Stars Uncharted

by S. K. Dunstall

  Or ruin things by trying too hard.

  “How long have you been a modder?” Snow asked.

  It was the only untruth about her new life. She’d had Nika James’s papers forged. She waved a hand. “Seven years, give or take.” Half the time she’d actually been a modder.

  “What school?”

  There was only one school for modders if you wanted to be the best. Landers Academy.

  She had thought about choosing another school for her forged papers, but there was always a danger someone would want to talk to her about her education. Even with the mismatch of years there was enough she could say about Landers to convince someone she had attended there. The fewer lies she had to remember, the better.

  “Landers.”

  He nodded, as if it was only to be expected. “Me too.”

  “What’s it like now?” It was a safe subject, and she could use the information he provided to know who to talk about and who not.

  Snow shrugged. “Still proud of itself as the preeminent genemod school.”

  “Who’s in charge now?”

  “Dean Marramar.”

  “Marramar. Goodness. She didn’t even have full tenure when I was there.” She’d been a tiny dumpling of a woman, with the most exquisite skin. Her specialty, not surprisingly, had been the epidermal layer.

  Snow looked at her as if he didn’t believe her. “She’s been dean for absolutely forever.”

  Maybe it wasn’t such safe talk. Nika shrugged. “You only think that because you’re young.”

  He didn’t argue it. She didn’t think he’d noticed even.

  They spent the rest of the trip talking about safer things, like where a good designer should start their design. Nika liked to start with the bones. Snow preferred to start with a feature the customer liked.

  * * *

  • • •

  The walls at Hub Station Five were covered with the plum-and-cinnamon Burnley Company logo. The logos were faded; the walls were scratched. Last time Nika had been through here—as a young apprentice fresh out of Landers—everything had been fresh and bright. It had faded a lot in fourteen years.

  Or her memory had.

  The Hub teemed with people, most of them busy going somewhere else. It smelled of humans. There was nothing you could do about the smell, and Nika had tried. Get enough people together to crowd a space and eventually it started to stink.

  She’d get used to it, but she didn’t have to like it.

  She bought them both coveralls and undershirts from a vending machine. “Put these on.”

  He did, but not without a last wistful glance at his designer business suit, which he packed carefully into the bag the coveralls had been in.

  The labor pool was out in one of the older modules that looked as if it had arrived precompany. The lifts didn’t work; they had to take the safety ladders—metal stairs so steep that if you slipped, and weren’t hanging on, you’d be at the bottom before you regained your balance.

  The module was one big room with desks scattered around. There were no partitions. People lined up at the desks. Desks in the central part of the room had permanent ship signs and logos, and the staff dealt with each person with impartial efficiency. The queues there were long.

  Nika hadn’t expected so many people looking for work. Nor had she ever seen so many people who’d never been near a modder.

  Around the edges were the temporary desks, set up for the ships that required one or two crew. The people on both sides of these desks changed often. Nika watched them for a while and saw that once a ship had attained the crew it required, the employer vacated the desk. A new person took his or her place and the process started over again.

  Snow looked around dubiously. “What are we doing here?” He fit in, with bruises from Banjo’s pistol-whipping coming up black on his face, the deep cut high on his cheek still unclosed. She should find him a body studio.

  “Looking for passage.”

  “This is a labor pool. People come here looking for jobs.”

  Nika’s escape-from-Alejandro plan had told her it was also the place to find a cargo ship looking to make a bit of profit on the side carrying paying customers.

  There was no day or night on a space station. Always open for business, and hundreds of small ships leaving every day. If Tamati tracked Nika this far, he’d have to sift through them all to find which ship she’d left on. He’d also be looking for a lone woman, not two people traveling together.

  She stopped at a screen.

  General hand. Must be good with Dekker calibrators.

  “We should get a job.” She’d spent the first two years in her studio calibrating Dekkers. They were temperamental machines. The calibrations went off fast. You had to sit and watch them all the time. It had taught her a lot about how to assess the progress of rebuilds, and about making minute modifications to the mix as you went. She still modded on the fly now, on occasion, to keep her hand in.

  “It’s not that sort of calibrator. It keeps the ship on course.” Snow paused and chewed at his bottom lip for a moment. “Like one of the mineral drips on a genemod machine. You have to be sure it feeds through at a regular rate, or it can muck up your job.”

  That was what a calibrator was.

  The woman sitting beneath the screen was as unimpressed as Snow. “Lady, the calibrator is the most vital part of a ship, not counting air and food. You get the calibrations wrong and you end up halfway across the galaxy from where you need to be. When I say I want an experienced calibrator, I mean it.”

  Snow dragged Nika away.

  She stopped two desks farther on. This one had a long line. The screen above showed:

  General hands. Good at hand-to-hand combat.

  Doctor. Dietel FastTrack.

  Tamati wouldn’t expect her to get a job.

  Snow said, “I didn’t study for six years just to become a doctor.”

  The trouble with young people was that they were idealistic, rather than practical. “Banjo will be looking for modders, not doctors.” So would Tamati, and she was far more scared of Tamati than she was of Banjo.

