Tin Star (15 page)

I was nervous, so I’d come late and missed the earlier parts of the festival. I approached one side of the hocht ring. Caleb and the other Humans were on the other side. Reza was leaning in close, presumably giving Caleb advice on how to beat me. I wished I wasn’t alone in my corner. I wished I had someone to hold a towel for me. Heckleck would have done that for me. I wished he was here to tell me what to do—to tell me how to see the win in this. I was afraid of fists coming at me. I looked around in the stands for a friendly face and was surprised when I saw that Tournour was sitting in the back row. He was with a female Loor, and they were sharing a twisted germy.

He was with her, but unlike her, whose eyes and antennae were focused on him, his were focused on me. When he saw me looking back at him, hoping for a sign of encouragement, he moved in closer to the female.

Then something pulled at my hand. It was the Nurlok’s child. She was there holding a bottle of water and a piece of fruit. She had a towel in her hand.

“Thado sent this over,” she said. Her voice was tiny and nervous. I took the fruit that she held out to me. It was full of sweetness. I had not been able to stomach any food this morning, and so it felt good to have something to fill me. I knew I would need sustenance to get through the hocht. My eyes searched until I found Thado, and I held up the pit of the fruit in thanks. He nodded back to me. It was a comfort to know that Thado and Tournour were here for me, even if they were not in the ring with me.

I took the bottle of water and drank a gulp down. It was good water, not recycled swill, but premium kind, imported. It was a little more sulfur tasting than I liked, but still, it was a treat and I was grateful. The little Nurlok flipped open a stool and encouraged me to sit. Then she went buzzing about, shooing people away as best she could to give me enough room to think.

I thought about the fight. I had learned a few things about fighting during my time on the station. There had been a few scrapes. I’d learned how to hiss like a Nurlok. I’d learned the spot that makes a Loor pass out. I’d learned how to crouch and bite like a Hort. But I did not know how to use my fists. They frightened me. They were capable of harm that I did not want to inflict on anyone else.

Caleb got into the ring. He was stretching. His bones looked even more fragile than I had remembered. He skin was covered with freckles.

I did not want to fight him. I considered throwing in the towel. I could forfeit and then we could meet without the crowd. They could barter with me as though they were a client. I could only imagine that this was about the travel passes. It was a measure of desperation. Perhaps they thought they’d be able to scare them out of me.

“Go, go,” the little Nurlok said.

I got into the ring. I crouched on the floor. I breathed in deeply. I listened to the crowd. They were getting louder. Some were chanting my name. I stood up. I stared at my opponent. I stood perfectly still while he stretched. Caleb began to slyly catch my eye. He would lean his arm over his leg and then he would glance at me. Every stretch, he glanced and held my eyes a little longer. Where first I saw a determination in him, now I saw hesitation.

Neither of us wanted to be here.

That gave me hope.

I remembered the fights I’d gotten into as a child. They were few. There was hair pulling with my friend over a doll we both wanted. There was a slap and a push I gave to my sister, Bitty, when we were fighting. There was a kick to the groin I’d given a boy at school who had tried to paw me at a party. Then I turned my thoughts to the fights I’d witnessed. My father, drunk over the holidays, fists in front of him, always jabbing at my equally drunk uncle, face covered with his arms but his stomach getting pummeled. I remembered the bully from school, Mika, fighting the scrawny Stan: Mika moving quick from side to side while Stan crouched low, always hitting Mika’s spleen. And of course Brother Blue, standing over me and kicking in my ribs.

I assumed a position, crouched low with fists in front of my face. I didn’t know if it was a position of power or weakness, but I was determined that I would not go down. Caleb had gone to a military academy, and despite his skinniness, he had likely learned to fight. He had been trained.

Don’t think. Just do
, I thought.
Just keep standing
.

The bell rang. The hocht began. We moved toward each other and began to circle. I kept up my stare. He swung. I dodged. He swung again, I dodged. I saw an open spot on his face, and I punched. My knuckles connected with his chin. It was a soft punch. It did no harm. He sprung back, more surprised than hurt. I crouched again, and he swung over my head. I hissed at him.

