by C. G. Hatton
He smiled then glanced away. Someone was looking at us. He gave me a nudge. “Listen, don’t go outside the walls. Stay inside the city. Don’t go anywhere near the workshops at the ore processing plant. You hear me? I know what you’re like. Stay safe, okay?” And he went back to his work.
Thing is, Benjie did know exactly what I was like. Saying that just made me want to go take a look. And I knew he’d know that. Something was going on and it almost felt like he wanted me to go find out.
I grinned. Benjie was cool. I knew he’d still be watching out for us.
They left me standing there for another half hour. It was weird being in there, watching. Like I was intruding on another world.
Dayton was giving out orders. He wasn’t the biggest guy in the room but you could tell he was in charge. He had a way of standing, big shoulders, shaved head, black ink tattoos tracing elaborate designs around his skull, and a tense presence about him that made him stand out even if you didn’t know who he was. He’d been running the resistance on Kheris as long as I could remember. Long before that probably. The promise was that we could chase the Imperial bastards off our land and reclaim the riches that should have been ours. Most of the kids bought into it. I just wanted the bombings and rocket attacks to end.
Dayton banged his fist on the table. The guys he was instructing didn’t like what he was saying but Dayton shouted the loudest and they sloped out, glaring at me as they pushed past to leave. I sidestepped neatly and watched as he talked quietly to some of the others, a muscle ticking in the side of his jaw as if he was more pissed off than usual, and eventually he looked up at me, squinting.
He raised a finger, beckoning. “Come here, kid.”
He pulled out a chair and gestured me to sit. He sat on the edge of the table, leaning forward. He looked more tired than angry. He smiled at me. “When was the last time you kids had anything to eat?”
I shrugged. I’d just eaten a bag of chips.
“They’ve changed the codes,” he said. “Can you get in there and get us the new ones?”
I nodded.
He stood and patted me on the back as he walked away. “Good. You want food? Bring those codes back here, kid, and you earn a week’s worth.”
Maisie was waiting outside, sitting on a wall opposite the safe house, the rising sun glinting off a couple of intact windows with the promise of a hot day to come. She was shielding her eyes, watching for me, and she grinned as she saw me.
She jumped down and dropped into step alongside me. “What did he want?”
“Codes.”
What else would it be? Dayton wanted me, then he wanted codes.
“You didn’t get any sleep last night,” she said. “You can’t go straight back out there.”
I didn’t stop. “We don’t have much choice.”
Dayton paid well and she knew it. She grabbed my arm. “Luka, wait.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll get you some chocolate.”
She pulled me into a hug and shoved me away just as fast.
I grinned and broke into a run. Codes were easy.
Chapter 5
The prevailing winds had brought in a dust cloud that was hanging heavy over the city as the sun rose and the heat built to its usual stifling intensity. I knew which outpost to go to from the roster I’d seen while I was inside their system in the garrison.
I perched on what was left of the schoolyard wall, dangling my legs and kicking at the rubble.
There were newbies on duty. You could tell because they were still wearing their regulation issue goggles. It took a while for the newbs to adjust to the dust and harsh light of Kheris. I’d heard them bitch about it enough. That and the gravity.
I watched the troops mill around the outpost, weapons out, twitchy as anything, close enough that I could see what was going on, far enough away that they wouldn’t tag me as a threat. I was just a bored kid, throwing stones into a bombed out building.
It didn’t take that long before an APC pulled up and Charlie got out. He talked briefly with the others then one of them climbed into the vehicle and it left. I waited for Charlie to spot me and jumped down as he waved.
Charlie being there made it easy. I walked forward. One of the newbs brought round his rifle, finger on the trigger, staring at me as I approached as if he thought I could have a bomb hidden under my grubby tee shirt.
Charlie gestured his buddy to stand down and said, “Hey,” to me.
“Hey,” I said back.
“You’ve grown. What are you now? Thirteen, fourteen?”
I shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“They bombed it.”
“The missionary one on the north side,” he said. “Aren’t you lot supposed to go there now?”
I shrugged again. I’d gone a couple of times. “They didn’t like that I knew stuff they didn’t.” And I’d got into a fight with this huge kid that was picking on the others. Put him in the hospital. They hadn’t liked that either.
Charlie looked like he was trying to stifle a grin or trying to decide whether to give me a hard time but then he just said, “You see the meteor shower last night?” He was testing me. Teasing.
I shook my head.
He smiled like he knew fine well that I would have been out after curfew and would have seen it. “C’mon inside.”
I followed him into the cool shade of their outpost. He threw me a candy bar and watched as I put it carefully into my pocket.
“What about you?” he said. “When was the last time you ate anything proper?”
I shrugged again.
Standard response.
“Sit down.” He pulled out a rickety chair and steered me into it.
I perched there, watching as he dug out a ration pack and put it in front of me. That would cost us fifty to a hundred on a good day. Just that one pack. He rummaged in it and pulled out a pouch of soup, twisting the tab to heat it.
“Don’t eat too fast,” he said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
The newb was staring at me. Charlie glanced at him. “Goulden, go make yourself useful and check on the stat reports.” He sat down opposite me. “How’s grandma?”
