Stone in the Sky

by Cecil Castellucci

  “I shouldn’t have been an ass when I arrived,” he said.

  “I was a jerk, too,” I said.

  I looked into his deep dark eyes, and I got up on my tippy toes, and I kissed him. At first it was hesitant, but then he slid his arms around me, and I knew that we had both said what we couldn’t say. I’m sorry.

  “You have to go,” he murmured as he pulled away from me.

  “Tell me where Caleb is,” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must know something. A clue. A trail. Don’t let me be alone out there in space.”

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “Besides, you don’t want to meet him again. He’s different.”

  “We’re all different,” I said.

  He looked down at his feet and then after a moment back up at me.

  “Please,” I said.

  I could see that he was trying to keep something from me.

  “We have to go,” the Per captain said worriedly.

  “The Noble Star. Look for the ship Noble Star. He might still be with them.”

  I nodded. We hugged. I held him longer than I should have. Unless I found Caleb, he would be the last friendly face I would ever see.

  “Come on, come on, come on!” The Per captain pushed me up the ramp as it was closing.

  The door sealed shut, and we were separated by the metal and glass, and a Per crew member put one of her hands on me, pulling me away from the door.

  “Please, Tula Bane, you must strap in for takeoff,” she said to me. The ship started rumbling as the engines engaged.

  I tore myself away from the door; from Reza standing on the dock staring at the closing airlock, from Tournour somewhere in the station dealing with the fallout of my escape, from my home.

  I was frightened. I felt the ship uncouple and float. I sat down and strapped in just as the engines engaged.

  I looked around at the ship. It was a standard cargo ship with a skeleton crew. Probably running passengers to the Yertina Feray for the rush, but now empty on the way back. I could see the cargo of alin hastily strapped down next to where Trevor had been secured. This was how my trip was being paid for. It was probably Reza’s first crop. Another thing I owed him.

  The ship accumulated high speed and pushed toward the inevitable light skip we’d have to complete to pull free from this solar system.

  We were off.

  I was in space again.

  13

  There is a certain kind of calm to a voyage in space.

  I wondered if it was the same in the old times for those who sailed on the oceans of any planet. Of course, oceans are choppier than windless space, but space had its own storms and challenges. What it did hold in common with an ocean voyage was the endless view of the same thing outside of a window for days, weeks, and months, even years on end. It allowed the mind to roam.

  I was restless, and no amount of blackness could calm me.

  These Per knew I wanted to get to Bessen. I’d told them my first night on board.

  “When do you think we’ll get there?” I asked.

  “We’ll get there when we get there,” the captain said.

  But they didn’t want to go to the heart of the Imperium with their cargo only to have it confiscated. I had to get off of this ship.

  Being a solo traveler on a spaceship was never totally safe. That was why so many aliens traveled in packs. It was why the Humans wandered. I was grateful every moment for Trevor. Trevor rolled with me wherever I went and for the most part, I was left alone by the skeleton crew of the Per ship.

  I appreciated their quietness and how they tried to make me comfortable, even though their ship was not made for the Human form. The whole ship was made for more arms than I had, and sometimes it was hard for me to reach or open different things.

  Since I wasn’t part of the crew, I meandered through the ship and looked out the windows at the stars when they were visible. Part of me knew that they left me alone because of Trevor. They had seen his knives whir once or twice. And part of me knew that they wanted to ensure they could still dock at the Yertina Feray. Tournour owed them a favor now, and even though they’d been paid with an early harvest of alin, with the rush on Quint, it was becoming a desirable thing to have an in on the station.

  My safety ensured their future when dealing with alin.

  These Per were looking to make trades right away while the prices would still be high. Alin was still rare because it was the growing season, and the first shipments would get the prettiest price.

  They knew they were lucky and would tolerate me until their cargo ran out.

  Think, Tula. Think. I said to myself as I wandered the empty ship.

  Going back to the Yertina Feray was a death sentence unless I had help. I knew that.

  Although I had spent the last three years surrounded by aliens, I was reminded that the citizens of the Yertina Feray had become familiar to me. On the Per ship, I felt a new kind of loneliness.

  I tried to remember that despite that feeling, I was not friendless. Tournour was my friend. Thado was my friend. Reza was my friend. Caleb was out there somewhere, and if he could forgive me, then maybe he could be my friend.

  He was the only one who I could go to for help now.

  The Noble Star.

  It surprised me that he was on a ship and not a planet. From the way Caleb had talked when we were on the Yertina Feray, he’d seemed to lay his bet on finding a race on the Outer Rim that would want to ally with Earth and come to the center with an army. But Reza had said that things had changed out there. I couldn’t count on what I thought, only on what I knew.

  I had a place to start. The ship’s name was Noble Star. Now I just had to find it.

  I haunted the communication room, sitting for hours searching for news of the ship. I scoured all systems and found nothing. It was as though the Noble Star did not exist. If only I had a planet that it was from, or a species to attach the name to. It was like looking for a needle but not knowing what or where the haystack was.