  Snow scowled. “I’ve been thinking about that. We shouldn’t have run.”

  Snow was right. She and Snow between them could have faced up to Banjo. Over time he would have learned. Unfortunately, Snow on his own wouldn’t have been able to, and she had no intention of staying around for Tamati to find her while she assisted Snow.

  Or maybe she should have stayed. Tamati would expect her to run. If she stayed right under his nose, maybe he wouldn’t find her.

  It was too late now. They’d run, and Banjo—with his new face and svelte figure and glorious chocolate eyes—would be out of the machine soon. The first thing he’d do would be trash Snow’s shop.

  “We’ll go as far as we can.” If she could work out how to discover which ships would take paying passengers. “After that we’ll start up another studio for you.” She’d finance it herself. Same level of equipment and materials as he’d had in his old shop, but in a safer location.

  He winced. “I spent everything I had setting up the first shop. It will take years to get enough together for the next.”

  Nika started walking the floor. “How long did it take to save for the first one?” She half expected to find, with his modder’s background and his touch of unworldliness, that he’d been gifted the credits.

  “I worked through college.” He chewed at his bottom lip. “I always planned to have my own shop.”

  And she’d killed his dream as effectively as Banjo had. Still, he must have saved hard to make his dream in six years.

  She stopped at one of the larger desks. There was a line of people signing up. It looked a large enough ship to take passengers.

  “Not here,” Snow said softly behind her. “Half his crew die every tim
e he goes out. Plus, he takes a lot of them from cattle ships.” His mouth curled over the words like he’d tasted something sour.

  “Cattle ships?” She had visions of ships carrying freezers full of slaughtered animals and pens of live animals to other worlds.

  Snow sighed. “You know, captured free traders. If you attack a ship, what do you do with the people you capture?”

  “Kill them?” Free traders killed each other all the time.

  “When you can get credits by selling them to mercenary ships, why would you?”

  Nika glanced back at the desk. The woman behind the desk wore a business suit and looked around Nika’s own age. She looked normal. “Like slaves, you mean?”

  “Not slaves. They sign you up and pay you. Although the rate is low.”

  The woman looked over at them and smiled. Her face was a little too perfect not to have had work done on it.

  “Most times they go to merc ships, because even free traders have standards. But some of them don’t.”

  This ship didn’t have standards, Nika presumed. She ignored the smiling woman and moved on to the next desk. “What about this one?”

  “No.”

  After the fourth no she started to wonder if Snow was being too picky.

  “Is there anyone who’ll satisfy you? We’re not going to spend the rest of our lives with them.”

  “We want our lives to be longer than the next two weeks,” Snow countered.

  Nika sighed. Maybe they should check out the company liners. They weren’t getting anywhere here. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  They were standing in the coffee line—which was more crowded than the labor exchange—when a deep, almost familiar voice said from behind them, “Hello. I didn’t expect to see the two of you here.”

  It was the spacer from the shop.

  Nika checked the side of his neck. “Passable,” she conceded. Just. “Is the rest like this?”

  “Don’t mind her.” Color washed into Snow’s face, and out again. Red flush didn’t suit copper hair. “She can be a little obsessive.” He nudged Nika. “It’s not polite.” The last was low, hissed through gritted teeth.

  “He was almost a customer.”

  The stranger grinned. “You want to see the rest?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Snow led the way to a vacant table. The back of his neck was still red.

  The stranger pulled off his vest and shirt. Two women and a man at the next table catcalled.

  Nika ignored them. “A basic machine job,” she said. “Dietel FastTrack.” The Dietels were cheap and left a characteristic pink stain on the skin. Every hospital had them. Modders—even the bad ones—avoided them because of the color they left. This man had gone straight from Snow’s studio to a hospital.

  If he wasn’t worried about reporting his injuries, why had he come to the shop in the first place? A doctor was a tenth the price of a modder. Although he had known Tilda.

  “I have no idea what she’s talking about,” the stranger said to Snow.

  Snow looked as if he wasn’t sure either, although he must have recognized the brand.

  “Big green machine,” Nika said. Their color was the most beautiful thing about them. “Dark emerald, almost glowing.”

  The stranger nodded. “It was at that.” He started to pull his shirt back on. “I’m Roystan, by the way.”

  “Nika. Snow.”

  She watched the way the new skin pulled against the old as his muscles moved, and put out a hand. “Wait.”

  He waited, arms in his sleeves, chest bare.

  She closed her eyes as she ran her fingers against the new skin, and then over the old. The catcalls from the next table grew louder. She concentrated on the texture. Yes. The new skin had the characteristic plasticity of hu-skin. She opened her eyes. “How much did you pay for this?”

  “A thousand credits.”

  The man at the next table pulled off his own shirt. “You want to check me out next?”

  Snow’s face and neck were an unbecoming brick red again. He didn’t look at her. Or at Roystan.