He pushed me.

His hands landed just above my breasts. He pushed me again. I put my arms up to him. Both of our hands were on each other’s chests. He pulled me in, crooking my neck in his elbow.

I had never been this close to a man. He was sweating. Our skin stuck together. It made a noise when we pulled apart and came back together. His mouth was near my ear, his breath hot. He had some stubble on his cheek. His skin was warm. His smell filled me. He pulled me in tighter, and I tried to slide out of his grip. I wanted to both pull away and also pull in closer but my eyes kept going over to Reza, who was watching from the side. I stumbled backward, wishing that I was doing this dance with him (although if I were, he would have already beaten me). Caleb came at me and I stamped on his foot and brought my knee up to his groin. He yelped and let go. The crowd cheered. We went to our corners. The Nurlok girl gave me some more water. I watched as Caleb toweled down. Reza and Els were whispering in his ear and watching me. Reza kept shaking his head from side to side.

Reza glanced at me in my corner and gave me a weak smile. He was with me even though he was over there. That was a comfort.

In a hocht there are no rules, no time outs, no referee. Every fight was up to the two combatants. And between Caleb and I there seemed to be an agreement. This was a fight, not a beating and that made a difference to me. I did not cower. We came together and fell apart four times, each of us landing punches that hurt the other; each falling toward the other, almost waltzing and then pushing each other away with a flurry of painful blows.

The fifth time we came together I knew one thing; I could not keep it up for much longer. I was weakening. And though I could see that he was tired, Caleb was not. I started toward him. I put up my hands. They were bloody and they hurt. My eye was swollen. My lip was cracked. My breath was labored. He pushed me. I stumbled back. He pushed me again. I swung and stumbled toward him. His arms were around me, holding me up.

And then he yelled in my ear.

“Come on,” he said. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

That jarred me awake and to action. I snapped my eyes open as he pushed me off of him. We circled each other again. He nodded at me. And then he looked down at his own body. My eyes were blurred by sweat that fell in my eyes. He yelled again. And then I noticed. He was doing most of the moves, but he was showing me where there was an empty space to punch him.

My hand struck. He doubled over. He showed me his jaw. I hit him. He circled me exposing his spleen. I jabbed. I kicked him. He fell to the floor, doubled over in pain. I kicked him. I kicked him. I kicked him again.

“Enough!” yelled Reza. He threw a towel into the ring. The crowd erupted in cheers and began to shout my name. The hocht was over. I had won.

The little Nurlok came over to me wrapping me in a large piece of fabric. I was shaking. Every part of my body hurt. But I also felt alive in a way that I had not felt in many years. I looked over my shoulder at Caleb. It was a powerful feeling to defend one’s honor, and I had done it. He was leaning on Reza. They both looked at me sympathetically. It was Els who was the most unhappy, yelling at the both of them as they moved away.

The little Nurlok nudged me toward the crowd. People were pressing in on me. Some were shouting, angry that I’d won. I had been the underdog. But some were joyous, because they had won money. The Nurlok tried to clear a path but was too small to be effective. And then Tournour was there. He was in front of the crowd, parting it for me. He was alone; the Loor female he had been with was nowhere to be seen. He put his hand under my elbow and helped to keep me steady.

“Go to the med bay,” Tournour said. “You need stitching up. He got you good.”

“I should have lost,” I confided to Tournour. “He let me win.”

“I know,” Tournour said. “But I made a lot of money betting on you, so I’m glad he did.”

Suddenly I was at the lift and Tournour blocked the way so that I could go up alone. I leaned my head against the cool metal of the elevator and made my way to the med bay.

The doctor brought me over to a bed and gave me a shot. “Tsk, tsk,” she said. “You Humans leak so much when your skin is broken.”

I would have to rest for several days.

All the parts on my body that hurt began to numb. But not my heart. That was still beating strong.

