Stone in the Sky (3 page)

What had I hoped when I sent Caleb and Reza away? That somehow Reza would spark a revolution to form a united Earth? Unfortunately, until recently Earth was still mired in infighting, with the power tipping back and forth. Now, the rebellion—made up of those who had wanted to remain isolationist—had been quelled and the Outer Rim remained eerily quiet. Except for the news of Pirates.

If Caleb were still alive, would he have found a group of aliens willing to press in from the Outer Rim and help Earth overthrow the Imperium and its tyranny over species and worlds?

I had done it all wrong. I had stumbled in my mission to kill Brother Blue. I had been cowardly, and I played dead once again. I had used my precious travel passes on what was likely little more than frozen corpses by now.

I was not as clever as I'd thought.

I shook off the dark thoughts and familiar feelings of failure and hopelessness. There was work to be done. There was a life to be lived. I was young, and if my old mentor had taught me anything, it was that time had a way of making the right moments for action travel toward you. In the long game, long was short and short was long. Patience was the key.

There was nothing I could do about the past. I shut off any part of me that missed Reza or Caleb and focused on the beats of my moment-to-moment survival. There was still a war going on, and I was still the way most aliens got their necessities. That was worth something. That was what I could do instead of dwell on the regret of what had not been done.

“Reports on station docks,” I commanded.

Trevor switched to listing the ships that were docked at the station and the ships that were leaving or scheduled to arrive. Only two. Every ship carried water. All life needed water. At least those two ships would have water that I could trade for. I listened to any hint of the identity of the crashed ship, but there was no mention of it, as though it was not large enough to merit a mention. That was interesting unto itself.

Heckleck had always reminded me,
“There are volumes of information in silence.”

“Music,” I commanded Trevor.

He began to play a soft Hort music, full of bells.

I patted Trevor on the head. His painted-on face did not express anything, but it made me feel connected to the robot. This was something that we all did, not just Humans, I'd noticed. We endowed inanimate objects with personalities. It was a universal thing. Aliens had pets, dolls, and nicknames for computers. I loved that we all had something in common. It was what I looked for. If an alien was too alien, I could always start there, with the things we anthropomorphized.

When I was ready to leave, Trevor shut down the music and rolled along behind me. Trevor was not my servant. He was more like a pet.

If I were still on Earth, he might have been a dog.

 

4

Even though the station kept a twenty-six-hour day and there was no day or night per se, there was a natural rhythm to the hours we all kept. The Tin Star Café was either open or closed, but mostly, with the help of a young Nurlok named Kelmao, it was open.

Most aliens made do with the various protein paks for basic sustenance, but when it came to indulgences, a sweet, salt, or water was the only true piece of home. At the Tin Star Café, the aliens came in and drank their water, ate their sweets, got their salts, and, of course, they talked. It was a few tables, a bar where my intergalactic sweets, salts, and bottled water were on display. On occasion, I'd serve real food, which was hard to come by on a space station.

Stretched high along the entire back of the room was a window. Through it I could see a glimpse of Quint, and, of course, I could also see the stars.

On the sill I had placed my alin plants. From their pots, long tendrils of the infrequent yellow bloom and green leaves cascaded down behind a protected plate of glass. I didn't want anyone touching my plants. Alin, even from poor-producing plants such as mine, was hard to grow in the galaxy. It had vast medicinal properties that made it worth stealing. The plants bloomed when they could, which was almost never. I had three plants now, two were cuttings from my first plant, which had kept me alive when I first arrived on this space station.

Trevor rolled to the corner and began playing some contemporary Loor music.

Too many low tones,
I thought. Without antennae I couldn't appreciate the full beauty of the piece, but others could appreciate it. Soon enough the style of music would change.

There was only one kind of music I didn't care for anymore.

Human music.

It reminded me too much of what I had lost.

In my place, I was proud that those species who traditionally did not get along—gutter rats, ambassadors, pirates, and the rare travelers—sat next to each other and played simple parlor games: sticks and stones, zero ones, and poppop bon. If they poisoned or betrayed each other, it didn't occur at the Tin Star Café. Instead, it happened at my competitor, Kitsch Rutsok's. I think Kitsch was proud that his place had such a rough reputation.

Let him keep it,
I thought. As long as I stuck to treats and specialties and not the things that he dealt in—imbibing, gambling, and other perverted comforts—he mostly left me alone.

The castaway on Quint was the only thing that anybody could talk about. Quint had once been a planet full of ores used for various technologies. The ores were mined by aliens with robots like Trevor to cut the rocks and earth. No one had been on the planet for two hundred years. There was no reason to go. There was nothing there.

“Any news?” I asked a Per whom I knew was from the Ministry of Travel. It had a drink in each of its four hands.

“Not on any of the manifests. It's a small ship.”

That made me feel better as it eliminated an Imperium ship from the possibilities. The stranger was someone wanting to fly under the radar, which was not uncommon to visitors on the Yertina Feray. We were far enough away from the central core systems and unimportant enough these days to be a place to come to and disappear from the rest of the universe.

As the crowd ebbed and flowed, rumors abounded as to who it was.

Rebel. Slavers. Traders. But no one knew.

The poor soul had obviously gotten caught in the solar flare and had its ship's electrics fried. With the station on safety protocol, an SOS would have gone unheeded. Not being able to dock, there was only one place to go.

Quint.

Throughout the day my eyes kept unconsciously drifting up to the window so I could see outside. It offered no great view like the arboretum, but it was my window, and so its view pleased me.

Who was down there?
I wondered.
Were they still alive?

“You won't be able to see them,” Tournour said, interrupting my daydreaming.

I loved the sound of his voice. There was a tone that Loors had that Humans could barely hear, but I imagined that was what made his voice sound so warm to my ears.