  I knew that Reza would not give me a false name, and that there were plenty of ships that came from the Outer Rim that were not on any official registry. Not every planet from the Outer Rim with spacefaring life on it was part of the Imperium. That was what was also so appealing about the Outer Rim. But that was what was frustrating my efforts to find Caleb now.

  Of course there could be another reason. The Noble Star could be a pirate ship. I didn’t want to think of that. Pirates were nasty things, and I never liked to deal with them when I was trading for Heckleck or serving in the Tin Star. They were heartless. They attacked ships and stripped them. They spent their loot on perversions that I could not even think of. The only thing that was true about pirates was they were hard, rough, and had no empathy. They were so cold that the usual tricks I depended on for my trading didn’t work. They wore outrageously colored costumes with shapes to distract from their form so that their species was hidden. There was no differentiation of species in their ranks. It was as though they’d all been wiped of any physical identity.

  That could never be Caleb. Sweet Caleb could never turn to that kind of life. He was too generous. Unselfish.

  Unless something terrible had happened to him.

  But Reza had said as much, hadn’t he? He’d hinted at the horrors they’d faced on the Outer Rim. Reza had made his way back to me because he hadn’t wanted to break. I knew that now. It was the only thing that made sense.

  But what if you were broken? I had to believe that even if Caleb had turned into someone like that, he’d still have heart enough to lend a hand to an old friend.

  I had no time for doubts.

  I sent messages hoping to catch the ship’s attention, but it was like sending a message in a bottle. And if the Per knew that I was trying to contact a pirate ship, they likely would kill me on the spot regardless of their agreement with Tournour.

  Meanwhile, I had nothing to do and nowhere to go but h
ope that sometime soon we would cross paths with either the Noble Star or a ship that was headed to Bessen.

  I had nothing to do as they went about their business, and I tried to make myself as invisible as possible. As generous as they were, I could tell that I was wearing out my welcome from the slurs that the Per crew would mumble when I passed them in the halls or the mess. I had to find another ship that was willing to go to Bessen. And I had to find one soon.

  I looked at their manifests daily until finally I saw on the roster of places that a Brahar ship the Per were trading with was going to Bessen.

  Bessen.

  After weeks of dreariness, my heart lifted. Humans did live in the consulate on Bessen. At least I knew that I would be safe as long as Brother Blue was not there. Perhaps I could buy myself some time. Earth’s embassy was there. Perhaps there was a way for me to blend in with them. Pass myself off as coming from Earth. I started to listen to all the Earth transmissions I could whenever the communications array was pointed toward our sun. I studied what news I could get and tried coming up with a story that might slip me in with any Humans as a new recruit. I didn’t know how many were stationed on the moon but felt that since I did not have the tattoos of a Wanderer, whatever story I told would be more believable.

  Revenge was a powerful motivator.

  14

  The Brahar ship light skipped into the system that housed Bessen soon after I boarded. We were to arrive at the moon in the middle of the sleep cycle, but I woke up early in order to see the outer planets as we jumped by them. Finally, we were circling the Loor home world, Tallara, where the moon Bessen orbited.

  Staring at Tallara, the planet that Tournour was from, made me feel as though I were with him somehow. I had hoped that I would receive a message from him, but I knew that it wasn’t safe, and though I had thought about sending him word when I was looking for the Noble Star, I resisted. Silence was the best way to let him know I was all right. Besides, I was sure that he knew that the Per ship had gotten away with me on it. I didn’t want my heart’s need for contact and comfort to put him into danger. But seeing his planet suddenly made it feel like he was with me across the light years, and I felt stronger.

  The clouds and the blue water were familiar. My eyes teared up at the sight of it. As much as I had loved looking at Quint, it was drier and colder; Tallara looked so warm and welcoming, it made me long for what had once been mine.

  For the first time in years, I missed Earth.

  Tallara looked like Earth, but with more land masses and smaller oceans. I knew that the Brahar home world, also in this system, was an even drier place. From here, that planet was only a red star in the sky.

  We were to orbit while the Brahar captain did some business on the surface. The city was the large domed city that sat on the face of the moon, and from the sky, it looked much like the Yertina Feray but laid out flat on the smooth surface. Here it housed the embassies of every kind of species, both Major and Minor. There were also all of the offices that did the various incarnations of government work. To take over the galaxy, one had to rule Bessen. The whole of the known galaxy was represented here.

  There were many ships in orbit around the moon, ships that were too big to dock with Togni Station, which had the space elevator. I could see a steady stream of small shuttles going to and from the station in a coordinated dance to dock with the space elevator that would take people down.

  I’d never seen a space elevator before. It stuck up out of the moon like a pin and ended in the shuttle port that orbited in sync with the moon.

  “I’m ready to go down,” I said to the captain, my bag packed, ready to try to infiltrate the Human consulate.

  The Brahar crew members laughed at me.

  “You need the proper papers,” one of them said. “And you don’t have any papers at all. You’re not even supposed to be on this ship.”

  My heart sank.

