing and leaving for dead. The one who’d pleaded for help. The one he’d run away from. He could see that girl in her eyes, though. In the tightness around her mouth. The expression made her seem much older than the eleven or so he’d pinned on her. “Why didn’t you go back to where you came from?” he asked.
“I didn’t know how.” There, another flare behind her eyes. The familiar terror. “So I followed you.”
“All the way to Alkirak?”
“I listened to you and your friend make plans, then used the credit chit I was holding to bribe someone in the cargo area.”
That weird, creeping sensation of being in a room with someone unseen stole across Gael’s skin again. It’d been her, hadn’t it? Hiding with him in the storage compartment while the Lennox had been at port.
“I told them the same story,” she said.
“What story?”
Bram was approaching.
“I’ll tell,” Aavi warned.
Bram arrived. “I’m not sure what’s going on here.” Scratching his head, he looked from one to the other. “But they’re nearly done unloading the shuttle and want us inside the safety barrier. We, um, should probably . . .”
The urge to shove Aavi back into her locker and send her away on the departing shuttle was hard to ignore. Gael’s hands twitched. His thoughts were doing useless laps. “I don’t know what to say.”
Bram’s lips compressed into a hard line. “Well, we got a four-hour ride to my place. Plenty of time to think about it.”
“You’re going to let her come?”
“Don’t see as I’ve got much choice, have I?”
“I didn’t plan for this.”
“Obviously not.”
“It’s not Gael’s fault,” Aavi put in. “He thought I’d be taken care of.”
“Did he now?” Bram’s gaze landed back on Gael.
Bram had such a kind face. A little weathered, as though he worked under the sun. The tight line of his mouth didn’t feel right. Gael glanced up, briefly, at the dark-gray haze hanging over the crevasse. When he looked back down, he met eyes of a defiant blue. Perhaps the only clear blue on this weird planet. Nice eyes. Intelligent too. Quietly so. And Bram was more handsome in person than on the holo. All rugged and experienced. The sort of man who’d seen a lot of what life had had to offer and had taken the time to choose carefully from that selection.
Gael dropped his gaze toward Bram’s boots. Absurd tears burned the back of his sinuses. He blinked them away. Anger followed and he curled his fingers toward his palms. This was going to be his new life—his chance to start again—and he’d already fucked it up.
“He didn’t know that the people who were supposed to watch out for me were going to sell me.” Aavi’s statement was like a dropped pin in a quiet room.
“I’m sorry,” Gael whispered.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Aavi dug her fingers into the tightly curled ball of his left hand until he relented and let her in.
“I didn’t mean to leave you.” He had, but if she’d held his hand like this back there, back then, he might not have. He mightn’t have brought her to the other side of the galaxy, but he’d have made sure Price found a place for her.
Price wouldn’t have sold her, would he?
Bram was looking back and forth again, his eyebrows pulled down.
Maia entered the awkward fray. “Much as I love a good family reunion, we’re holding up proceedings. Gael, honey, what do you want to do with this locker? Ain’t nothin’ in it but some empty meal packs. I’m going assume Aavi lost her luggage too?”
“I, ah . . .” Gael let himself be herded back behind the glass and through the shuttle port. Aavi squeezed his hand the whole way. Bram was an impassive presence behind his left shoulder.
“I can buy it off you, if you like,” Maia said. “Always need shipping cases.”
He found himself nodding. “Sure.” He lifted his chin toward Bram. “Ah, just credit Abraham’s account, okay?”
Bram stopped walking. “I don’t want—”
“It can go against whatever you paid to bring me out here. And if Maia can find a job for me, I can pay the rest back. Soon as I have enough, we’ll be out of your hair.”
Bram opened his mouth—probably to object. His expression was hard, eyebrows low, jaw clenched. Then his shoulders dropped, his posture slipping from anger to disappointment.
The situation might not have been what Gael would have chosen for himself, and he still couldn’t quite believe a man like Bram had found him interesting enough to send a ticket, to invite him into his home, but Gael had been excited. He liked Bram already.
The colony wasn’t what he’d expected, either. There was no damn sky, for one. Well, there was, but the thin atmosphere made it dangerous to get out under it when they weren’t in a designated zone—which apparently meant down in a crevasse. But Bram’s farm had looked nice. Picking soybeans and polishing rocks—or whatever it was Bram did in his spare time—would be a lot more relaxing than collecting trash, washing endless dishes, trying to scare credits out of a shopkeeper, lining up a targeting scope, or just about anything he’d have found to do on Zhemosen.
Gael had been prepared to make a go of it. He wanted to try.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, this time toward Bram.
“We can talk about it when we get ho—to my place.” Bram’s cheeks flushed. “That is, if you want to come back.”
Gael had come all this way on the promise of seeing something green. Maybe he could at least do that before his life took another turn through the sewer of the universe. “I’d like that. If it’s okay with you.”
Without answering, Bram strode off. Shouldering his bag, Gael tightened his grip on Aavi’s hand and followed.
