by Kelly Jensen
“Report update, 1.1.2568. Property reported leaving atmosphere. One ping aboard Zhemosen Station.”
They’d had one further ping for Aavi, still inside Commonwealth space, then nothing, leading Bram to conclude the activity on Aavi’s bracelet here on Alkirak had been due to the Band intermittently connecting to corporation satellites along the route she traveled. Her ID hadn’t been logged, but she’d collected spam messages. Adverts and offers. It was the only explanation for the insistent message light. He’d had the same issue countless times, and it meant that if he hadn’t inquired after her, she’d never have been found.
His scalp began to sting, and Bram loosened his grip on his hair.
Gael’s case file wasn’t what he’d expected. One of the warrants had already been closed out. The Commonwealth no longer wanted Gael for murder, only theft. Frowning, Bram listened to the notes on the closed warrant, but couldn’t make sense of the details. Someone named Rufus had been arrested for the murder of Aavi’s owner. A weapon had been found and traced back to the Trass family. Why was that name familiar? Wait, wasn’t that the family Gael had worked for on Zhemosen? Julius and Rufus were the men who’d killed Gael’s brother.
How were the two events connected?
Bram checked the small indicator at the bottom of the display for signal strength. It was strong, of course. He was in Landing, Alkirak Orbital and CWO Joshi somewhere above him.
He opened a call session.
CWO Joshi’s face appeared onscreen half a minute later. She smiled. “M. Bauer, thank you for calling.”
Bram gave a noncommittal grunt in reply.
“Will M. Reyes be joining the call?” she asked.
“M. Reyes has—” Bram swallowed “—relinquished all claims.”
“I see. Have you listened to the case logs I sent you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure you have questions.”
“I might.”
Her smile widened. “How about if I tell you what I need to satisfy this warrant and we proceed from there?” At a vague gesture from Bram, she named a figure in Galactic credits. A large figure.
Bram frowned. “If all you want are credits, why are we having this conversation?”
“I am prepared to take Aavi di Vorss into custody and deliver her to Zhemosen, but as the family is more interested in the loss of credits than property, I am unlikely to be reimbursed for transport fees.”
“That’s what this is to you? Money?”
“I’m a warrant officer, M. Bauer. This is my job.”
“Then I’ll ask you again. Why are we having this conversation?”
“In investigating you, I discovered that you recently imported a companion from Zhemosen. The identity of your companion had been deleted and the transaction record altered, but I was able to reconstruct most of it. Gael probably isn’t all that unusual a name on Zhemosen, but the dates matched up. Gael con Trass was wanted for three counts of theft and one of murder.”
“Con Trass? Was Gael a slave?”
“No, merely associated with the Trass family. The name is a formality required for official documentation only. If we can return to the discussion at hand? As you can imagine, murder warrants are worth considerably more than property warrants.”
“But someone else was arrested for the murder of Aavi’s keeper.” Bram couldn’t bring himself to say owner.
“Thus ruining a good payday for me.”
Dusting hell. Anger finally began to push through the fatigue and fear he’d been carrying for the past however many hours. “Is this where I remind you of the fact you’re outside Commonwealth jurisdiction?”
“Corporate coalitions might be known for making their own rules, but I happen to know that Muedini takes allegations of theft very seriously.”
Bram let out a tight breath. “So I pay you and you make all of this go away? Sounds to me like the Commonwealth Warrant Office makes its own rules as well.”
“It’s a big galaxy, M. Bauer.”
“What guarantee do I have that if I pay your price, these warrants will be closed?”
“I don’t know how familiar you are with Zhemosen, but justice is a myth in the undercity. Officers of the law prefer not to descend below any level where there is no Band access. And yet, in this instance, justice not only proceeded, but prevailed. Your companion apparently has a friend in the undercity. A friend powerful enough to not only produce a weapon, but prints that match a well-known crime figure in the same district: one Rufus Trass. I imagine the Trass family is probably too busy dealing with the repercussions of its actions against the Vorss family to follow up on an officially closed warrant.”
Had Gael done it and then arranged for Rufus to take the fall? Not only would that solve Gael’s problems, but such an act would avenge his brother’s death.
“But can a warrant be reopened?”
Joshi tilted her head. “Is that what you want to ask?”
“Do you have anything else on Gael?”
“I do not. M. Sonnen is a ghost. He is a citizenship record number and that is all. Do you have something to share?”
Bram licked his lips, and finding them dry, reached for the squeeze bottle of water he’d set behind the holo terminal.
Joshi leaned forward, her face filling the small screen and spoke in a quiet, confidential tone. “How about if I share what I know about you, M. Bauer? You have more commendations on your file than any other Muedini employee. Your attention to detail is noted multiple times. You are a careful, methodical man without a single misdemeanor to your name. You’re almost too good to be true. According to M. Reyes, you’re not particularly ambitious, but I don’t see that as a crime.”
Bram snorted.
“Further, you spent a year looking for a companion before contracting one. Again, careful and methodical.”
“Apparently I contracted a murderer who may or may not officially exist.”
“Do you really believe that? I know you left your homestead in the middle of a storm to drive M. Sonnen to the clinic in Landing. I know he is being treated for exposure, among other things.”