I took a sip of the hot soup and raised my eyes. “She’s fine.”
“What have you done to your arm?”
There was a small pocket book on the table, open, intricate code filling every line, but it was facing him not me. He flipped it shut as we sat there. It was Goulden’s name on the front, not Charlie’s. Charlie would never have been so careless.
He gestured again. “Your arm?”
I took another slow sip. “Just caught it on something. It’s fine.”
Charlie shook his head and stood. “You up for an errand?” He walked round.
I couldn’t reach for the code book and open it right in front of him but I didn’t need to. I’d seen enough.
“Sure,” I said, reaching into the rat pack instead and palming the chocolate bar.
There was a sting on my neck. Cold and sharp enough to make me flinch.
“Antibiotics,” Charlie said. “You’re welcome to the chocolate. You don’t need to steal it.” He sat down again. “Do you know the west outpost, quadrant seven?”
I nodded, mouth full of soup.
“I give you a kit bag to deliver and there’s more candy.” He looked at me seriously. Charlie was always one of the cool ones. He was the one who taught me how to play poker when I was nine. He stuck out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
It didn’t take long to deliver the bag. I took out a couple more ration packs and a med kit that were in there before I dropped it off. Charlie was just playing games, making me feel like I was earning the favours. It almost made me feel bad to steal from him but I was glad he was back.
I headed straight back down into the tunnels. Benjie had gone and Dayton wasn’t there but one of the others sat me down. They knew the drill and didn’t m
ess about with any pleasantries. A woman gave me a board and a pen, looking at me like I was a freak when I took the pen in my left hand. I switched it to my right. No one native to Kheris was left-handed. I scribbled out the lines and lines of code, switching it in my head from the upside down glyphs I’d seen in the book, recreating a perfect copy of the cipher currently in use by the occupying Imperial forces.
I was done before anyone noticed. I sat there for a while, expecting someone to come over and throw me out. When they didn’t, I reached carefully for one of the other boards stacked there and sat flicking through it. It was just some kind of manual, tedious as anything, but I’d read it all by the time anyone noticed and came over. They took it off me and said, “Go, scram, get out of here.”
That wasn’t the way it worked.
“I get paid,” I said, standing and squaring up to them.
Everyone else was ignoring me already but one guy said, “Not this time.”
“But…”
“But nothing. You want my boot up your ass? Now scram.”
I didn’t move. He grabbed my shoulder and slapped me round the back of the head hard enough to hurt then shoved me away with a, “Get lost.”
It sucked.
As I left, I palmed a couple of gizmos and a screwdriver someone had left on a table on my way out and skedaddled.
Up on the surface, I made my way to the outskirts of the city and the block we were calling home for the minute. High-pitched chatter and squeals were echoing down the street, Maisie trying to be heard, trying to be stern but laughing too much.
They were in the burned out wreck of the old crashed shuttle. It was just a shell, jammed half in, half out of the bombed out rubble of a store front, scavenged for anything useful long ago but cool as anything to play in. I ran up and stuck my head round the cockpit hatch. Maisie was wrestling with two of the little ones in the stripped-out troop section, tickling them mercilessly, both of them screaming. Spacey was sitting in the pilot’s seat, on top of the stack of old cushions, playing with the rusted out skeleton of what was left of the control panel. Spacey was one of our littlest. She had an attitude that reminded me of me at that age.
Maisie saw me and eased up, the kids tickling her in retaliation. She fended them off and grinned at me. “Can you remember when we used to play in here?”
We’d seen it crash. I used to pretend I was going to fly it out of there.
I grinned back. “When there were still switches in the panel?”
She laughed. “So what did you get?”
I gave the candy bar to Spacey and threw the chocolate to Maisie. “Couple of ration packs.”
She frowned. “From Dayton?”
“From the outpost.”
She pulled a face and turned back to the kids. “Come on, everyone, we have food. Time to go home.” She shooed them out. “What did you get from Dayton?”
“Nothing.” I helped Spacey clamber down out of the cockpit.
We watched the little ones run off towards the high-rise block we’d claimed as ours.
Maisie stood in the door, leaning against the mangled frame. “They didn’t give you anything?”
“Dayton wasn’t there. Benjie wasn’t there. Don’t worry, we’ll get paid next time.”
She didn’t look convinced. She climbed down and took the ration packs off me. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t let Calum know these are from the outpost.”
“It’s food. He’s not going to turn it down.”
She nudged me in the ribs. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
I shrugged. I didn’t care what Calum thought of me. I cared about what Maisie thought of me.
She shoved me and grinned. “Is the chocolate from them as well?”
I nodded.
She shrugged then. “I don’t care. Chocolate is chocolate.”
We chased the little ones home and ran up the stairwell, kicking aside debris, sneakers crunching on broken glass. The whole block had no windows, no heating, no power. No one gave a shit who was in there so it was perfect. It was our hideaway. Our den. Our base of operations. Even Latia didn’t know where we were. We were the runaways, the waifs and strays of the city, a steady influx of orphaned kids who couldn’t bear life in an Imperial care system that cared more about its image and funding than any children it was landed with. And the constant battles made sure there were always plenty of orphans. Latia took care of us from a distance and that suited us all fine. We made sure she had food and she made us promise that we’d go to her if we needed. It worked. No one bothered her and no one bothered us.
