The two women made an unlikely pair. Julexi had lost her husband Pitoso on El Cavador, and she had argued and questioned every one of Rena’s proposals and decisions ever since. Sabad, Arjuna’s youngest wife, despised everyone from El Cavador. How these women had formed an alliance, Rena could only guess. What was the saying? The enemy of my enemy is my friend?
“Your stay here was intended to be temporary, Rena,” said Sabad. “Arjuna, in his kindness, took you in for a time because he pitied you. It was not an invitation to alter our entire operations. What gives you the right to come onto our ship and tell us we’re doing everything wrong? Do you think yourself so much better than us?”
Arjuna took us in because he needed laborers, Rena wanted to say. Which is what we’ve been doing since we got here—working our fingers to the bone, which is more than I can say for you, Sabad, whose only occupation seems to be whining, backbiting, and flirting with the other men on your husband’s ship.
But aloud Rena said, “No one is implying that your operations are flawed, Sabad.”
“Then what are you implying? That our work is beneath you? That the salvage trade is for a lower class? Is that what we are to you, Lady of El Cavador? A lower class? Because we are Somali?”
Rena sighed inside. Why did Arjuna persist in calling her Lady of El Cavador? Didn’t he see that it angered Sabad?
Of course he saw, thought Rena. That was probably the reason why he was doing it. To annoy her, a way of publicly poking her with a stick. Everyone saw how Sabad would move around the ship half naked, lingering in the engine rooms where the men would ogle at her healthy breasts. It wasn’t uncommon for the Somali women to go bare chested, but Sabad put hers on parade, twisting her hips as she moved through the room, so her breasts would sway back and forth in zero gravity like an invitation. Arjuna had told her to cover herself on more than one occasion, but Sabad had merely found ways to avoid him.
Is that what you’re doing, Arjuna? Rena wondered. Annoying your wife through me?
“There is no caste system on this ship,” said Rena. “There are two tribes. Ours and yours. We are equals.”
“We are not equals,” said Sabad. “This is our ship. You are guests here.”
“We have formed a partnership,” said Rena. “Making the Gagak a mining ship is Arjuna’s wish as well.”
“It is a false partnership,” said Sabad. “You cannot form an alliance without a male leader among you.”
“Our male leader is on Luna,” Rena said—although in truth she wasn’t sure if that was accurate. Once the ship had logged in to the network, Rena had trolled through the news feeds until she had found Victor’s name. It hadn’t been difficult. When the invasion began, several news outlets had recalled the video a young free miner named Victor Delgado had uploaded onto the nets and that everyone had dismissed as phony. Rena had done some additional digging and learned that Victor had been arrested by the Lunar Trade Department for various ridiculous charges involving his flight into Luna. He had escaped custody, however, and that’s where the trail ended. Maybe he was on Luna, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he had gone to Earth. Maybe he had tried to return to the K Belt. Maybe he was trying to find El Cavador. She wished she knew.
But for the moment, what she did know was enough: He was alive. He had made it to Luna. He had done the impossible.
It struck her as ironic that he had made such a sacrifice only to have the world reject him. All that way, all that suffering, and what does Earth do? How do they thank him? By throwing him into prison. It was a wonder more families hadn’t fled the insanity of Earth and taken up the mining trade.
“If your son is on Luna, why doesn’t he talk to us?” said Sabad. “How do we know this alliance is his wish? Are we to take your word on it?”
“Our Council of women met and voted on the matter,” said Rena. “Victor is our chief in absentia. The Council makes decisions in his absence.”
“First off,” said Julexi. “Victor is not our chief. I don’t care if he’s the oldest male or not. That doesn’t make him our leader in our culture. Second, the Council’s vote is meaningless. We’re not a true council. We haven’t been a true council since the Incident.”
