by Martin Kee
God, anyone would have been better than Brandon. Anything would have been better than what happened. But that was almost twenty Earth years ago, just a few weeks time to him.
Kendal brings the photo to his chest and closes his eyes. He’s paid a hefty price for this illegal voyage to freedom—freedom from memories, freedom from the past… freedom from punishment imagined or real.
He shudders at the thought of what could have been. He doesn’t even have a picture of his own mother, and he has her to thank for this ticket to nowhere—her and Uncle Ernie.
“They won’t find you if you’re smart,” she said to him. “And they won’t find you because you’re smart. If they do finally figure it out here, it’s too late anyway.” She had smiled at him, patted his chest. “My boy. Lay low, and lay smart. Listen to your Uncle and we’ll see you in a few.”
He tries to imagine what his mother might look like now, assuming she’s alive, assuming she hasn’t been arrested for his little trip. The gravity of his situation is undeniable.
“Teens don’t yet have the capacity of forethought. You can’t see the consequences of your actions yet, son. And one day you’re going to be really sorry if you keep shitting all over the people who love you. For once in your life stop being a selfish prick and start considering other people for a change.” That’s his dad talking again. The man who said he shouldn’t run, the man who told him to just take it like a man.
Take it like a man. Fake it ‘til you make it.
Even if he turned around now, the old man would be dead by the time he made it back to Utah, fifty years gone in the blink of an eye, and suddenly Kendal understands.
I’m gone.
The fear is as real, and as final as a bullet hole to the chest, sinking with lead weights to the bottom of his gut. And his grief feels like vertigo.
It is vertigo.
The ship is changing course, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a degree, so slight you’d have to be perfectly still to notice. They are slowing, maneuvering, and soon they’ll be over a new world.
So soon?
He pulls up the tablet and taps the screen, wiping his cheek with his other hand. He studies the output and frowns. As a survey ship their job is to scan planets for life, make any observations available to their corporate head, and then move on to the next. They’ll be gone for another year before they swap out the crew. But as Kendal looks through the logs, something troubles him.
The mapping of the planet surface shows some weird anomalies, huge calcium deposits, flowing water—if somewhat scarce. It could support life, but then they thought that about Mars once too. Gaseous clouds cover most of the surface with an odd compound even the scanners have trouble identifying, and what really bothers him is that there’s oxygen, nitrogen, and a shit ton of methane. The whole planet probably smells like one big fart.
That means life.
But the Life Probability Report is missing from the data. The planet classification: MUNDANE
There are close to a billion worlds classified as Mundane. It means the planet can probably be safely mined and harvested, with a minimal supply of water and ice for fuel. Earthlike planets are typically avoided, with probes sent in, scanning for civilizations. If something resembling a civilization is detected, the corporation steers clear. Mundane is classification reserved for planets like Mars—dry, inhospitable, exploitable. It’s the type that ships like his are searching for. It means that the chances of human impact are minimal. Mundane means exploitable.
So then why is the Life Probability Report so hard to find?
It dawns on him just as the ship lurches out of acceleration—the LPR is missing entirely… no, not just missing. Someone is purposefully deleting them. Redacting them. He scans ahead, trying to find the data entry before they can be erased, but he’s too late. As soon as he moves up a directory, the file directories have shrunk again and again.
“Backups…” he mutters, and starts through the archives. The LPR history would still have the caches stream, so he dives into the Temp directory. Just as he thinks he’s found something—just the letters LPR—the ship lurches again and he drops the tablet. When he picks it up the archives are gone, wiped clean.
His stomach flips. He is floating. He stares at the tablet hovering inches from his face, the screen black with a spinning watch—NO INTRANET ACCESS.
Impact, jarring and neck-breaking. It travels through the ships skeleton like a shockwave as the superstructure absorbs massive amounts of energy. The only way gravity can cut out like this is if the AI is diverting everything into keeping the ship together. A high-pitched whine starts to fill his ears, mixed with muffled screams, and Kendal realizes this is the first time he’s ever heard the Luxemburg’s emergency alarm.
