Aetherbound

by E. K. Johnston

  Pendt rested her head against his shoulder, and they breathed together. Half an hour ago, everything had seemed to out of control and beyond her, and now they had a plan. Fisher was more than reliable and steady for her, he was the answer to questions she wasn’t even sure how to ask.

  “Pendt,” said Fisher.

  “Yes?” she answered, looking up at him again. His eyes were dark.

  “I—” Whatever he had planned to say went unheard as Pendt leaned up into him and pressed her lips to his.

  This kiss was different from the first one they had shared. Slower, more deliberate, it burned through him. He relaxed into the sofa cushions, taking her full weight against his body. She settled between his legs, her hands on his thighs for balance as she dragged her tongue along his teeth.

  She was so tiny, compared with him. He knew it was the result of an underfed childhood, and he tried not to think it was attractive. She’d put on so much weight since she arrived on the station, rounding out her stomach and her hips, and still his hands felt perfectly sized to hold her against his body. She was soft now, her skin having lost its papery feel even as the body underneath it filled out with calories and fat and muscle. This was who Pendt was meant to be, her true form. Not the waif her family had tried to suppress. Not the unwilling mother they would have forced her to be once she turned eighteen. This glorious girl in his lap, her mouth on his with a hunger he could match.

  She pulled back, panting for breath, and smiled at him.

  “I’m not entirely sure what you want,” she said.

  “To be honest, neither am I,” he told her. “This is new for me as well.”

  Her smile grew even wider, her hands sliding up his chest to brace herself against his shoulders.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said. “I have a certain amount of confidence in us.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly that he blinked. Then he saw the quirk of her lips and realized she was making fun of him. He laughed and pulled her body flush against his. Fisher never wanted to leave Brannick Station, but he had finally found something he wanted to explore.

  23.

  THREE DAYS LATER, FISHER was working in operations when a notification came in. They would need to clear the lower pylons, it said. A generation ship was coming, and that was the only place that it would fit. Fisher held his breath while he read over the specifications. There was no doubt in his mind. It was the Harland.

  He looked around the room. Dulcie would have gotten the notification, and Pendt as well, but she was spending this shift in hydroponics. It was entirely likely she wouldn’t hear the notification chime, if she was busy enough, Fisher thought. He immediately dismissed the lie: Pendt always listened for chimes in case she was needed to open the Well or the Net. The foreman looked up at him, a question written on her face.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, and hoped he would be able to.

  The Harland hadn’t been gone long enough to make it anywhere and back, which meant they must have rendezvoused with one of the faster sublight ships Pendt had brought through the Net. That, or they had been waiting for a message from someone, but from everything he knew of Arkady Harland, she wasn’t the type to waste resources, waiting in space. Fisher reread the notes from their departure last time: Yes, someone had mentioned that they were headed to a meeting. No further details were given, but none could really be expected.

  The manifest Fisher was given was short. The Harland wasn’t off-loading anything, but they did have a few scheduled pickups. None of them flagged Fisher’s attention when he looked them up in the station’s records. He had no idea why they were making this trip.

  A supplementary document appeared on the file. It was a notice from First Officer Lodia Harland, stating that the last time the Harland had been at Brannick, there was a miscommunication, and one of the ship’s hands, her daughter, had been left behind. There was no mention of Pendt by name, just a physical description and a promise that Lodia would reimburse any costs her daughter had incurred while she had stayed on the station. It seemed uncharacteristically generous, to say the least.

  No sooner had Fisher finished reading than the door to operations slid open, and Pendt came flying in. Her hair was bound up around her head, tufts sticking out of the scarf she’d wrapped around it to keep sweat and soil from mixing in her hair. There were green smudges on her cheeks and dirt under her fingernails. She’d never looked more alive.

  “Did you see this?” she said, brandishing the datapad. Everyone was staring now.

  “Yes,” Fisher said as calmly as possible. “Do you want to go somewhere and discuss it?”

  Pendt seemed to realize there were witnesses. She immediately reined herself in. It would have been painful to watch if it had been her disappearing into a shell, but instead it was as though the professional, adult version of herself stepped forward to deal with the situation.

  “Of course,” she said. “As long as I am not interrupting?”

  The people in operations knew more about Pendt’s personal history than the given station worker, and they were almost as protective of her as Fisher was. Furthermore, they took their cues from Dulcie, and the foreman was clearly upset about something. No one would question the interruption.

  “We’re good,” Dulcie said. “I was about to kick Fisher out to get some dinner anyway. He skipped lunch.”

  “You promised not to tell!” Fisher protested at exactly the same time Pendt said, “You promised you wouldn’t do that anymore!”

  The operations crew laughed. It was almost normal.

  “Come on, then,” Fisher said, and led her into the office off the side. It’s where Ned had liked working best, because he could be alone there. Fisher preferred to work in the main room.

  “There’s no way my mother is going to pay you back for everything I’ve eaten since I got here,” Pendt said before the door had sealed. “Let alone the clothes.”

