Horizon Storms (31 page)

space. All thirty people inside died of sudden explosive decompression. Almost half of the bodies were lost.”

“I’m . . . sorry, Zhett.”

“I was only eight, but I still remember the funeral. We wrapped each of the victims in a long embroidered shroud marked with our clan symbols.

Then my father launched them up out of the ecliptic with enough velocity to escape the system’s pull. That way they’d drift forever, true Roamers carried along by the vagaries of gravity, following their own Guiding Stars.”

“Does that . . . sort of accident happen often to you people?”

She concentrated on flying again, not looking at him, though he could see a sparkle of tears in her large eyes. “Roamers live and work in high-risk environments. Everybody knows that. Accidents come with the territory.

We just try not to let the same disaster happen more than once.” He saw her swallow convulsively. “In fact, the dome breach accident that killed my mother and brother led to a remarkable innovation. We would have sold the idea to the Big Goose, if we hadn’t thought you’d cheat us.”

Fitzpatrick didn’t rise to the bait. “What was your solution?”

“We disperse thready aerogel clouds in the upper layers inside the colony hemisphere. That way if a breach happens, the squishy aerogel clutter is sucked to the gap first. They whoosh over, seal together, and clog the hole. Exposed to vacuum, the material sets and seals the breach like platelets in your blood forming a scab over a wound.”

Fitzpatrick recalled Tasia Tamblyn, another Roamer, and her unorthodox solution of creating artificial rafts out of tactical armor foam to hold refugees on Boone’s Crossing. “That’s quite an idea.”

“You learn to be resourceful when you don’t get everything on a silver platter,” Zhett said. “Like some people I know.”

Fitzpatrick felt he had to defend himself, at least a little. “Yeah, it was so easy growing up with a famous, snooty name. Once in a while I wished I could just have a normal, unremarkable life.”

“We know your parents were ambassadors,” Zhett said. “And your grandmother was Chairman Maureen Fitzpatrick, Dame Battleaxe herself.”

Fitzpatrick nearly choked with unexpected laughter. “That’s a good name for her.” He pictured his stern grandmother, remembered the times he had spent with her as a child. Maureen was distinguished-looking, with porcelain features and an icy beauty—few people’s conception of an old 186

battleaxe—but he realized the appellation was completely accurate. “And I knew her only after she’d retired and supposedly mellowed. I would not have wanted to cross her when she was the Hansa Chairman.”

As Zhett flew the grappler pod around the battlefield wreckage, Fitzpatrick noticed other pods and small tugbikes carrying Roamer salvage experts who dismantled the ships, stripping away valuable materials.

Electronic systems, sleeper modules, food and air supplies, even scrap metal. He assumed everything was hauled over to the spacedocks and ship-assembly grids, where they would be reinstalled in Roamer constructions.

“So who was your grandfather? How did he put up with her?” Zhett asked.

Fitzpatrick shrugged, watching a work crew remove a large Juggernaut hull segment that had been blackened by hydrogue lightning. He turned away, not wanting to look at the damage.

“Oh, I never even met him. When their marriage ended in a bitter di-vorce, good old Dame Battleaxe used her political clout to crush the poor man. She made him bankrupt, destitute, and he never set foot in the halls of power again. I always wondered what was so bad about the guy.” Self-consciously, he ran a hand through his loose, dark hair. Already, it was growing longer than he’d ever been allowed to keep it in the EDF. “I knew my grandmother well enough not to believe her ‘Maureen-centric’ view of history.”

Zhett flew past a mangled Remora, its cockpit torn open as if some rabid dog had ripped it to shreds. Parts of an engine drifted about, and Fitzpatrick was sure he caught a glimpse of a deflated spacesuit, all that remained of the dead pilot. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Could we, um . . .

look someplace else?”

Without teasing him, she flew away from the salvage operations, following the long, sweeping ring. Below, Osquivel’s clouds seemed smooth and peaceful, giving no hint that monsters hid deep within.

“By virtue of being Fitzpatricks, my parents were made ambassadors to a succession of Hansa colony worlds. They transferred from place to place as they got bored with each location. But I lived with private tutors or in fancy boarding schools. My fellow blueblood students and I had regular assignments to go slumming—you know, work preordained charity missions

and keep in touch with all the little people we were supposed to remember.”

“Like Roamers, you mean?” Zhett asked with a defensive undertone.

“Oh, no! My grandmother would have been horrified if she had ever caught me with a Roamer. I participated in environmental cleanups, visited down-and-out families. I handed out clothes or soup, assisted in restoring polluted marshlands or decaying seaside communities. I could see the worth of the work, but I hated it each time, and my family’s reasons for making me do it were no more altruistic than mine.”

