“Yes,” he said, then jerked his chin at Caligtiera, who stubbed out the cig against the bulkhead, let it fall to the corner, and stepped by the captain back into the room. Marcus held out his hand. “I ran out. Give me your pack, hm?”
I pouted but handed it over.
He took it, then shoved my head lightly. “Ten minutes. And clean up Cal’s cig.”
I scowled. “Yes, sir.”
“Review the notes. I’ll be asking you about them.”
“Aww!”
“Yuri.” He stared at me, not easy.
“Yes, sir.”
He disappeared back inside, and the hatch shut with a clang. I picked up my slate from the deck. And the dropped cigret. It still stank.
The worst thing about a pirate ship, after the people, was the work.
Since Bo-Sheng was on another schedule, I didn’t see him at all, but they kept me plenty occupied. My first real job among the crew was in the cargo bays doing inventory on the supply bins stacked in the cold storage area. I wore a skinsuit against the chill and had a slate with a list of serial numbers and itemized contents, names that I couldn’t pronounce. They looked scientific or medical, or just numbers and letters. Weapons, I thought for some of them, but wasn’t sure, and nobody I worked with confirmed when I asked after a week of working. They just said, Ask the captain. So after that week I asked him, and he said, Where do you think we get the guns that I’m showing you how to shoot?
The contents didn’t matter to me just as long as I verified everything every two weeks. It was busiest when we got new inventory, usually off-loaded from Shiva since Marcus said he was running The Abyssinian in the shadows for a while.
By July I had my solid routine and the regularity of it made the dark corners and tall crewmembers seem more familiar. Or less intimidating. I had goldshift meals with Marcus, then bridge observation and weapons training, then library lessons or research on any kind of topic Marcus or Estienne assigned—which usually had to do with military strategy, mathematics, station and star systems, the most-used languages in the Hub aside from majority, and politics. For fun I got to look up stuff about Earth or entertainment, pick vids to watch in my quarters at blueshift alone or with Estienne. That was all before lunch. Then Marcus or Estienne would have lunch with me, and after lunch I worked on the ship. Until August it was all cargo bay inventory, and after August it was Engineering observation in the afternoons. Before dinner was gym and sparring time. And after dinner was my time. As the months went on, Marcus said, I would learn a new area of the ship. In a rotation.
It was better than school. Nobody treated me like a kid because I was the captain’s protégé, and when I did my work well Marcus rewarded me with cigrets or clothes or just extra cred, which I could use to order stuff from Austro. Some of the crew would pick up orders on their outrider forays to the Rim. Sometimes Estienne went because he had business there too. He’d dress up in his black like one of the first times I’d seen him and say he was going to a party on station. Austro was the biggest station outside of Hubcentral, and I’d read about how the rich people there had vid premieres and socialite gatherings to raise money for “the destitute” and some of it even went to places like Colonial Grace.
Papa never wrote. And Marcus said the transit station where Mama and Jascha had passed through had been blown by some symp marauder, and now many of the relocation records were lost. So it was taking a long time to try and track where they might’ve gone. There were a lot of relocation colonies in the Spokes. Mama and Jascha hadn’t shown up at Colonial Grace yet.
I tried not to think of Papa and Isobel. I still wrote to them in a separate part of my journals, which Estienne encouraged me to do, and when I’d gathered a week’s worth I gave the file to Estienne to send to Papa. But Papa never wrote back. By September I stopped bugging Estienne to send them, and he stopped asking me. We just stopped talking about my family altogether, and I thought he preferred that anyway. Marcus too. They were sad for me, maybe, and it made them uncomfortable when they had to tell me that nobody on Colonial Grace cared where I was. And neither did Bo-Sheng. He didn’t ask for me either, Estienne said. Let Bo-Sheng work, Marcus said. And you do your work. And you’ll both be all right.
If it weren’t for Marcus and Estienne and all the things I was learning, I would’ve been a lot sadder.