21

The announcement came at Sixteenth Chime. The station would be passing through a meteor shower, the remnants of a comet that no one had seen for centuries. The angle at which it approached meant that we would be taking a fair brunt of it.

Along with everyone else, I headed immediately to my designated shelter. When I got there I checked in, so that my whereabouts were accounted for, but once accounted for, instead of pushing through the door with the crowd, I moved away.

There was a reason to go to a shelter. It meant life in case of disaster. If one of the meteors punched through the hull, the station could get decompressed and if you were caught outside of the shelter, you could die.

But there was no better time to get loose annoly wire than during a lockdown. The probing sensors opened to monitor even the most microscopic fissures, foreign elements, and radiation levels. The wires from the previous opening fall away, exposing the new wires. The dropped wires were still good and worth something for their scarcity. Annoly wires were a good thing to barter with, they were needed for many tiny repairs, but not easily obtainable in small quantities. Technically the loose wires belonged to the station, but the ones that fell were considered fair game to my mind. They were usually just swept up by the cleaning bots as garbage during the lockdowns, which is why no one ever managed to get any. By the time everyone emerged from the shelters, the wires were long gone.

It wasn’t stealing. I didn’t steal. If I collected them, I would have something that was hard to get and more valuable than them being swept up to be melted. If I was going to commit to getting off the station sooner than later, I would have to take risks.

The danger, of course, was that being caught outside of the shelter was against the law and if the meteorite or radiation got through, potentially dangerous. Heckleck had always said that it was lucrative but not worth the possible high price. A fool’s harvest, perhaps. But things had changed, and I needed to have every advantage.

It was spookier to be wandering around the quiet of the station now than it was when when the Imperium had first come. Perhaps it was because then, there were still aliens moving about their days. But now, the halls were empty in a way that signaled the immediate danger. I could see some of Tournour’s unit checking doors and quarters, making sure that everyone had evacuated. They were wearing full space gear as a precaution against the elements that might rip through the surface at any moment. Seeing them covered head to toe was unnerving. I shrank into a nook to avoid their sweep. When they passed, and the lights of the station powered down, I knew that I was alone, and they had likely gone into a shelter themselves. It was too late to beat on a door of a shelter to let me in—I’d made my choice, I had to hope that I’d live through it.

The chimes stopped, but a pulsing emergency light kept a steady beat. I moved to the first sensor probe, and there, as I had expected, were some wires on the floor. I swept them up, careful not to prick my skin, and put them in my bag.

I followed this course, staying just ahead of the cleaning bots. My haul was pretty good, and I tried not to get too confident about what the wires could do for me.

After the fifth probe that I hit, I began to forget about the pulsing light and began to enjoy the silence. I felt like the last woman in the universe. It was then that I heard it. A noise.

I froze. I could hear the shower. It started small and then increased in intensity. The meteorites slapped then evaporated against the hull like a heavy hail storm. My fear was palpable. I wondered if I would hear if one pierced the exterior, or if I would just expire. But nothing changed, and soon I became used to the gentle steady hail of meteorites. I even enjoyed the rhythm of them.

My guard was completely down, so that when I turned a corner, I was unprepared for what I saw.

At first I thought it was a ghost. I could not process that I wasn’t alone. But then, when my brain was able to make sense of what I was seeing, I saw that it was Caleb. He was near a sensor, but he was not interested in the wires. He was helping himself to some electronics from a storefront that had been left open and unattended when the owner had evacuated. I froze in place, stupidly thinking that he would finish what he was doing and then go in the other direction, not noticing me. But when he turned to move he smashed right into me.

He let out a yell. My bag fell to the ground, wires fell everywhere, mixing with some of the parts he’d had in his hands.

“What are you doing here?” he yelled. “You scared me half to death.”

His voice sounded unnaturally loud against the now lessening noise of the meteorites against the hull.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I whispered.

“It’s dangerous to not be in a shelter,” he said as he kneeled down next to me. I felt strange being close to him again after having just fought him in the hocht.

“You’re not invulnerable to the dangers of space either,” I said.