Stars Uncharted

by S. K. Dunstall

  Roystan sat back on his heels, a boot in each hand. “I never noticed before how expensive your clothes were.” He waved a boot. Soft, exquisite, sap-green. “We must be poor rustic cousins compared to what you’re used to.”

  “Hardly.” It was good to close her eyes. “Most of the time we were in the middle of nowhere, chasing up whatever crazy lead we had. There was us, the ship, and nothing else. Except when someone decided to attack us.” She tried to smile at the memory and found she couldn’t. “We spent a lot of time linked in, planning what we’d buy when we got back.” Some of it had been equipment, but there’d been clothes, and shoes, and mods—including bioware.

  Beside the bed, Roystan was silent. She opened her eyes.

  He was watching her, boots neatly on the floor beside him.

  “Why do you do it, Josune? The Hassim had everything Goberling wanted. How many worlds did you find? Six? Eight?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen! All Goberling ever wanted was to find one. And you’re chasing after a dream that . . . I don’t know.” He rubbed his face. She heard the scratch of his stubble. They’d all been up a long time. “You, Feyodor. You had everything you could possibly need.”

  “But we had a dream,” Josune said. “It’s out there, Roystan. Somewhere. I will find it.” Except it didn’t seem so important, here on Roystan’s comfortable ship. What sort of dream was it when it could be so easily forsaken?

  Roystan groaned. “What sort of dream is that to waste your life on?”

  She changed the subject. “Later, when all this settles down, I want to go over the last days of what happened on the Hassim. I want to know more about the people who destroyed my friends.” No one killed her friends and lived to get away with it.

  He expelled a long sigh. “That’s fair. I’ll give you access here, in your cabin.” A smile twisted up the corner of his mouth. “It’s one way to keep you in bed, I suppose.”

  Josune crossed her arms, then uncrossed them again, because it hurt. “I’m injured. Not an invalid.”

  “You still need a genemod machine.” He hesitated, curious now. “How did you manage on the Hassim? When you got injured, I mean.”

  “We had a safe port. In the Between, halfway out to the rim.”

  The legal zone was—supposedly—policed. The rim was uncharted space. Few people—except a foolhardy few like Feyodor and her crew—ventured out past the rim where there was no safety net if anything went wrong. The space between the legal zone and the rim, informally known as the Between, was the most dangerous. “One of the Big Twenty-Seven had a mining venture out there. It wasn’t making any profit, so they abandoned it.”

  There was more to it than that, she knew, but Declan, the leader of the settlement, had never told her the story.

  “Just up and pulled out, leaving everyone there. The survivors banded together, started a protection business. You pay their premiums.” Hefty premiums. “They guarantee your safety.” The annual fee the Hassim had paid would have fed the whole community. “They have a private army. A hospital. Even a flourishing artists’ colony.”

  “Artists’ colony?”

  “They turn out some amazing stuff.” She’d kept aside some of the red mineral she’d picked up on Sassia for one of the artists. That had gone to Brown now, along with everything else on the Hassim.

  “This agreement you had with them? Was it an annual fee, or pay-as-you-go?”

  How would a cargo runner from the legal zone know how these agreements worked? “Annual.”

  “So if the Hassim turned up there and asked for sanctuary, and maybe repairs, they’d get it, at no cost?”

  “The Road isn’t the Hassim,” Josune said.

  “What if someone from the Hassim turned up. Without their ship.”

  She couldn’t read his face. “What are you getting at, Roystan?” Was he dumping her?

  Roystan tapped some codes into his communicator as he stood up. “I’ve given you access to the Hassim feed. If you can’t sleep, stay here and look at it.”

  “Read-only, I hope. Have you stored a copy of this off-site?”

  He tapped something else into the communicator and confirmed, “Read-only.”

  “Roystan!” He was too trusting.

  “And yes, I have an off-site copy.” A line creased his forehead as he looked down at her injuries. “Once I’ve sublet the run and gotten you some emergency repairs, we’ll see if your safe site will give you sanctuary as part of the Hassim contract.”

  What if she didn’t want to go? Would he kick her off his ship? “And then?”

  “That depends on you, doesn’t it?” He tapped his handheld. “Everything here is rightfully yours.”

  Far too trusting. “Did you even check to be sure I was who I said I was?”

  “Credit me with some brains.” He brought up an image. A teenage girl, surrounded by electronic equipment and spare parts, staring at the camera, as if whoever was taking the image was wasting her time.

  Back then Josune’s head had been shaved. Impatient teenager that she had been, she’d hated wasting time doing her hair.

  “Josune Arriola, aged thirteen. The day she won the Inter-Worlds engineering championship.”

  “She looks nothing like me.”

  “She has the same direct way of looking straight at you.” Roystan looked down at the image and smiled. “I think she’s rather cute.”

  Josune threw her pillow at him.

  He escaped out the door.

  It was a good thing, she thought, as she settled down to scroll through the data Roystan had left her—on the screen in her room, not through her eye, for she was mindful of Nika’s warning—that the mascot she’d carried with her everywhere as a youngster was out of that particular picture. A battered old spaceship. She’d had it since she was five years old. The Determination. The ship Goberling had owned when he’d found his lode of transurides.