It is the sound ships make when they die.
Chapter 3
IT’S AFTER dusk by the time they enter town, with the sky turning dark behind the Godcloud. Bex has been taught there are stars above the swirling gray mist, but she’s never seen them in her life, not clearly. The horns of the world vanish into them, stairs and platforms circling the surface, embedded in the calcium shell. Perhaps that’s what the priests atop the horns of the world do, look at stars and meditate. She doesn’t know or care to know at this point.
Bindo limps beside her, grunting with every fourth step. She’s surprised they haven’t had another run-in with stalkers, but she’s too exhausted to ask why. They are skittish creatures, prone to distractions too subtle for most to notice. Maybe they found another victim. Good.
The gateguard watches her approach, his grafted modifications painting a jagged silhouette several heads taller than she. He stands at the space between the partly opened gates, half his body covered in armor, blades, and spikes. A claw twitches at her approach, moving slowly to unsheathe a bone sword at one hip.
“I need a place to stay.” She does her best not to make eye contact, doesn’t want him to see the pain or shame there.
The plates and shells shift as he studies her from beneath his grafted armor, saying nothing. Grafting is common for Preservers, replacing those vital limbs and organs as each one is lost in combat, and the end result is often what stands before her: a patchwork walking weapon, made of bone blades and horns. People repair themselves as they must. It isn’t Bex’s place to judge. She just needs to rest.
“You need a Patcher too, by the looks of it,” the guard says. “What’s your name?”
“Bex. What’s yours?”
“Veerh…” His jaw twitches behind a chitin plate, taken aback by the reversal in questioning. “What’s your story?”
“Stalkers,” she says.
“Aye,” he says. There is no humor or sympathy in his voice. “Common in these parts. Lost an arm to them five years ago when the weather shifted and they came up from the gorge. You’re lucky you walked away with no grafting this far out in the plains. Only idiots and Tenders venture out here unprepared.”
She makes a slow movement, pulling the gun from her pocket, letting the dim light reflect off the weapon. “I had this.”
“That will work as well as anything, I suppose, assuming you can still find ammo.” He nods, auxiliary arms flexing. “Girl shows up with a plainsteer and a handgun, it’s my job to ask questions. What’s your trade?”
“I am a trained Tender.”
“That explains the weapon.” He snorts. “A bit young to be a Tender.”
“I’ve made do.”
“This plainsteer your Ward?”
“No,” she answers too quickly.
“Don’t often see a Tender without their Ward.”
It’s too soon to admit her failures to herself or anyone, and she chooses her words carefully. “I said I’m a trained Tender, not that I was a practicing one… Most of my education had been in patching before I left…”
“What guild?”
“On Bone Sea.”
The Preserver yanks a chain and the wooden gate creeks open. The Preserver h
as a pair of deputies pulling the gates wide, but neither appears as seasoned or as modified as he.
“We already have a Patcher in town, not that he couldn’t use the help.”
“You the only Preserver?” she asks, coaxing Bindo forward.
“I’m the only one this town has needed. Salaries cost money, and as you can see a town like this doesn’t have much. Why? You planning something I should know about?”
“No. Just curious,” she says and he nods, letting her pass.
“Keep your gun holstered. We have our laws, and while you are here you will respect them. Tender or not, I’m the last person you want to have a second conversation with about this. Is that understood?”
She only nods. There’s no point in telling him that she has no bullets, nor would she know where to buy more bullets.
“Good girl. Patcher’s house is at the end of the street to your right. It’s next to the large red barn. Vin stables some livestock in there, and you can probably talk him into letting you and your steer stay the night in the hay.”
While the streets are empty, she still feels eyes watching her from behind shutters. Tending is fine on the Bone Sea, out of the way of cities and civilization, but here she sticks out like broken tusk on a flathulker. The superstitions that fuel these towns could just as easily fan the flames of blame towards her when the next drought grips the land.