  “Are you joking?” Fisher asked. “I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking.”

  “I’m dead serious,” Pendt said. “I don’t know what Lodia wants, but I guarantee you that she’s not going to pay you for it.”

  “Pendt,” he said, “I meant that isn’t my priority. It never even crossed my mind to calculate how much— You know you can’t leave anyway, I mean, I couldn’t let you leave, even if they offered to pay me what you were worth. Which they can’t, because your worth is beyond measure.”

  It was a bit garbled, but she seemed to get the point.

  “Oh,” she said. “I panicked and I forgot how things worked.”

  “Understandable,” Fisher said. “What are you going to do when they come here and find out they have no legal hold on you?”

  Pendt thought about it.

  “Send them on their way, I suppose,” she said. “They have no hold on me, and I don’t owe them anything because they thought they could come back and claim me. Why, do you think we should try to help them? They might have trouble making the next port on the supplies they’ve wasted to get back here, but I don’t want Brannick Station complicit in their trafficking, now that we know what they’re really doing.”

  “I did wonder if you’d want to help them,” Fisher said. “Or if you’d want revenge. Either would be understandable. They’re your family and they treated you like shit.”

  “If we had enough evidence about the trafficking, I’d have the captain charged under station law,” Pendt said. “But we don’t. All we can do is send them on their way with no help and build the case against them when they’re gone.”

  “We can do that,” Fisher said.

  Pendt stared out the window of the office into the black void of space.

  “You know,” she said after a long moment, “I really thought they might never come back. They told me I was worthless for so long, I guess I thought they would cut their losses with me, e
ven now that I know what I can do.”

  “They don’t know,” Fisher said. “And that might be the best revenge.”

  “Yes,” Pendt said. “You might be right.”

  Any other words of comfort Fisher might have given were stopped by a bright flash outside the window. There should not have been a bright flash outside the window.

  “Did something explode?” Pendt said, trying to see.

  “No, we would have felt it,” Fisher said.

  “Then what?” Pendt said.

  Fisher’s heart sank all the way to his shoes.

  “It’s the Net.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Operations was calm when they returned to it, but there was an air of panic hanging above everyone’s heads.

  “Dulcie, it wasn’t Pendt,” Fisher said calmly. “I don’t know how much time we have, but I would like you to evacuate the loading docks and seal every door you can. Have the station populace return to their homes, like a lockdown drill.”

  To their credit, they still didn’t panic. Dulcie announced the drill in a calm voice, while her seconds began to evacuate and seal the docks.

  “Pendt—” he started, but she cut him off.

  “I am staying here,” she told him. “No matter what comes through that Net, I am staying with you.”

  There was only one person it could be. They knew it, even if no one was willing to say it out loud. This was how the Hegemony invaded. They used their genetic hostage to activate the Net, and then nothing could stop them from arriving at the station of their choice. Fisher’s father was coming home, and it was the very worst sort of homecoming imaginable.

  The Net glimmered as a ship made contact. Instead of firing its engines and making for a dock on the pylon, it sat there. Eventually, an automatic drone was activated on the station and went to tug the ship in. The whole process was beyond Fisher’s control. In the case of station safety, getting a ship to dock was always prioritized, and stopping the drone would require more time to overwrite than they had.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Dulcie. “That’s a one-person drone. They can’t follow him through.”

  She was right. The Net was already flickering out, and all of the Brannicks were on this side of it. Nothing could be caught without their say-so.

  “Maybe they’re using my mother against him,” Fisher said.

  It was possible, and almost too horrible to contemplate. Pendt knew what her aunt would choose, but Fisher’s father actually used his heart.

  “I’ll go down,” Fisher said. “Whatever is going on, I’m the least likely to be hurt.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Pendt said.

  “You can’t,” Fisher said. “You are the station’s priority right now. We have to keep you safe.”

  “Fisher,” she said.

  “I will be all right,” he said. Physically, at least, he was pretty sure. He could already feel his heart starting to fracture. Whatever he found in that pod couldn’t possibly be good.

  “I’ll be watching,” she said, indicating the monitors.

  “Damn straight,” said Dulcie.

  Fisher took the lift that let him override all stops between operations and the loading dock where the drone had landed. With the lockdown, it was unlikely that anyone would stop him, but he wanted to be sure. The lift seemed to take forever, even though he knew exactly how long it took. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way for the cameras. Pendt wouldn’t be fooled for a moment, but the fact that he was trying would make them all feel a little bit better.

  At last, the doors of the lift slid open, and the loading dock spread out before him. The air was already a bit stale, typical when an airlock had cycled during a station lockdown. The drone was ready to open, but whoever was inside wasn’t coming out.

  Fisher had imagined this moment a hundred—a thousand—times. Good versions, where his parents stepped out smiling and said it was all a misunderstanding. That the Hegemony never meant to split up their family so cruelly. Bad ones, where his father led an army, his mother’s blood still staining his hands. Nothing had prepared him for the unknowing of the moment. It was agonizing, and yet he never wanted it to end.