  13

  NIKA RIK TERRI

  Nika had a vague recollection of Roystan talking to her, trying to wake her up. She stayed asleep. She was safe here on this ship in the middle of space where neither Tamati or Alejandro could get to her.

  She woke, stiff and sore, at the table where she’d fallen asleep.

  Snow sat watching her, his back to the wall, eyes half closed, head drooping. He looked lost in his too-old body. Defenseless and defeated. Carlos sat next to him, half napping as well.

  Roystan sat at the table, talking to Jacques through the ship link. “All of it,” he told him. “Everything that’s there.”

  Jacques stood in front of a crane. Nika vaguely remembered seeing the crane as they ran through the cargo area coming on board.

  “You’re giving away our only source of income.”

  “We’re cattle bait if we stay on our route. Or dead.”

  He was right. You didn’t outwit a company by going where they expected you to go. Which was why Nika was on this ship and not on a passenger liner.

  “We’ve no money,” Jacques said. “And no way of getting any more if we don’t have work.”

  “We’ll get some, somehow. Load it all, Jacques. That’s an order.”

  Roystan sighed as he clicked off the communicator. “I’ll miss this route. I was happy here.”

  “How long have you been doing it?” Nika asked.

  “Forty—” He stopped, made his voice lighter. “I knew everyone’s children. Their grandchildren.”

  If Nika had to guess, she’d have put his age at around thirty. A good modder could take years off someone’s age, but there came a time when, no matter how good the machine was or how good the modder was, age showed. You were only as good as your raw materials, and once the cells started to break down you couldn’t stop the thinning of the hair, the buildup of fat on the stomach and loss of fat under the skin. Or more obvious
ly, the loss of color in the iris, and slight changes in balance. Roystan hadn’t reached that stage yet.

  If he’d grown up on the ship, that forty might literally be forty years. Along with some mod work to make himself look younger. “Who did your mod?” It was as skillfully done as Snow’s.

  Carlos opened one eye. “We always go to Lesser Sirius.”

  Roystan hadn’t come to Nika, and he certainly hadn’t gone to SaStudio, for he wouldn’t have walked out with crooked teeth.

  “Tilda. The woman who owned the shop before you did.”

  “It was my shop,” Snow said.

  Nika would have to train him not to call it a shop. That was halfway down the ladder to being a doctor, something Snow didn’t want to be.

  Roystan bowed his head in apology. “Sorry. Your shop.”

  Train them both.

  He looked at Nika. “You worked for him?”

  “What do you think?”

  Roystan shook his head.

  Snow took a deep breath. “You’ve been disqualified from practicing, haven’t you? Deregistered. You’ve lost your accreditation.” He blurted it out, as if he couldn’t hold the words back any longer. “You wouldn’t use your ID when we bought the Dekker. You know you would have been refused. I should have guessed when you were all black and white. Color is big in modding, and you haven’t any.”

  She would have laughed if she didn’t think that would make it worse. No one banned Nika Rik Terri. “Color is last season, Snow. As modders we make trends, not follow them. And no. I haven’t been disqualified. I didn’t use my name because I don’t want anyone to find me.” She couldn’t tell him she was Nika Rik Terri, but if she was honest about running, he might understand she had secrets and forgive her for that deception. Maybe.

  “Another one on the run,” Carlos said. “You’ll fit right in here.”

  Did he mean himself?

  “Everyone has secrets,” Roystan said.

  But Snow, now started, couldn’t seem to stop. “You didn’t go to Landers, either.”

  “I went to Landers.” Long enough ago now that it wasn’t important anymore. Not the way it was to a kid fresh out of college.

  “Marramar has been dean forever. You would have known that.”

  “Maybe it was more than seven years ago.”

  “How long?”

  Fifteen. “Marramar was teaching the epidermis. Nassaf was dean.” He’d been there forever. “Farinor was teaching biological sex.” He—or she, for he/she changed on a whim—had the worst ideas for modding Nika had ever come across.

  “I heard about Farinor.” At least she’d momentarily diverted him. “They said you couldn’t tell what sex he or she would come in on the day.”

  “But he didn’t change much else,” Nika said. “You could always recognize him as Farinor. Different-colored hair, but same nose, same lips, same hands.”

  Same feet, too, for she’d worked the machine for him in class on occasion. No way would she have ever let a student mod her body.

  She thought about the other lecturers. “There was Chatty, of course.” Igor Chatsworth, genetics expert. He’d taken Nika on as his own special student.

  Snow brightened. “Professor Chatsworth was retired, but he came in and gave us a guest lecture every year. You must have been at Landers when Nika Rik Terri was there.”

  Now was the time to tell him who she was. But a secret wasn’t a secret when you told the world.

  “I was.”

  “What was she like?”

  Nika thought about her younger self. A know-it-all, sure she had all the answers. Already knowing she’d own her own studio. Already with big plans, and enough talent that her professors let her get away with it.

  “Arrogant. Obsessed.” Lonely.