  It was true. I was lucky that they had taken me. It was only because they were headed back to their own system that they had agreed to. As instigators of the fall of the League of Worlds, they were a more protected species when it came to navigating Imperium bureaucracy.

  Of course I couldn’t just waltz down to Bessen from Togni Station. And if I did, I couldn’t go and speak to the highest ranked Earth Gov representatives. Even if I claimed to be a Wanderer, they wouldn’t care.

  I cursed not having found the Noble Star before I got here. I needed help and I didn’t have it. Bessen had been a good idea, but I’d failed to stitch all of the pieces together to succeed in my plan. I knew the rules and how to bend them to my way on the Yertina Feray. But this was space’s center, and I knew nothing about it.

  “Where will I go if I don’t find a pass?” I asked.

  He pointed out the window to Togni Station and the space elevator.

  “You can probably catch someone there willing to give you their papers for a price,” he said. “You have a few days before we drop you there.”

  Defeated, I went to the mess hall to eat and think, but I could feel all the Brahar with their eyes on me, whispering about their bad luck to have been stuck with me on their trip.

  Think, Tula. Think.

  I did what Heckleck always told me to do when defeated. Take stock of what you have, even if it’s nothing.

  I had some currency on my chit. I had Trevor. I had information about the Yertina Feray and Quint. I had no home. I had desperation.

  That was more than nothing.

  I started asking my ifs.

  If I had to go to the Togni Station without a plan for a way down in the elevator in place, I would need a pass.

  If I got a pass to get down the elevator to Bessen, I would need a place to disappear to when in the city.

  If I made it to Bessen and managed to move about, I would need a contact that could light a spark to make a fire in the Human Embassy.

  It would be hard as a Human on Bessen to go knocking on doors. I needed to use these few days I had left to open one for me if I managed to get down there. If I could reach someone at some ministry, they might get me a pass to go on the space elevator and that was the first step.

  When you can’t see the long game just think of one step.

  There were many ministries on Bessen. Surely someone would give me a pass if I used my skills in bartering.

  Times were such that no one would report a strange call from a Human. They would log it as miscellaneous and would make it disappear.

  It would be impossible for me to get anyone with high authority to talk to me, but I knew my best chance would be to go lower. Receptionists, clerks, janitors; those were the people that Heckleck always reminded me were the ones who would be most willing to barter. They had the most to gain from under-the-table dealings. And to my advantage, they likely wouldn’t know for sure if I was with the Human contingent on Bessen or not.

  I took a deep breath and started making vidcalls. I would call everyone except Humans so as not to get caught. And I would start all of my calls dark so they could not see me until I was certain that they were not Human. The first place I signaled was the Office of Extraplanetary Excavations.

  I punched the screen and a female Loor filled the screen. She was not looking at her console; she was packing her bag, obviously getting ready to leave.

  “Yes?” She said. “It’s almost closing time. You’ll have to call back when my secretary is in.”

  This Loor seemed bored and disinterested. I pressed my camera button so the Loor could see me.

  “Hello, my name is Tula Bane.”

  The Loor looked up at me.

  “You’re Human.”

  I nodded my head affirmative.

  “Have we met?” she asked. “On Earth?”

  She’d been to Earth. This was not a low-level worker. Maybe this would work out better for me.

  I shook my head no.

  “Not a Wanderer,” she said, examining me and likely noting that I lacked the tattoos that Hum
an Wanderers had to mark their voyages.

  “Not Imperium.” She motioned to my outfit, which was not the uniform that the Humans who worked at the Embassy wore.

  I shook my head again.

  When something unexpected happens, the truth is often the right way.

  “I’m solo,” I said.

  “No one is solo in space,” the Loor woman said. I’d lost her, and her hands began the movements to cut our communication off.

  “I belong to the Yertina Feray,” I said. It was what Tournour had always said about me. Even though I had been sent away, it felt truer than belonging to anywhere else. Unless I belonged to myself.

  “Where did you say you were from again?”

  “The Yertina Feray,” I said.

  That got her attention. Like everyone else, she would be aware of the rush on Quint.

  “It’s on the outermost…”

  She waved her arm at me, indicating that she knew where it was. I was familiar enough with the Loor to know that her antennae told me that something about her attention had shifted in my favor.

  “I’m representing the claim holders on the planet Quint,” I said. It was a lie, but I needed something to keep the wedge I had with this Loor open. I could see that she was interested in me.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for a pass to come down and talk to someone about the tracts of land for sale.”

  I checked my list. Office of Extraplanetary Excavations.

  “There’s land and work to be had. I thought I would offer it to your department first,” I said.

  “Claims on Quint aren’t an issue,” she said. She looked old and tired. “We Loor have had a claim on Quint since back in the days of ore mining.”

  “The Loor do, but how about you? People like to speculate.”

  I bit my lip. This could be a big mistake. Even though many government officials were corrupt and not averse to making a little on the side, I could also be wrong.

  “The Imperium has a representative on the ground, dealing with the situation,” she said.

  “Your office?” I asked.