There were ten other kids on board that were on my shift schedule, and sometimes during gym time we’d get a game going with a ball. We weren’t supposed to take the gym equipment out of the gym, but I snuck a fist-sized ball in my pocket to my next Engineering observation block. Sometimes the men and women there started to talk among themselves about things I didn’t understand, and that was when I went to the bathroom for a half hour, or so I told them. I started to go to a rarely used back corridor somewhere near the supply rooms and bounce the ball on the deck and bulkhead. Bounce-bounce and back to my hand, over and over again, traveling down the corridor as I went if I wanted a challenge.
The fifth time doing this I heard singing coming from the main corridor, then a man appeared, heading for Supply, voice echoing in a language I didn’t understand. He spied me midcast and threw up his hands, one of them holding a slate, in mock surrender.
“Please, don’t shoot!”
I grinned. He didn’t seem like the type to yell at me. “This isn’t a gun, it’s a ball. My gun’s in my quarters.”
He approached, hair sticking up in all directions as if he’d just awakened or run his hands through it too many times.
“Still, a ball can kill a man in the right hands.”
“It’s rubber!” I bounced it once to show him.
“Ah, indeed it is.” He caught it before I could and looked at it all over. It was a red marble design. “But, you know, the captain doesn’t like these toys just all around the ship.”
“It’s not all around the ship, it’s just here. When I’m bored.” I wondered if he was going to report me. “I keep it in my pocket most of the time.”
“I see. So you should be working, but you come here to play, hmm?” He held out the ball to me, though, with a smile.
I smiled back as I took it. “What’s your name?”
“Piotr Tyborsky. And you?”
“Yuri Mikhailovich Terisov.”
“That’s quite a name.” He rubbed his chin in thought. “But it’s much too long. Just too long for me.”
“You can call me Yuri.”
“Yoo-ree.” He emphasized.
I laughed. “Yuri.”
“Yoo-ree.” He started to sing the name as he punched in a code to the supply room. “What work do you do for this great ship, Yoo-ree?”
I shrugged. “Stuff for the captain. I’m his protégé.”
“Oh, yes?” He glanced down at me, crooked grin, as he disappeared into the supply room. I leaned against the hatch and peered in at him among the high shelves stacked with small bins. A light tracked him overhead as he moved down the aisle, consulting his slate as he went and running his fingers over lit labels. “Protégé, hmm? You are a special boy!”
“Eh.” I shrugged again.
“The captain has many special boys…,” he murmured, pulling down a bin and setting it on the floor so he could open it.
“What? Does he? Who else?”
“Oh, never fear, Yoo-ree. Nobody else at the moment. I just meant—from before.”
“Before what? Before me?” Who else? And where were they now, on other ships?
“I’ve said a wrong thing,” he muttered, taking out an opaque plastic packet from the bin and tucking it under his arm.
“Why?”
“It’s up to the captain to tell you, not me. I am sorry.” He stood, sliding the bin back into its space.
“No, tell me. I promise I won’t say anything.”
He shook his head and ushered me away from the hatch so he could shut it again. “Nah. I’ve said too much.” The hatch made a hollow thud as it closed. Then he looked down at me. “Plea
se do not mention it to the captain, Yoo-ree. For both of us. Captain Falcone doesn’t really like talking about the others.”
I tucked the ball in my pocket. “Um, okay.” But I was curious.
He put his hand on my head, still for a moment, before ruffling my hair. “Good boy. Now. Go do some work.” He whacked my bottom.
“Ow!” I tried to kick him, but he moved away, too fast, and started singing some ridiculous song using my name as the chorus. “Shut up!” But he made me laugh.
He waved at me and strolled off. That blueshift at dinner in the mess hall I asked Estienne what Piotr Tyborsky did, and Estienne smiled. “He’s one of our drive technicians. And he drives the senior staff down there crazy with his singing. Or he would if he wasn’t so damn good—with his voice and his fists.”
I waited a week into October before asking Marcus, casually over breakfast in the captain’s mess, if he’d had any other protégés before me.
“Yes,” he said slowly, sipping his caff. “Why do you ask?”