  Nika ignored them. “They ripped you off.” Hu-skin was a synthesized organic they used when the machine couldn’t repair the human skin. “They fixed it with hu-skin. There’s no reason to do that unless your DNA doesn’t take.” Then she added, for he was looking bemused, “They usually do that when someone has botched your DNA.”

  Sometimes even hu-skin didn’t work in those cases.

  Roystan had started to pull on his shirt again. He stopped, shirt ready to go over his head. “What?”

  Snow patted a sleeve and said kindly. “She’s not saying they botched anything.” He glared at Nika from behind Roystan. “She’s saying they charged you for services they shouldn’t have.”

  But they had provided the service they’d charged for. “Which hospital?”

  “Old Base.”

  He’d gone to the nearest hospital after he’d left them. Given its proximity to the spaceport, Old Base was always busy. Too busy to provide services one didn’t need. Hu-skin took three times longer to take, far longer than replicating one’s own skin with mutrient. That was one genemod machine that might have had two more patients. For Old Base, hu-skin would be a last resort.

  “If you have problems that need hu-skin, you’re better going to a modder,” Nika said. “A good one. Doctors can only run the machines. They have no idea how to fix people.”

  Roystan blinked, then finished pulling on his shirt, studying Nika the whole time.

  She couldn’t read the stare. She ignored it and slid onto the seat beside Snow.

  Roystan settled opposite them, still watching Nika. “What brings you up here?”

  Many people came to the Hub, but those who came down to the labor exchange were looking for one thing. Work. Or occasionally, “Passage.”

  Roystan nodded. “A pity. It was a good shop.”

  “Studio,” Nika corrected.

  They talked about gene studios for the rest of the meal. Roystan had been in a few. Nika was surprised he knew the inside of one, except Tilda’s.

  Roystan’s handheld beeped. It was an old-fashioned, external communicator. They’d been all the rage twenty years ago, a nostalgia fad, until people discovered how inconvenient it was to carry your linking device around with you, instead of having the bioware built in.

  Based on that, Nika would have believed that Roystan had last been modded twenty years ago and retained the trimmings. But she’d spent lunch talking to him about body shops. He’d been in one more recently than that, had plenty of time to change it.

  Roystan looked down at his handheld, then stood up. “This is my slot. Let me know where you end up. I’ll keep an eye out for your shop.”

  “We look forward to having you as a client.” It was the literal truth. Problems that required hu-skin were a challenge.

  Roystan’s crooked smile flashed. “If I hear of anyone reputable offering passage, I’ll let you know.”

  “Excuse me.” One of the women from the next table leaned toward them. “Captain Jai, from the Boldly Go. I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation.” She ignored the vocal agreement from both her companions. “I have a spare cabin this trip, if you are looking to pay your way, and you’re willing to share.” She glanced at her noisy companions. “I’ll keep my uncouth crew under control, too.”

  Nika looked at Snow, who shrugged. “I don’t know the ship.”

  “I do,” Roystan said. “Captain Jai is said to be fair. The Boldly Go does takes passengers to supplement its income.”

  “Can we talk it over?” Nika asked Jai.

  “No problem. Let me know soon. I’m shipping out at 23:00 today.” The captain sent across her contact details.

  “Thank you. We’ll let you know.”
>
  8

  JOSUNE ARRIOLA

  After the extended jump, the cracked calibrator did exactly what Josune expected. It cracked further.

  “Not even going to try to fix it,” Carlos said. “Pull it out. We’ll use some of those credits to buy ourselves a brand-new one.”

  While Roystan was off hunting new crew members, Carlos went shopping.

  “You coming?”

  “I’ll stay here and dismantle the old one. Roystan’s only booked the ship berth till midnight. That way, if we have any issues with the calibrator we can still buy extra parts.”

  In truth, she wanted to stay on board. Maybe Roystan would forget he’d told her to go. He and Jacques had gone down world and returned with new pink skin, after which Roystan had taken himself off to the Hub to find new crew members.

  Once, she had planned to explore on her own if anything ever happened to the Hassim. Now, it wasn’t as appealing.

  Maybe she could hire Roystan and his crew.

  Or maybe not, given what he thought of explorers.

  Roystan ran a comfortable ship. He was comfortable to be around, even with his governing more by committee than as sole leader. Not like Feyodor, whose decisions were final as soon as she made them. Roystan and his crew—those that were left—were good people.

  In the end, she might have to go. But not immediately. Not unless Roystan kicked her off. Which he would do, unless she could convince him that she wasn’t another traitor like Pol. That she wasn’t a company person.

  She spent the afternoon dismantling the calibrator. Not thinking, just doing. And she kept the ship links open. Jacques spent his time in the galley, preparing a welcome meal for the two new crew members they were to get. He was sweet-talking his oven, which was normal, but not something he’d done since the mutiny until now. Guardian’s betrayal had hit him hard. They’d been friends.

  Carlos came back empty-handed. “Shop refused the credit. I need to talk to Jacques.” He stomped off to find him. “I asked them to hold it for us.”

  Josune set the parts under a stass field and followed.

  “Of course I didn’t stop the credits,” Jacques said. “Why would I? We talked about it before you left.”