  The pod was clearly not going to open itself. Fisher crossed to it and looked at the readings. One life sign, fading. Whoever was inside was injured, but not fatally if they were given medical care. No matter what happened, Fisher told himself, he would help someone today. Even if it came back to bite them.

  Since the airlock had already cycled, it was easy enough to open the pod’s door. There was no lock on it, no code. It was absolutely ancient, he realized, and he pressed the opening sequence. It was barely space-worthy. Maybe whoever was inside had been healthy when they left and nearly died on the journey.

  He was stalling, he knew. He had to get it over with. Pendt would already have it open if she were here. She was probably yelling at him on the viewscreen upstairs.

  Fisher finished the sequence and stood back as the door swung open. A rush of oxygen came out, even more stale than the stuff Fisher was breathing, and a body slumped onto the floor of the bay.

  Even as he moved forward, Fisher’s brain insisted that it wasn’t possible. His eyes were deceiving him. The oxygen mix was worse than he’d thought, and he was already hallucinating.

  Ned Brannick smiled as his brother pulled him out of oblivion and into his arms. It was such an achingly familiar smile. Fisher wanted to scream. It couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t. And yet the universe wouldn’t be so cruel as to make Fisher lose him twice. Ned collapsed in Fisher’s embrace before Fisher could even think of any questions to ask. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  “Fisher.” Ned’s smile faded and he was deadly serious. “Thank goodness. I have some news.”

  24.

  BRANNICK STATION WAS STILL locked down, so there were no random bystanders around to watch while Fisher and Pendt hauled Ned to Dr. Morunt’s office in the infirmary. Pendt had appeared in the loading bay so quickly Fisher wondered if she’d broken the lift to do it, but he wasn’t about to send her away. Together, they could manage Ned, even though he was very unsteady on his feet.

  Dr. Morunt was shocked to see the three of them, of course, but immediately helped lift Ned onto the table for an examination.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ned protested.

  “You are dehydrated,” Dr. Morunt said. “And your oxygen saturation is low.”

  “Put the mask on, Ned,” Fisher said. “You can still talk.”

  Ned put the mask on. His colour was already better with the flow of air normalized, but he was still quite thin. His skin had the papery look to it that Pendt’s had when she came aboard. It wasn’t because he’d been in space; it was due to malnourishment.

  “So the Cleland was captured, then?” Pendt asked. Fisher was so grateful that she could keep a level head.

  “Yes,” Ned said. “We were covering the retreat of several other ships. Choria always volunteers for that sort of thing. It’s one of her best qualities.”

  “We heard it was destroyed with all hands,” Fisher said.

  “Oh, they destroyed it,” Ned said. “But they emptied it first. All our stores went to Hegemony soldiers, and we were taken off to prison. I think they assumed we knew things, but only Choria had any real knowledge of rebel movements, and she never broke.”

  “And you escaped?” Pendt asked.

  Dr. Morunt successfully got an IV line into Ned’s arm, and began the flow of nutrients.

  “Sort of,” Ned said. His face darkened. “We were held in a massive prison in deep space. The only way in or out is by sublight ship. But Choria learned from eavesdropping on the guards that the Hegemony had a wild Well nearby. It takes forever for ships to get there, but once they arrive at the Well, they can aim for an
y Net they like.”

  “They still need someone to turn on the Net,” Pendt said.

  “Well, yes,” Ned said. “That’s where I came in.”

  He shifted uncomfortably, trying not to pull at the needle in his arm.

  “Choria figured out that I could escape,” he said. “You know she’s a whiz with calculations. She determined exactly how I’d need to hit the Well to get here, and she knew that the Brannick Station Net would activate for me when I did. It wasn’t quite that easy. We had to get a ship for me to go in, but eventually we managed it.”

  “Well, your timing is impeccable,” Pendt said. “We just learned my family is coming back.”

  Dr. Morunt dropped the equipment he was sterilizing, and an entire tray of medical tools crashed to the floor.

  “Doctor?” Fisher asked.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I’m still a bit in shock.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Ned said. “I heard about the Harland while I was at the prison. They’ve been on the Hegemony’s payroll the whole time. Pendt, this might be hard to hear, but they traffic in human beings.”

  “We know,” Pendt said. “We figured it out on our end too.”

  Ned exhaled so hard the mask shifted on his nose.

  “I’m glad you know,” he said. “But I’m sorry you had to find out.”

  “All right, we know they’re coming, and we know they’re bad news,” Fisher said. “I’m glad to have you back, but if that’s all the news, then you might have wasted the trip.”

  He was trying to keep it light, Pendt knew, to fight back the hysteria they were all feeling at seeing Ned, alive, again.

  “They know what Pendt can do,” Ned said. “They have a Hegemonic order annulling the marriage, and they are going to take her. The Hegemony is going to give them enough money that they’ll be able to settle on a planet if they want to, and Pendt will belong to the Stavengers.”

  Fisher felt his legs buckle, and suddenly he was sitting on the floor. Pendt was pale, but kept her feet.