She meant the destruction of El Cavador and the death of all the men. That’s the name Julexi had given it. The Incident. Rena found the word offensive. It sounded so insignificant. Uncle Jorge having too much to drink at a birthday party. That was an incident. Victor as an infant peeing into the air during his baptism and unleashing droplets of urine throughout the cargo bay. That was an incident. But the death of half of their crew, the shattering of their livelihood, the orphaning of their children, the widowing of the wives, the ripping in half of their families, was not an incident. It was far more than that.
“Our true Council included our husbands, Rena,” said Julexi. “Sensible men. And if they were here, they would laugh this idea of yours to scorn. It never would have been put to a vote. The group you call the Council now is a grieving pack of terrified widows who will jump at the chance at any return to normalcy. What’s that, you say? A mining ship? Just like El Cavador? Why yes, let’s do that! Even though they have no idea how to actually pull it off.”
“Our women are making intelligent, informed decisions, Julexi. We discussed the challenges in detail. We debated the issue five times. Everyone’s voice was heard, including yours. This was not an emotional decision. It was a financial one. We are much more likely to achieve the independence we want if we make this move. I honestly think it’s in our best interest as women and in the best interest of our children.”
Julexi threw her hand up in exasperation. “That’s what you always say. It’s in the best interest of our children.” She pointed in the direction of the cargo hold. “None of those little ones are your children, Rena. Not one. They’re ours. So I don’t see why you think you have the right to speak on their behalf.”
Rena forced herself to smile and keep her voice calm. “Forgive me, Julexi. I misspoke. I say ‘our’ because that’s what I’ve always said, ever since Victor was born. But you have kindly reminded me that my inability to have more children after Victor removes my right to use that possessive pronoun once Victor is gone. I assure you, hereafter, I will say ‘your.’”
Julexi folded her arms. “Now you’re being snide.”
“No, Julexi, I am apologizing. Whether you accept it or not, is your decision. As for the Council, nothing would make me happier than to have Pitoso and Segundo and the others back among us. But that’s not going to happen. As much as we want it to, it’s not. That leaves us with two options. We can be paralyzed by our husbands’ absence and make no decisions whatsoever and float through the rest of our existence. Or we can adapt to this and still function as a family, and take control of where we’re going. I prefer the latter option. And I strongly suspect that our husbands would prefer that, too.”
Julexi burst into tears.
Rena had to bite her tongue. This is what Julexi always did when her arguments fell apart. The moment she realized that logic was against her, she resorted to her one defense mechanism. Tears.
She knew, of course, that this would silence any argument. All she had to do was open the floodgates and suddenly anyone who had held a contradictory position now found themselves taking Julexi into their arms and whispering words of comfort.
Rena had fallen for it the first few times Julexi had done it, especially shortly after losing the men. When any one of them would cry, Rena would swoop in and embrace them and hold them close. She felt like crying herself, and mourning together was one way to cope.
But Julexi had turned it into an art—probably without even realizing she was doing it. Her tears weren’t fake, after all. As far as she was concerned, they were as real and warranted as all others. To suggest otherwise would be an offense.
“I’m sorry this is difficult for you, Julexi,” said Rena. “And I’m sorry, Sabad, if you disagree with the decision Arjuna has made. I suggest you take i
t up with him. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She wedged her way between them and launched up the corridor.
But over the course of the day, as she worked in the helm with the navigators, Rena couldn’t help but wonder if Julexi was right. Could they really do this? Repairing a broken heat coupler was one thing, installing a mining drill onto a salvage ship was quite another. None of the women had ever attempted such a thing. Segundo and Victor over the years had done all that.
Could Rena? Was she honestly capable of installing a lug processor, for example? Could she calibrate a digging stabilizer? And was the Gagak even structurally sound enough to house the needed equipment? What if it wasn’t? When would they find that out? On their first official dig as the ship ruptures and breaks apart from the vibrations?