“I just wanted to know…if I was the first.” I wasn’t going to get Piotr in trouble. And I rocked a bit on my chair to distract Marcus, to be cute.
“Sit properly, Yuri.”
I clunked back and picked up my toast, bit into it. Sometimes he wasn’t in the mood for me when I wanted to act like a kid, but other times he seemed fond of it. He’d tousle my hair and hug me a lot. He seemed this shift to be in a huggy mood because he smiled at me.
“No, you weren’t the first, but you’re certainly the one to do best so far.”
“Yeah?” Grin. “Sir?”
“Yes. All of the others failed me in one way or another. I don’t think you’ll fail.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He looked serious for a minute. “But it’ll be hard. I won’t lie. It’s very hard sometimes to work on this ship. But the reward is great. I reward my crew.”
“I know.” I smiled so he wouldn’t be so serious. “How many were there? Before me?”
“Three.” He leaned back with his caff and didn’t smile back.
I wanted to ask what had happened to them all, but something about the way he didn’t look at me anymore made me hesitant, and I left it at that. I never wanted to push too far on his patience or kindness. I remembered the girl in the airlock. There were limits to what he tolerated, like any father, I guessed, and if this crew were his children, then I wanted to be the son he favored most.
For a long time.
We had a horror vid that late blueshift, Estienne and I, which I liked to watch in his red-and-black quarters with the lights off. He propped his comp on a chair, and we sat against the bulkhead on his bunk with the red material hanging down all around so in the particularly bloody vids it gave a fun atmosphere. He curled his arm around me, and even though I tried not to, sometimes I shut my eyes and made “ew” noises.
“You’re going to give yourself nightmares at some point.” He laughed.
“You’re not supposed to laugh, it’s supposed to be scary.”
“Okay then. I’ll be scared.” He hugged me tighter and said in an exaggerated child voice, “Help, help.”
I shoved him and he laughed again and the mood was ruined. But it didn’t matter because I was tired anyhow and curled up with my head in his lap, watching the vid sideways. His fingers ran through my hair in light caresses, and it made me sleepier. But I remembered my questions and if I couldn’t ask Marcus, I always asked Estienne.
“Did you know the other protégés?”
His hand stopped moving for a second, but then continued. “No.”
“How come?”
“Well…” He started to rub my back, and I liked that the most. “I wasn’t here when the first two were around, so I never met them.”
“What happened to them?”
“Oh…the first one left. Betrayed the captain, I hear. It was really ugly, and Marcus hates it mentioned. The second one killed himself. Apparently he was just unstable. He wasn’t suited for this at all. I guess he was weak. Don’t talk to Marcus about what I say, okay?”
“I won’t, I promise.” I fingered the fabric over his knees, the soft worn pants of his sleepwear. “What about the third one?” The one before me.
“He wasn’t cut out, so the captain let him go on station. Chaos, I think.”
“Yeah?” So I was doing well, or else he would’ve kicked me off too.
“Mmhmm.” His hand slid up the back of my T-shirt and started to rub. This always got me sleepy real fast because the pads of his fingers had slightly rough calluses that just seemed to tug my eyelids shut with every stroke. I forgot my questions in the lull, then he said, “Want to sleep here this shift?”
“Okay.”
So he ordered off the vid and lay down with me, and caressed my back just like that until I fell asleep.
4.10.2189 EHSD—The Khan
I didn’t see Bo-Sheng for three years. For my thirteenth birthday Estienne threw a party, which I figured had Marcus’s approval since Estienne made a huge deal of it. He hadn’t done it for any of my previous birthdays. Before it had just been dinners between me and him, or me and him and Marcus. Small gifts like extra time on stations or like last year Marcus had given me my own LP-150 rifle, just like soljets had, but it was never a party. Turning thirteen was an occasion though, despite the fact I did what plenty of adults did anyway, but for the sake of dates and numbers, it was a deal. Or maybe three years later I’d finally earned the right to be fussed over outside of work.