Bram packed the back of his rover with the supplies Maia had for him—the new drill bits and air filters and five bags of wheat flour. That he didn’t have to save room for Gael’s and Aavi’s luggage seemed like . . . not an omen, but a statement on the fact they weren’t here to stay. He couldn’t even wrap his head around the fact both of them had traveled across the galaxy with nothing more than a single change of clothes. Or that Aavi had apparently stowed away in a storage locker. Or that Gael was the sort of person who would leave his sister behind. Or that—
The click and hiss of the enviro-seal on the rear hatch cut off his thoughts, which was just as well. He didn’t have all day to stand around thinking. They had a long drive ahead of them. If he wanted to miss the sun on the overland portion, they had better get started.
Inside the rover, Gael and Aavi were already buckled in. Gael up front, Aavi in the back. At first glance, they were nothing alike, but Bram didn’t want to spend too much time looking at either one of them. Not right now. He felt . . .
Disappointed, mostly, but also duped. And stupid,
because with Gael in the front passenger seat and Aavi in the back, he could be driving his family somewhere. A small corner of his heart wanted to thump with joy; the rest of his heart felt as loose and unraveled as his thoughts. Generally, he wasn’t a spontaneous person. Every aspect of his life met with deep thought before passing into action. This . . . this was close to nuts, and he didn’t have enough credits to try again, even if he could convince himself to do so.
Bram slid into the driver’s seat, activated the canopy seal, and waited for the all clear before powering up the rover.
Landing was tucked inside the largest crevasse on Alkirak. The widest terrace was given over to the shuttle port, hence the town’s name. The actual town covered two more terraces to the north with housing on the upper terrace and businesses on the lower. Most terraces narrowed to ledges at either end. The ledges between Landing’s terraces had been carved to a uniform width, providing a road between the town and the shuttle port, and a highway leading south toward the bulk of Muedini’s mining operations, which would allow Bram to complete half the journey home in the shade of the crevasse. With no sensors embedded along the route, he’d have to manually steer the rover. He didn’t mind; it gave his head something to safely encompass.
The first hour passed in silence. There was nothing to see but rock on one side and emptiness on the other. There were farms close to Landing, but they were all below and behind them. Bram almost forgot he had passengers until Gael started snoring softly next to him. Glancing over, he noted the shadows beneath Gael’s closed eyes, and mentally strangled sympathetic thoughts in their infancy.
The silence of the second hour was harder to take.
Gael roused as Bram directed the rover toward an incline that would lead up, out of the crevasse for the short run across the planet surface. Bram checked the environmental controls and did a quick survey of the atmosphere on the plateau. With dawn about an hour away, they had plenty of time to cross before the sun swung overhead, scorching everything in its path.
Blinking, Gael sat up and looked out his side window. Over his shoulder, Bram could just see Aavi pressing herself against the window in the back seat. He could tell them there wasn’t much to see yet, and that the surface would be more of the same—nothingness, from horizon to horizon. But that would require making conversation, and he wasn’t up for that yet.
The rover crested the rise and bumped out onto the planet surface. Setting the direction again, Bram powered forward, increasing his speed. Sensors would warn him of any rough terrain before he got there—and he knew this stretch of ground well enough to anticipate most of it.
A gasp floated forward from the back seat. “It’s so . . .”
“Empty,” Gael said, finishing Aavi’s thought. He turned to Bram. “Is it all like this?”
Conversation. Right. Ah . . . “Yep.”
“And all the farms really are in the cracks? The crevasses.”
“Yep.”
“I read that the farms and the mining will help build a thicker cloud layer so the sun won’t burn everything,” Aavi said.
Gael swiveled in his seat. “When did you—” Flushing, he turned back to Bram and then dropped his gaze. “I read that too. But I didn’t know the surface was like this. I thought . . .”
“What?” Bram asked.
“That we’d be able to see the sun.”
Bram nodded toward the east, where a purple glow limned the horizon. “It’s over there.”
“But we can’t stay up here after it rises, can we?”
“No.” The rover would protect them for a while, but an extended period would seriously tax the environmental system.
“Will we see it from your farm?”
Why this obsession with the sun? Zhemosen was supposedly a gorgeous planet. The city was probably depressing. Cities usually were. But the main continent was essentially a large island with beautiful beaches. Then there were the archipelagos.
“We’ll see the sun down there, just not for as long as you would on Zhemosen.”
“We never see the sun on Zhemosen,” Gael said.
Bram glanced over his shoulder to see if Aavi agreed with this preposterous statement. The girl was chewing her lip and looking out the window. Addressing Gael, he asked, “How is that possible?”
“I lived in the undercity. The sun doesn’t reach down that far. The overcity is too dense.”
Bram couldn’t even picture it. Dark corners, yes, but an entire layer of city cloaked in perpetual night? “What about the edges of the city? The beaches.”
Scoffing, Gael turned away.