I hadn't seen him since we'd all been on lockdown. His antennae moved slowly from side to side, indicating that he was concerned about something, but not too worried. In the past year, I had come to know and depend on him in a way that I had never done with anyone before. He was the only thing I had left. Somehow, we fit together, the two of us, cast out from our homes and secretly trying to fight the Imperium.

Even if it felt like most days I had nothing, I still had something.

One
thing.

“I was looking for the color blue,” I said.

“It's out there,” he said. “But you should leave that color be.”

He was trying to steer my heart away from whom it hated most.

Tournour ordered a bottle of Loor water and sat down, signaling to the other aliens there that all illegal transactions should be put on hold. Aliens either left my place and went to Kitsch Rutsok's, or settled down to more casual social interactions. Tournour was of the law.

He placed his currency chit on the counter, which I pushed back to him. It was a game we played. Whatever he ordered, it was always on the house.

“He ruined everything in my life. He abandoned me on this space station and tried to kill me,” I said.

“Twice,”
he reminded me and took a long swallow of water. He put the bottle down and smiled. Loors, despite their antennae, triangle patch of colored skin, and lack of eyebrows, were more similar to Humans than most aliens in their expressions. With a Loor, a smile meant a smile.

I smiled back.

“You don't sound glad that Brother Blue kept his word and made sure that we're forgotten,” he said.

“When you say it like that, you make it sound like I should be thankful for something that man did. I will never be thankful for anything that he does.”

“He kept his word,” he said. “That's more than most.”

I started to get agitated. Most days it was something that I pushed to the bottom of my thoughts. It was either that or let the powerlessness I felt about Brother Blue drive me mad. Tournour shifted, and I could see him holding himself back from trying to calm me down. It was a strange thing about Loor biology that when they were mated to someone, they would release a scent when their partner was in danger or upset. It was a way of bonding. Sometimes it made me feel uncomfortable to have the responsibility of his heart, as much as I needed his care.

“I just expected…” I continued.

“What?” Tournour took my hand. He knew the things I was frustrated with. Being here. Being the lone Human. Feeling powerless. Thought of as dead. Being worldless. He was a careful observer of everything but also, of all things, me. He also knew that I was from a species that needed to state and restate the obvious all of the time. He'd learned, through my careful instruction, that sometimes I just needed to vent. That it didn't mean I was angry or in danger. It was a necessary Human emotional release. I let my breath out in a big sigh and changed the subject.

“What's the news on the castaway?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” Tournour said. “We don't know if the alien is alive or dead. There is a distress beacon on Quint, so we know where it is, but it's automatic. We've had no word from an actual alien, and we don't have the resources to send someone down there.”

“So if they are alive, they will just live there on Quint? Alone and abandoned?”

“Assuming it has the nanites to help its lungs with the atmosphere. And assuming its kind can.”

Not every species benefitted from nanites. They only regulated the gases of most species so that complicated masks or suits were not required on some stations, ships, and certain planets. Of course, it all depended on your physiology. Many aliens had nanites and still had to wear masks. Nanites were still useful for language if not breathing for those species.

Tournour knew that I didn't like to think of things being left behind and forgotten.

“Eventually someone will go down there to get them, alive or dead,” Tournour said softly. “It's just not a priority. I don't want to make a request to the Imperium because it would put us on their radar.”

The rules of rescue meant that a ship that could assist in an SOS could salvage any and all parts and ware from the wreck in exchange for safely returning the survivors, if any, over to the closest habitable planet or space station to be questioned, treated, and then sent on their way.

“Seems like a hard lot,” I said. It was bad enough having been abandoned on the Yertina Feray as the only Human these past three years, but to be the only being on an entire planet. That could break even the strongest soul.

“They'll be found soon,” Tournour said. “No one will leave scrap anywhere for long. It's too valuable. Every time a ship comes to dock at the Yertina Feray they are asked if they have the capability to retrieve and rescue the crashed ship.”

The music changed again. A Nurlok lullaby. Some Nurloks at a corner table began to sing along, and I could not help but feel soothed.

I lifted my wrist and shook the gold bracelet with the charm of Earth that I had taken off of Els's dead body a year ago. Tournour put his hand on it and played with the charm as I kept talking about my hate for Brother Blue. He cocked his head, and it made me think he loved the sound of my voice as much as I loved his.

I looked at his dark eyes, no whites in them. Sometimes looking into his alien eyes made me long for Reza's Human eyes—deep and brown. They were eyes that I could understand. Eyes that I missed.

But I could not deny that these alien eyes of Tournour's filled me in a way that was uncharted. Feeling guilty, I let go of his hand.

“I wish I could cut this hate from you. I can't understand why you hang on to it,” he said, thinking that my sudden shift in mood was because of Brother Blue, as it was so often. I didn't correct him. I didn't want to tell him how much I missed Reza sometimes. It felt like a betrayal.

“Don't Loors hate?”

“Yes,” he said. “But it doesn't consume us the way it does you Humans.”

We were so very different. It was when he couldn't understand me that I remembered he wasn't Human after all. He was alien.

“Caleb and Reza, if they are alive, are now long awake.”

“I'm sorry that we don't know what happened to them,” Tournour said. “Communication is not simple with the Imperium in control.”

That was true, but it was also true that Tournour was the one who made sure that the communications array was in disrepair and not upgraded quickly enough. He liked to keep the station quiet. That was one of the ways that he kept the citizens of the Yertina Feray safe. If no one could hear you, it's almost as though you don't exist. Ever since the Imperium had put Tournour in charge of the Yertina Feray, he kept us as quiet as possible. It was not unlikely for aliens who docked here to comment on how surprised they were that the station was still in operation.