Estienne went all out. Full-surround decorations, invitations dropped in comps and alerts, and lots of presents. He tried not to imply that he was giving me anything beyond the party, but I saw the way he watched me when I was in his quarters. If I poked behind too many cases or into his lockers or behind this or that curtain, he was ready to take my arm and distract me with talk, food, or games. I played along. If I truly ruined it for him, he’d make me pay in training. And it would get back to Marcus, because I knew Estienne reported on my progress to Marcus, and when it was Marcus’s turn to test me or make me work he’d be sure I paid too, in some way—doubling me with the smelliest crewmember to oversee cataloging of supplies we’d hauled in from one ship or another, or making me itemize the weapons with the meanest son of a bitch assigned to the ship’s armory. It was his way of punishing me and training me at the same time. Sometimes I went to sleep bruised, but it was never serious. I was special in the crew, like Estienne was special. The crew never touched him either so whatever roughing up he got it must’ve been from his clients.
He had clients that we met at ports in the Dragons or that he flew to see on other ships or stations. They left him some shifts unwilling to leave his quarters, so he’d comm me in a croaky voice and say I should just catch up this shift. Never knew exactly what he did at that point, and he never explained, but it was important to Marcus, and Estienne didn’t seem to mind (always back the next working shift without any change of behavior). It seemed to require expensive clothes and a knowledge of weapons. And sex, I suspected. Which I knew about from watching vids and talking to the other crew—and Estienne, even though most of the time I got the feeling he wasn’t telling me everything. Later, he kept saying. Now I had to learn languages. Or guns. Or fighting. Or planetary trends, weather systems and terraforming and satellite communications across leap space. I read a lot of old literature, and new, and they even let me learn music. I also had to know military procedure, even though The Abyssinian wasn’t a military ship. But Marcus had been a carrier captain and I learned about EarthHub carriers.
But sex was what I thought about. I wanted to ask him so many times—how did it feel when you did those things specifically beyond just kissing. Kissing was easy. He kissed me a lot, on the cheek and the hair and the mouth sometimes, but it wasn’t anything like some of the crew did in the mess hall or the lower-deck berths. That kind of kissing took skill and I didn’t have it yet; nobody would take me on, which I figured was Ma
rcus’s or Estienne’s doing.
Sometimes I was tempted to go through Estienne’s belongings while he was still asleep or if I was waiting in his q while he was in the bathroom. But I never did. He’d kill me, really. But I thought about it. A lot. About what he knew from experience and I only knew from observation. Especially when I cuddled with him. That was nice, and I slept better with it, but I thought about it, who he’d been with and why and what he did, and how did that help our ship?
He shouldn’t have been with other people. He liked being with me the most. He said so.
But whatever it all was, he kept it to himself. He loved a little mystery, and my birthday was a great excuse. He made me wear a blindfold for the party, even when I said I’d keep my eyes shut.
“I don’t trust that you won’t peek. You’re such a rascal.” He laughed and slipped down the black mask over my eyes, then took me by the shoulders. We were in his quarters but that wasn’t where the party was going to be. “Okay, walk.”
“I’m gonna trip!”
“You won’t. I won’t let you. Now just walk.”
I spread my hands in front of me so I wouldn’t bump into anything, not entirely trusting he wouldn’t let me run into a bulkhead just for fun. His quiet laughter didn’t let up as he steered me through the corridors. I heard low voices and little giggles as I went. Estienne’s hand was firm on my shoulder, his other one gripping my waist. I mapped the turns and steps we took and soon knew exactly where we were going. The captain’s mess.
Private party.
I heard a hatch open, and Estienne said, “Step over.”
The threshold, which I knew, so I did, and immediately the smell of warm, spicy food—my favorite, rice and dal and peppered roti—hit my nose, then my stomach, making it rumble. I grinned, and Estienne squeezed my side. “Don’t take it off yet!”
Something chirped.
I smiled wider. “What’s that?”
He growled at me and made me walk to the left, positioning me in front of something. My toe hit what might’ve been the leg of a clamped chair. I felt other people crammed in the room, the heat of bodies and the silence of stifled voices. Estienne held me now on both sides of my waist, and said, “All right, take off the mask.”
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