Aavi answered for him. “We lived near the center of Zhemosen. It’s a long, long way from the coast. I don’t know how you’d get there without a pass to another district, and they cost a lot.”
“You can’t just walk?”
Aavi’s eyes widened. “Through the undercity?”
“It’s not safe,” Gael explained quietly. “And the districts are gated. You have to go up to cross and going up requires . . .” Brow creasing, he fiddled with the Band he wore on his left wrist. “It’s expensive.”
Bram had watched enough holo dramas to assume that there were other ways to cross districts. Secret doors, holes in fences. But he also knew these extra entrances wouldn’t be available to everyone, and use of them likely came with a cost all their own. That the lower levels of the City Without End was such a place shouldn’t surprise him—but it did.
Holy hands, a life spent beneath a city with no way in, no way out, and no sunshine?
“We can watch the sunrise one morning if you like,” Bram heard himself saying. “From the top of the crevasse. It’s safe to stay up there for a little while, so long as we have rebreathers. The air’s kinda thin. Once the temp tops sixty Celsius, we’ll have to duck down, though. Or back inside the rover.”
“Can we do it now?” Aavi leaned forward, a hand coming around to grip Bram’s seat. “Pleeease.”
Dusting hell. “I’ll have to see if I have enough masks in my kit. We’ll wait until we get close to Henderson Crevasse, okay? So we can head down after.”
“I’ve got one here,” Aavi said, holding up a polarized mask and rebreather that she’d dug out of nowhere. “Check under your seat, Gael.”
Gael bent forward as far as the restraint allowed and reached under his seat. A moment later, he pulled out a standard survival kit, which included a mask.
He looked up Bram with a devastating grin. Chest constricting, Bram turned back to the road, such as it was.
Half an hour later, the edge of Henderson Crevasse came into view. Bram slowed the rover, cruised along the lip until he found the top of the ledge that led down, and pulled to a halt. He grabbed the mask dangling next to the canopy control and tugged it over his face.
“Everyone set?”
Two masked faces nodded back.
Bram released the canopy. The rover doors opened up and out like wings, and his passengers scrambled onto the plateau. Chest squeezing again, Bram stepped out after them. He rubbed a hand over his heart, not really apologizing for the workout—more wondering when he’d last had to deal with so many conflicting emotions in such a short space of time.
No instance came to mind.
He inhaled slowly, exhaled just as slowly, and went to check his guests’ masks. Both let him fuss for a moment, answering his questions about whether they were able to draw a full breath and see properly. Like a mother hen, he guided them away from the edge of the crevasse and finally let them go to enjoy the sunrise.
An odd sense of peace grew around Bram as he stepped back. It’d been a while since he’d dallied up on the planet surface. An age since he’d watched the sun rise. His attention was usually focused downward, below the mists.
The sun rose swiftly, the glow along the horizon brightening—intensifying, really—and spreading like liquid along the visible edge of the plateau. The sky warmed from the deep purple of night to a dull red, except for a blue halo around the sun
.
When he glanced back at Gael and Aavi, they both had their faces tilted upward. Aavi tapped Gael’s arm and pointed forward, describing something. Then she reached for Gael’s hand. Gael snatched it away before relenting and shifting so Aavi could attach herself to him, reminding Bram of all the odd and wordless squabbles he’d had with his own siblings. Then they both looked up again.
Though they faced away from him, he could see excitement in their postures. Long slender shadows made Gael seem taller and Aavi more delicate. They were both far too thin, as though food had been as scarce as sunlight where they’d come from. Had they not eaten during the voyage? The ticket he’d purchased for Gael had been meant to include meals. Had he had to share them with Aavi? Not unless his surprise at finding her in a locker had been feigned. Hadn’t seemed like it, though, and the inside of the locker had been littered with meal pack wrappers.
Bram shook his head. Their arrival together was a mystery, one he might never solve. But watching them appreciate a sunrise went a little way toward soothing the burn—even if that made him twice the idiot. Alkirak might not be most people’s idea of a viable colony, but it really was a beautiful planet. The changing colors of the sky overhead were proof of that. And his guests weren’t just enjoying the view. They were entranced.
The sun was almost fully over the horizon now, the blue and purple fading out behind a pulse of dark amber. The color of the sky wouldn’t change much until the sun set, though from the crevasse, the amber would appear more gray, which had taken some time to get used to. The ever-present cloud layer over the green zone was necessary, and his soybeans did well enough with their limited slice of day.
Speaking of which . . .
Bram tapped his guests on the shoulder. They both turned, the visible portion of their faces bright and happy beneath the tinted plastic of their masks. Bram nodded toward the rover and then pointed for extra emphasis. The temperature had probably risen ten degrees in the last minute.
Gael turned back toward the sun, which seemed to have doubled in size. It bobbed low in the yellow sky, a bright pulse of heat and radiation. He spread his thin arms and tilted his head back. His curls were damp, clinging to the back of his neck, and hanging over his ears. Sweat beaded his skin.