Oh Segundo, she thought. Am I doing the right thing? Is this truly what’s best? Am I helping or hurting? You could probably look at this ship and know in an instant if such a thing was possible. I am lost without you, mi amor. Lost. Sometimes I feel confident about what we’re doing, but most times I want to simply fly away and be alone. How I wish you were here, mi vida. Helping me, guiding me, holding me.
She imagined what it would be like if Segundo were here. He and Arjuna would likely be close friends. They were of a similar temperament. She could see the two of them laughing together. And at the end of the day Segundo and Rena would go back to their cabin—and yes, they would have their own cabin!—and the two of them would laugh at how foolish Sabad was being, and Segundo would sashay around the room and shake his chest the way Sabad did, and Rena would laugh and slap him playfully on the arm and tell him he was being mean.
“Rena?”
Rena looked up from the holoscreen she had been staring at.
Edimar, her niece, was floating beside her. Fifteen years old now, and looking more like Lola, her mother, every day. Edimar had been a close friend to Victor. She had been the one to first spot the Formic ship approaching the system using the ship’s motion-detection telescope known as the Eye.
Edimar had always been a little girl in Rena’s mind, isolated up there in the Eye of El Cavador, watching for collision threats and keeping them all safe.
But she was hardly a little girl now. The last year had seen a growth spurt. She was nearly a woman grown—tall, full chested, slender in the arms and legs. Not old enough to marry, of course, but old enough to give boys heart palpitations. It had happened once on the Gagak. One of the Somali boys her age had whistled at her, and Rena had quickly gone to Arjuna to put an end to it.
Rena smiled. “Mar, I’m sorry. I didn’t you see there.”
“Can I speak to you for a moment?”
“Of course.”
They left the helm and went to the bay window at the bow of the ship. The immensity of space was before them. It was not a real window, of course—merely a projection from the cameras outside. But it looked real, and it must have reminded Edimar of the Eye, because Rena always found her here, floating at the window, staring outward, as if looking for something lost. Perhaps her sister Alejandra, Rena thought. Or her father Toron.
Edimar said, “I need you to ask Arjuna something for me.”
“Okay.”
“I know I can technically go to him myself. He’s said as much. Anyone on board can approach him. But I’d rather you do it.”
“All right.”
“Now that we’re on network, I want to get on the Parallax system.”
Rena furrowed her brow. “Should I know what that is?”
“It’s a group of telescopes orbiting the system. Juke set them up years ago. With them, scientists can look way out into deep space.”
“Why have I never heard of this?”
“Because they’re for academics, researchers. We had no use for that kind of data on El Cavador. We were focused on finding nearby asteroids, not on looking into deep space. And besides, we weren’t on the network. It wasn’t available to us anyway.”
“Why do you want to get on Parallax?”
“When I saw the Formic ship coming into system, it was only a few weeks away at that point. But if I had had a stronger scope, and if I had known precisely where to look, I might have seen it long before then.”
“What are you saying?” asked Rena. “You think the Parallax satellites may have seen the Formic ship before we did?”
“I think it’s possible, yes. But I won’t know unless I look at the database from the past two to three years or so.”
“But if the Parallax scopes had seen the Formic ship, wouldn’t they have warned everyone?”
“Remember, these scopes are computers. They only do what we program them to do. Nobody has their eye to a lens, analyzing every little odd thing the scope sees. That would take too long. And it would be an enormous waste of time anyway. Most of the objects out there are harmless. All astronomers are worried about are collision threats. So they programmed the scopes to flag only those light-reflection objects that pose a threat to Earth. Everything else gets ignored. Essentially, if it’s not on a trajectory with Earth, if it’s not following normal parabolic patterns, nobody cares.”
“Okay. Makes sense.”
“It makes sense, yes, but there’s a gaping hole in that practice. It doesn’t account for anomalies. Like when an object decelerates or when it changes from one trajectory to another. The scopes should flag those type of objects, too, but they don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one thought it was possible. Objects that behave that way are clearly extraterrestrial. And astronomers gave up on looking for extraterrestrial life way back in the twentieth century. Research in that field became unfashionable. Academics would have been laughed to scorn if they had suggested the scopes look for such things.”