Do you know if he’ll recover?
“You are what I’d call a good judge of character. If I may speak frankly”—when had she not?—“I would rather have you settle these warrants than have to take either M. Sonnen or Aavi di Vorss into custody. I am not ignorant of what I’d be returning them to.”
“What’s that?” Bram asked.
Joshi’s dark eyes flashed. “I was once property myself, M. Bauer.”
“So this is a crusade for you?”
“Honestly, no. But this warrant, this case, the more I found out, the more it seemed as though you’d rescued not one, but two vulnerable people, and . . .” The faint scattering of holo pixels could never do justice to the full range of human emotion, but Bram would swear he could see the shine in CWO Joshi’s eyes. “Now and again, I like a happy ending.” She cleared her throat. “Shall we discuss my fee?”
While the return to the subject of credits was a little jarring, Bram welcomed it. Treating the situation as a transaction helped him tuck everything into convenient mental pockets. Now wasn’t the time to wonder if he’d taken leave of his senses a couple of months ago. If asking Gael out here had been a mistake. If taking Gael and Aavi home with him had been the stupidest thing he’d ever done.
Or whether any of those questions were really valid when compared with how he felt about the two people who’d been sharing his home.
The number of credits required to secure Aavi and Gael’s freedom wasn’t beyond his imagination, but without knowing if he still had a farm, Bram wasn’t sure he could make the payment. He’d spent his small reserve on shipping Gael out from Zhemosen and any extra after that on fancy drill bits and new air filters—
His claim. He pulled a small crystal out of his pocket. Not a sample, but the classification of what he’d found, of what Orfeo had considered valuable enough to exchange for a life.
He slotted it into the reader and pulled up a second, discreet display.
He barely glanced at the report. All he could see was Gael’s face. Aavi’s happy smiles. Gael’s sweetness seemed to wrap around him, warming him, and he could hear Aavi’s laughter. The lilt in her voice whenever she spoke to Gael. The way she clung to his hand.
He couldn’t buy himself a family, but he could ensure Gael and Aavi remained together. He could buy their freedom.
Turning back to Joshi, he said, “Let’s do this.”
“I’m sending the appropriate paperwork through now. A pleasure doing business with you, M. Bauer.”
The holo screen fizzed into nothingness. Bram blinked into empty space. He felt as though he’d been sitting here for a month.
When he blinked again, Maia was sitting at the other side of the table.
“Aavi’s settled for the night.” She drew her shoulders back before adding, “They found Orfeo.” Her expression told the full story: they’d found his body.
Bram checked his Band. He’d made the call to emergency services nearly seven hours ago. “Storm must have blown out by the time they got there.”
“He was in debt.” Maia’s eyes glistened softly beneath the dim saloon lighting. “Investment after investment. None of them panned out. Then that damn fool Cliver offered something like a double or nothing.”
“I know.”
“Bram . . .”
“All I’ll ever tell the company is that he fell.”
Maia covered her face with her hands, fingers trembling. When she looked back up, grief continued to haunt her expression, though he could tell she thought she was straight-faced. Bram had never seen her like this. He hadn’t been around when she lost her wife, but now he wondered if this was why Maia never spoke of her. Because this Maia wasn’t the same Maia who ran the company store, the saloon, the motel, the whole fucking town.
Bram reached across the table and gripped her hand. “Sometimes a person’s got to make a difficult choice. At the end there, he chose you. Hold on to that.”
“He wasn’t a bad person.”
“I know.”
“You don’t need to . . .” She tried to withdraw her hand.
Holding on, Bram rose and rounded the table, tugging on her fingers as he did so.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Not doing it for you,” Bram said as he caught her other hand and squeezed both.
Maia wasn’t the sort of person who wanted to be held close and told that everything would work out. She was a realist, same as him. She knew how the dust was going to settle, and when it did, she’d lay a new trail, here or elsewhere. But he needed her not to blame him. Right now, they might be the only true friend the other had on this inhospitable ball of dust.
“He was jealous,” Maia whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be. You . . . you deserved better, Bram. Always did.”
Bram digested that for a moment before making his promise anew, “I’ll only ever tell them he fell.”
Maia squeezed his hands and let go. “Go take care of your family.”
Before she could turn away, Bram touched her shoulder. “Maia.”
She looked up at him.
“That means you too.”
Her return nod was somewhat absent, but Bram knew his message was clear—and that it probably wasn’t anything she didn’t already know.
But sometimes a person just needed to hear the obvious out loud.
For a long time, everything hurt. The world was pain and pain was the world. Gael could tell when he was conscious, because he hurt more when he could hear voices around him, and the quality of the darkness pressing his lids down changed. Little made sense when he was awake, though. Sleep was better. His dreams were pleasant. Mostly him not being in pain. He’d thank the sun for the lack of nightmares, but he didn’t want to tempt fate.
After a while, only most things hurt. Like breathing. Thinking. Thinking about moving. The one time he managed to curl a finger, he figured he’d either lost his arm and had just lifted nothing, or all the flesh had been removed from his arm, exposing his muscles to the harsh saw of voices and light.