We lived on the top two floors. It was the best place we’d stayed in for ages. It had taken a direct hit from an artillery shell, years ago, and half the top floor had its walls missing.
Maisie headed straight up to the main room, our penthouse suite, and started busying about with the rations. Some of the kids were playing board games on the floor, some of them play fighting in a corner.
Peanut was working at the table. I stopped and emptied out my pockets. He didn’t look up. He just mumbled, “Cheers, Luka,” and carried on working, peering through a magnifier and working on some piece of kit.
Peanut was our tinkerer. He was eighteen but he was weird so Dayton and the resistance hadn’t recruited him. It was their loss. Peanut was weird but brilliant weird. He could fix just about anything. He’d gone and got an unofficial job as a maintenance techie at the space port and he lived there, but he still came back to fix stuff for us. He was the one who’d taught me how to pick an electronic lock and hack into the Imperial command system before I was ten. He’d been caught in the bombings eight years ago and had an arm that stopped in a stump just below his elbow. He had an awesome prosthetic he got from the Imperial missionary hospital but half the time he didn’t use it. He wasn’t using it that day but that didn’t stop him doing the most intricate work I’ve ever seen. Anywhere. Even in the guild.
He picked up one of the gizmos, grunted and spotted the screwdriver. “Nice,” he said and switched it with the one he’d been using.
I used to spend hours watching Peanut work. He never explained anything except to ramble at times, but he didn’t need to, I just liked watching him take stuff apart and put it back together again.
“I fixed the alternators on the bikes,” he said without looking up.
“All of them?”
He didn’t reply. He tinkered a bit more then pushed across a board. It had stats scrolling across its surface. “An IDC ship landed this morning.”
“IDC?”
“Imperial Diplomatic Corps.” He laughed. “It’s black ops. Look at it. The Empire doesn’t even have a diplomatic corps. High end stuff for Kheris. And we’ve got a courier in for repair. Real nifty. Jump capacity and everything.” He glanced up. “You wanna come take a look later?”
Working at the space port meant Peanut had an access pass. I always climbed over the fence. When I wanted to play with ships now, I tagged along and played in real ones. A diplomatic vessel meant we could scavenge the latest news from across the galaxy. That was always cool. And Peanut knew I wanted to go see a jump ship. That was the latest manual he’d scrounged for me. I grinned, said, “Sure,” watched a bit longer then left him to it and climbed out onto the open window ledge. I stared at the sky. I was tired but too hyped to chill out yet.
Maisie came out after a while. She nodded back towards the room. “We saved you something to eat.”
“You have it,” I said. I was guessing she wouldn’t have eaten much herself. “I’m fine. They gave me soup.”
She looked puzzled.
“At the outpost.”
“They like you,” she teased. She scrubbed her hand through my hair before I could stop her. “You ever wonder who your father was?”
I shrugged. I didn’t care. I knew what she was getting at. Not so much who as which one. There weren’t many blond kids with green eyes on Kheris. I stood out a mile which meant I had to work hard
er to hide.
She laughed. She knew I’d never talk about it. My mother hadn’t. Her mother hadn’t and if Latia knew, she’d never admitted it. An obvious Earth heritage wasn’t something to be proud of. Especially not in my family. Everyone knew but I was tolerated because of what had happened.
We sat quietly then she bumped my shoulder and turned her gaze up to the sky. Bright blue and we couldn’t see the stars beyond, but they were all we looked to. “Do you ever think of leaving?”
I managed not to laugh but I couldn’t help blurting out, “To go where?”
She shrugged then. “Anywhere. Not here.”
No one got to just leave Kheris. Anyone who had family to take care of them, money behind them, might move out of the city to the more remote settlements. There were supposed to be places that were nice. Places with trees and wildlife. But we never heard of anyone who got to leave the planet and go anyplace really civilised. Waifs and strays like us? We had no chance.
“One of them might take you,” she said, looking down and over towards the outpost.
I bit back the comment that sprang to mind and just said, “I don’t think so. Besides, I wouldn’t go. Who’d look after you?”
She glanced sideways at me with a smile beginning to crease her mouth.
I was lying. To her. And to myself. Hiding it by being flippant but it was all I wanted. It was all any of us wanted.
Chapter 6
She gave me a shove. “Go get some sleep.” She looked round. “The rest of you… chores.”
There were grumbles, mostly from Calum’s little crew along the lines of, how come Luka doesn’t have to do chores? It’s great being singled out as special, it really is.
“Luka gets to sleep,” she said, “because he was up all night so you lot would have food to eat.”
That was another reason why I was tolerated. I was useful. I made sure I was useful. If you’re different, why not be the best at everything to make sure you were so different, no one could say a word against you. It was a fine line and I pulled it off because I didn’t care what they thought of me.