“Well they’re kicking themselves now,” said Rena.
“My point is, it’s very possible that the scopes saw the Formic ship earlier without flagging it for analysis. And if something doesn’t get flagged, it might as well not exist. It goes unseen and unnoticed in the archives.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t astronomers be sifting through that data now?”
“You would think,” said Edimar. “But no one is. I went on the system and checked.”
“Wait. You’ve already been on the system?”
“As a guest,” said Edimar. “I did what any college kid can do. You can log on and see what the current objects for analysis are. But that’s it. You can’t access the archives. And that’s where the answers are.”
“So you need deeper access. Is there a fee involved?”
“Well, yes, but I’m not proposing we pay it. We couldn’t afford it, and they wouldn’t approve us anyway. We’re not a university.”
“Then how do you get access?”
“I set up a bogus username and I piggyback on a university’s current account. It wouldn’t be difficult. And it’s not like anyone polices the system. Why would they? It’s research, not a bank.”
“But it is illegal.”
“Technically. And that’s why I need Arjuna to approve this before I do it. There are people on this ship looking for any reason to make us leave. And I don’t want to be the person to give them a reason.”
Rena smiled. Edimar, so young and yet so wise.
She took Edimar’s hands. “You’re growing up too fast, Mar. Your father would be proud of you. I know I am.”
“So you’ll talk to Arjuna?”
“I’ll talk to him. And he’ll say yes.”
Edimar looked out the window a moment. When she turned back, Rena saw that there were tears in the girl’s eyes. “This will never be home, Aunt Rena. No matter what we do to this ship, no matter how much we modify it or equip it, it will be never be home.”
Rena felt as if her heart would break in two. She gently squeezed Edimar’s hands. “You’re not wrong, Mar. Home was El Cavador. Home was Segundo and your father and Alejandra and everything the way it was. And no matter what we do here, no matt
er what changes we make, we can never have that home again.” She reached out and put a hand on Edimar’s cheek. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy, Mar. It may not be the happiness we had before, it may feel like a lesser version of it for a time, we may not even feel it some days at all. But we have to believe more will come. We have to hope. You’ve suffered more than most, Mar, and I wish I could fix that. But I can’t. All is I can do is be with you and your mother and the others and try to make something new. Maybe not a home. Maybe that won’t come until later. But I believe it will come, Mar. With your brains in this operation, how could it not?”
Edimar smiled, and the two of them embraced.
A voice shouted from down the corridor. “Ms. Rena.”
Rena turned and looked. One of the crewmen from the helm, Magashi, was calling to her. “You better come to the helm quick, Lady.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You have a message,” said Magashi. “Arjuna said to bring you at once.”
“From the traders?”
“No, no, Lady. From your son.”
FROM: helm%[email protected]
TO: [email protected]
Re: Found at last
Dearest Vico,
My son. I have read your letter five times now. Every time I do, I cry. You would have been proud of me: I have held back tears for a long time now. I have tried to be strong. But to know that your fingers actually typed the words I was reading, to know that you’re alive and safe, I became a slobbery mess. It’s only a matter of time before the crew here starts calling me “nose faucet” or something worse. Somalis love nicknames.
Edimar was with me when your letter came. She sends her love. You wouldn’t recognize her if you saw her, she’s grown so much.
All of the women and children are here as well. I have read them your letter. If I were to include all the messages they asked me to pass along on their behalf, this would take forever to type. Suffice it to say, you’re loved and missed.
In fact, this might be a good time to inform you that you’re the chief of our tribe. It’s a long story, but essentially we need you to approve our partnering with Arjuna and his crew to turn the Gagak into a mining vessel. I’ve convinced myself that being the wife and mother of two brilliant mechanics qualifies me to lead this effort. So far no one has put me in a padded room. Should I self-commit?
Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) Page 25