When the pain started to fade, Gael didn’t immediately register the difference. His existence had become such a drifting, mishmash of dream and reality that not hurting was strange. Then a relief.
One day he decided to open his eyes. It didn’t hurt. He was in a dimly lit room that seemed to be part of a medical facility. Where that facility might be wasn’t clear until he noted the pale-blond hair spilling across one side of the bed.
Aavi. Wherever he was, he had Aavi with him.
That was good.
Somehow he’d managed to keep a promise.
The next time he opened his eyes, the room was much the same, except that Aavi was gone and he wondered if he’d dreamed her. Not hurting was very strange. Gael looked down at his hand, intending to try to move it, and saw a broader, bulkier hand underneath his fingers. His eyes could only roam so far to the side and couldn’t see who the hand was connected to. Something like hope blossomed within his chest, though, and that didn’t hurt either.
Bram.
Gael flexed his fingers, and the hand beneath his jerked back, the warmth of Bram’s skin sliding away from Gael’s touch, leaving him suddenly bereft. Then Bram leaned into his field of view. A version of Bram. Wrinkled, stubbled, and generally unkempt. The smile on his tired face warred with the downward slope of his eyebrows and the lines marching across his forehead.
“Hey.” Gael’s throat felt a little raw, but the whole drawing-in-air-and-forming-words- on-the-way-out thing worked.
Bram’s frown gave way to a smile, and then he was crying. Sturdy and stoic Bram with his eyes squeezed shut over fat tears, his shoulders shaking.
“Don’t cry.” Gael wanted to find Bram’s hand, but had the idea that moving would start to hurt soon. “Shh.” He patted the bed. Bram’s fingers slid beneath his, and Gael pressed down. “Shh.”
More people arrived, all dressed in pale blue. They seemed thrilled to meet him, as though they’d never been introduced. Maybe they hadn’t. Last thing Gael remembered was Bram finding him in the storm. Not much after that.
And all this thinking was making him so very tired.
Next time he opened his eyes, Aavi was there. He heard her before he saw her, a soft tuneless hum near the bed. Taking in a quiet breath, Gael turned his head to the side and there she was, sitting in a chair pushed close to the bed, poking at her lap.
“Aavi.”
Her head popped with a jerk that made his own thoughts swim. “Gael!” Immediately a broad smile lit her face. She ducked down, dropping something to the floor, then stood and leaned against the bed, trailing her fingers down his arm in the same way she pet the hens and rabbits. After drawing in the air she’d apparently need, Aavi started telling him everything. She spoke so fast, her words formed an echoing jumble of sound, most of which made no sense.
He caught and held on to one fact, though. They were free. Somehow, they were still on Alkirak and free. Inhaling painfully, he said, “Slow down, sweetheart. My ears are tired.”
“Ears can’t be tired.”
“Can so.”
Aavi giggled. Then her chin trembled, her lips quivered, and she was crying.
Burning sun, was everyone going to stand over him and cry?
“Come here.”
Gael tried to hold his arms out. One lifted, the other failed to report for duty. Aavi took what she could get, flinging herself across the arm she’d been stroking. One of her hands flopped to a hard landing in the vicinity of his ribs. Gael hissed and . . . lay still. Sitting up and/or rolling away were much more daunting prospects.
It didn’t take long for her to cry herself out, and Gael suspected she’d simply been emptying a reserve tank. Aavi wasn’t one to keep her emotions in check for any length of time. When he got his hand back, he patted her
wet cheek before inviting her to sit on the edge of the bed with him.
She climbed up and pressed herself along his side, and if he ignored all of the equipment arranged around him with its soft beeps and hisses, the various tubes running under the blanket, it was almost like being home.
“All your hair is gone,” she said.
Gael looked up. No curls across his forehead. He reached slowly for his head, lifting his hand one shaking centimeter at a time. Aavi met him halfway, interlacing her fingers with his. “Your head’s covered in a bandage, but Bram said they had to cut your hair off to fix you.”
Absurdly, his vision misted.
“It’ll grow back,” she assured him.
In time, and right now, Gael’s concept of time was skewed—probably because he spent so many hours sleeping.
“Tell me a story,” he said, knowing the sound of her voice would send him off again.
Aavi stared off into space for a handful of seconds and then smiled. “Once there was a little girl who . . .”
In the days that followed, meals became his measure of time. Gael was poking at something that looked like green mush, his fourth meal that day, when the door slid open and Bram strolled in. Bram’s face lit up immediately, as though he’d brooded his way to the clinic, which he probably had.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
“Okay.” Gael nudged the square dish across the tray. “Any idea what this is?”
“Green goop?”
“Tastes like it.” Gael put down his spoon and leaned back into the pillows with a soft sigh. The smallest tasks took so much out of him: Sitting, eating, breathing. Touching the top of his head to measure the growth of his hair. It’d been four weeks since the storm, two weeks since he’d awakened from what everyone kept referring to as a “medical coma.”
He reached up to rub the soft stubble covering his scalp, fingers wandering over the couple of smooth patches at the back. They’d assured him his hair would cover those patches if he kept it reasonably long.