  “Sounds like all modders I know,” Carlos muttered.

  Roystan’s lips twitched.

  “But you must have thought she was good. You named yourself after her.”

  Now he was assuming too much. “Never change yourself to imitate someone else, Snow. That’s a bad way to begin. Nika was a common name back then. One year at Landers there were four of us with the name.”

  Roystan stood up. “It’s time I showed you two where your cabins are. Given that we set you to work as soon as you stepped on ship.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The bedrooms were on the top level.

  The lift opened onto a landing, with passageways leading off in four directions, making a cross. Heavy breach doors stood open at the start of every passage.

  Someone—a long time ago—had painted the walls a deep crimson. They were faded now, scuffed, and marked after long years of use. Still, it warmed Nika to see some personality in the otherwise featureless ship. The walls she’d seen to date had been a practical, drab olive—also faded.

  The passages all looked the same. “How do you tell which passage is yours?”

  Roystan grinned. “They’re not marked, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  It was.

  He pointed to the leftmost passage. “I’m down there.” To the one past it. “Jacques and Carlos are down there.” To the passage the other side of Roystan’s. “Josune is here, to the right of the stairs. She’s a quiet neighbor. I’ll put you alongside her.”

  “Thank you,” Nika said.

  Roystan indicated the small terminal beside the lift. “There’s a public node here.” He stopped beside it. “While we’re here, I’ll link you in to the ship. That will allow you to use the screens. As well as the screens, it will give you access to general systems and allow you to contact us anywhere on ship.”

  “Thank you.” It had been tiresome earlier, checking facts aurally. There was only so much information you could hear before you forgot it.

  Roystan keyed an override into the node. “Link in.”

  Nika touched a finger to the node in her jaw and heard the familiar pling that signified she was in. “Iris, voice, palm recognition, and code,” Roystan said.

  Her own node would provide the iris, voice, and palm details.

  Snow had a jaw node, too. Given his worry about credits, or lack of, Nika half expected him to have his in his tooth. Although tooth links were cheap and could turn off or on when you ate the wrong food. So far, Snow had demonstrated a good sense of when to cut costs and when not.

  “Confirmed, both of you.” Roystan led the way down the passage to the first room. “The door only recognizes a code. It’s currently four zeroes. Key in the number to open the door. Do you want to reset the code?”

  Nika had nothing worth stealing. “I’m fine with your code.”

  The cabin contained two bunks, a built-in desk at one end with drawers underneath, and a cupboard over the top of the desk. Spacers traveled light, obviously.

  At the other end of the cabin was a door. Roystan indicated that way. “Toilet, shower. Water cycle is two minutes.”

  These walls were the same faded crimson. Nika mentally redesigned it. Light colors. Maybe a restful aqua, with a scene on the wall behind the bunks. A pastoral scene on the top bunk, something water-based for the bottom.

  She followed them to the room across from hers, which Roystan had chosen for Snow. “Keypad locks are old technology.” She’d investigated it when putting her own locks in against Alejandro. Biometrics had been around hundreds of years now. Keypads were a fad, like handheld communicators and palm recognition systems.

  She’d implemented one as an extra layer of security against Alejandro. Had Roystan implemented his for the same reason?

  “This ship is old. You’ll find a lot of old technology on her. It works, and why change something that works?”

  The ship was an antique. Or built by someone who didn’t trust electronic locks. Nika could understand that.

  “I’ll
leave you to get settled.” Roystan hesitated at the door. “I seem to have landed you in a worse mess than before. I’m sorry, but we’ll work something out.”

  He knew what they were running from. Or thought he did, anyway. Banjo. But the crew of The Road to the Goberlings were running, too.

  “What are you running from?” She had to know how bad it was.

  “We found a ship everyone thinks can lead them to a big find. It nullspaced in front of us. We went over to check it out.”

  “Salvage?” Snow asked.

  “Yes.”

  Nika had no idea what they were talking about.

  “There’d been a fight.” Roystan’s expression changed. Sorrow. Or regret? “The company—the one that’s chasing us—tried to take over the ship, but the crew had killed most of them.”

  “You shouldn’t take on a company,” Snow said. “Not for salvage. No ship’s worth it. Not unless it’s something like the Hassim.”

  “It was the Hassim,” Roystan said.

  Snow opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again.

  “There’s nothing left from the Hassim, Snow. We sold it, and then some of our crew stole the proceeds and ran. Unfortunately, the company doesn’t know that.”

  He turned to go. “We’ll do what we can to keep you safe, but the safety of my crew is important to me.”

  In silence, they watched him leave.

  Snow dropped onto the bunk. “On the Boost we had six to a cabin the same size as this. Except Gramps and me, where they turned the other four bunks into cupboards. We used to keep the drugs there. People always tried to break in.”

  The more Nika heard about Snow’s old home, the less she was impressed with it.

  “Then I went to Landers, and even the cheap scholarship rooms only had two beds to a room. Beds, mind you. Not even bunks. We each had a desk, and a cupboard to store clothes. Everyone complained about the lack of room. It was four times the size of this.”

  He looked up at Nika. “I complained too, because everyone else did.”