The houses are a design common in the plains: rough shanties, built from the scavenged bits of other buildings, probably left behind after the last resource conflict. She sees entire histories amongst the walls as she and Bindo walk through the dusty streets—walls made of old fences, tarpaulins, battlements, barricades, stables, warwagons, clinics, and palaces. Everything is fair game out in these parts as people grab what they can to survive.
The large barn looms up ahead, a giant dome of rotting wood and pieced-together mud and clay. The Patcher clinic isn’t much more than a small leaning shack in front of the barn, the porch a darkened cavern of mismatched wood slats. The steps creak like small animals as she walks up them. Bex knocks on the door, which seems to have been ripped directly from a much nicer house.
Footsteps approach from the other side of the door, and pause. “A bit late. Unless this is an emergency.” The Patcher’s voice is old and scratchy, with a hint of annoyance.
“It is.”
Another gap in the conversation and she thinks she can hear a fluting sigh. “What’s the nature of your emergency? Do you require patching?”
“My plainsteer, yes.”
“Why?”
“Stalkers.”
She hopes that’s enough without going into too much detail. A moment later she hears movement. Bolts and locks clatter on the other side, the door cracks open and small, shriveled eyes peer out at her. “You have money?”
“No.”
“Scrap?”
“No.”
The wrinkled eye narrows with suspicion. “No? You said stalkers.”
“That’s right?”
“No husks?” he says, the voice rising in disbelief.
“No…”
“You slay a stalker and don’t scavenge the husk? Were you born under a rock, or just stupid?”
She groans internally. “It was getting dark and I was worried we might run into more.”
The Patcher grumbles something under his breath. A chain falls away from inside, and then the door opens wide, revealing a gloomy, dimly lit house. Wood stairs twist upward from the entrance to a second floor, but Bex can see the bottom level is where most of the work is done. Husks, skins, horns, claws, line the walls, some for decoration, others probably to use as acquisition. Most of them seem well past their prime.
Staring up at her stands the Patcher, a short, ancient little person, probably at the end of his second life. Rough calcium calluses mark his thick skin like barnacles. On his back he wears an overshell covered in calcium stained trinkets, husks and glass. It’s hard to tell where the shell ends and the Patcher begins, and it certainly explains why he moves so slowly. Small birth-arms cross impatiently in front of his folded working arms.
“A stalker husk would have been nice,” he says, staring at Bindo—who has found a small spot of grass to much on. “I could patch him up tonight. But now… I might be able to treat it, but if crust has set in, you’ll need a patch.”
“Can we stay here, just for tonight?”
The Patcher laughs. “Well! Just come in and help yourself! Awfully forward aren’t you?”
“I didn’t mean—”
He waves the comment away and turns away. “Bring him around back and I’ll have a look…” The door slams in her face.
Bindo looks up at her and she leads him reluctantly away from the grass, around the shack to the barn. The Patcher waits there for them around back, opening a cabinet that sits along a wall of vials and tools. Several long, threatening needles stick out from a pincushion on one corner of the desk, and even though Bex has been trained in patching, she still finds the practice barbaric on some level.
He works in the corner a while, using a small grafted hand no bigger than an infant’s to thread the needle while a longer arm reaches for a cloth nearby. She wonders if maybe he did these grafts on his own. Out here, it seems likely. There is no evidence of stitches, however. Now, in his old age, the grafts have all unified under the thin, calcified coating that spreads over his body.
He turns around and blinks at her in the dim light. Bindo is sniffing some hay, and Bex notices that it’s stained in blood.
“Cow just gave birth,” he says, settling onto a stool. “Nothin’ for your mount to worry about.”
“I don’t see a calf.”
“Sold it. Hold him still.” He approaches with the needle in hand.
She strokes Bindo’s side and leads him towards the Patcher. The Patcher scratches his chin, studying the animal’s shoulder. A long flap of skin hangs there, pulled back from the muscle. Blood shines in the dim light as he takes the flap and lifts it.
“Not sure if this flap will hold or not. He’s lucky the scabbing hasn’t set in too bad yet”
“There wasn’t much left of the stalkers,” she says, hating the apology in her voice.
“Hmm,” he says, shrugs. He starts to dig through his leather bag on the floor. “The skin has started to dry here… and here. These stitches might not take. Stalker husks have a good lifespan after they are removed.”
“I wish I’d known…”
He moves over to the pouches on Bindo’s rump. “You graft these saddlebags yourself?”
“Jumper eggsnatcher pouches,” she says. “There was a colony of them just south of the Bone Sea.”
The Patcher nods. He sees the concern on her face and says, “Oh, don’t worry about him. Plainsteers are hearty. I’ll sew this up, but you might consider reinforcing the dressing with some jalla reed or even emm leaves. They’ll soak up the extra calcium and keep any scarring from occurring.”
He continues to dig through his bag with an auxiliary arm, then comes up with a long, metal syringe. Bindo stomps.
“You’ll want to keep him calm. This is just an anesthetic.”
She pats Bindo as the Patcher makes three quick injections around the wound. He sits back and says, “Give it a minute and I’ll start the stitches.” He places the needle back in the bag and rummages some more. “You a Tender?”
Bex’s stomach sinks a bit. “I was.”
“I only ask because of the pouch. You seem a little young.”
“You seem a little old.”
He hacks out a surprised laugh that turns into a coughing fit. “I guess you’re old enough to taunt an old man with a bunch of sharp objects. All the Tenders who’ve come through here were well on their way to the ground journey. What’s your name?”
“Bex. This is Bindo.”
“Not a Tender anymore?”
She says nothing and he nods. He has probably seen the dead egg at this point, but nothing is said and Bex fe
els relieved she doesn’t have to explain herself.
“Fair enough,” he says and starts threading the needle. “They train you in grafting at all in those schools?”
“A little, but it’s discouraged unless there’s no chance the donor will survive.”
The Patcher nods with a grunt. “Well, you can’t let them harden. That’s the truth.”
His voice trails off as he begins to concentrate on the procedure, weaving the needle. Bindo takes it like a champ. He was bred for loyalty and toughness and Bex figures he got the best of both. She wouldn’t be alive right now if it weren’t for him. They never would have escaped this far.
“I still need a place to stay,” she says off handedly. “I mean…”
“I got a room upstairs I rent out. Then there’s the inn… or you could try Ugly Sal’s, but you don’t look like a tourist and I doubt you could afford his rates anyway.”
“Here’s fine. I’d like to stay close… In case there are any complications.”
“Bah.” He finishes the stitch. “There won’t be. I’ve been doing this a long time.” He cuts the thread and pats Bindo’s rump. “There.”
Bindo turns to her and licks her on the cheek. This time she doesn’t complain.
The Patcher watches a moment, then puts away his things. “He’ll be fine. There’s a bit of crusting around the edge, but in a year it will look like any other scar. You two are lucky.”
More than you know, she thinks. But then she remembers the egg and thinks maybe she isn’t lucky at all.
“I’m Vin, by the way. Thanks for asking.” He walks over to the stall across the way and continues the sarcastic rant. “And you’re welcome. ‘Oh, thank you Vin. So nice of you to fix my mount and let us stay free of charge.’ Why, you’re welcome.”
“They told me your name when I entered the city…” She catches herself. “…thank you… Vin.”
They close up the stables, and Vin leads her back to the clinic door.
“You eaten?” Vin asks.
“No, but I’m not hungry.” It isn’t a lie. She simply can’t think of food, and as the emotional and physical exhaustion overtake her, she realizes that she only wants to sleep. “Just show me my room if you could.”