“It was helping other people, Fitzie. Couldn’t you appreciate that for its own sake? Didn’t it make you feel good?”

“I never managed to see it that way . . . at least not at the time. What I learned was how to smile whenever a camera was pointed toward me, because if I made a media blunder I would catch hell from my grandmother.”

Zhett shook her head, flying them onward. “Ah, Patrick Fitzpatrick the Third, your Guiding Star is no brighter than a strap-on fingerlight.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Some Roamer religious nonsense?”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be accusing other people of nonsense. Didn’t you ever have any close friends, any pets?”

“Not really. It wasn’t part of the program. My life was completely mapped out for me, and that didn’t leave much room for spontaneity.”

Now Zhett gave him a warm smile. “Aha! And that must have hampered your understanding of how people interact. That’s why a cooperative life among the Roamers is such a shock to you. It’s an alien environment. Your life on Earth was always so sheltered and so set. You never had to strive for anything. That’s why you can’t take pride in anybody else’s accomplishments.”

He scowled and turned away. “There’s the familiar Zhett Kellum again.

I was beginning to worry, since it must have been fifteen minutes since the last time you criticized me.”

“Touché,” she said, then, “I’m sorry.”

He sat in silence, thinking. “It never occurred to me that other people—like you Roamers—might live differently because you want to. That you might actually be happy with what you have. I assumed your lower-class living was the result of your own failures rather than . . . conscious choice. Always I divided everyone into two camps: the rich and the needy.

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I was glad to be among the rich, and convinced that the needy wanted everything I had.”

“Excuse me, Fitzie, but I wouldn’t trade lives with you for all the credits in the Hansa corporate bank accounts.” Refusing to meet his gaze, Zhett reached over to touch his arm with a glimmer of compassion. When she realized what she was doing, she snatched her hand away as if the contact with him might burn her fingers. “Maybe you just need a fresh start to do something useful instead of being a spoiled rich kid.”

She piloted the grappler pod back into the docking bay of the converted asteroid’s vehicle pool. As they climbed out and stretched their legs, Fitzpatrick turned to see barrel-chested Del Kellum emerging from the hatch that led to the administrative offices. “There you are, my sweet!” He looked askance at Fitzpatrick. “I hope you had a good time—and that he didn’t try anything.”

“You worry too much, Dad. I had him wrapped around my little finger.” Fitzpatrick gave her an affronted look.

“I’ve brought news from Rendezvous. The Roamers decided unanimously to cut off ekti shipments to the Big Goose. We’ve shut down all trade whatsoever.”

“No more ekti shipments?” Fitzpatrick cried. “We need that fuel! While you Roamers hide, the EDF is fighting this war against the drogues, protecting your little jackrabbit asses.”

“Protecting us?” Kellum let out a bitter laugh. “By damn, you Eddies have a strange way of showing it, by raiding and destroying Roamer cargo ships. We recently recovered the wreckage of one flown by a good friend of mine, Raven Kamarov. Emptied of its ekti cargo and then blasted to pieces by EDF jazers. Don’t go giving me any bullshit about you boys ‘pro-tecting’ us.”

Zhett turned to him. “The Big Goose can’t make any excuses for what they’ve done, Fitzie. If they want their ekti back, they have to confess to their crimes, bring the perpetrators to justice, and renounce any such activities in the future. Simple enough.”

Fitzpatrick felt a hot lump in the pit of his stomach, his knees grew weak, and he was sure all the color had drained from his face. He himself was responsible for that particular mess. He had ordered the blast that de-

stroyed Kamarov’s unarmed ship. He didn’t dare speak up and admit his guilt, though it must have been sickeningly obvious on his face.

Zhett noticed his oddly reticent behavior as she led him back to the chambers where the other EDF prisoners were held. Despite his resentment for their situation, Fitzpatrick couldn’t reveal what he had done, not simply for fear of the Roamer reprisals, but because a small, nagging part of him didn’t want Zhett Kellum to think any less of him. . . .

525ORLI COVITZ

Rheindic Co was vastly different from cloudy, damp Dremen, but this was only a stopping place, a waypoint where eager colonists waited to go through the transportal to their new homes.

Orli was used to gray gloom and cold drizzle; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt warm sunlight on her bare arms and face. To her dismay she got ferociously sunburned for the first time in her life. On Dremen, she’d never had to worry about it, but now a tingling redness covered every square centimeter of her arms and cheeks and neck.

Her father went among the other colonists, asking if anyone had brought lotions or sun creams. Only a few had, and he couldn’t afford the price they were asking. Fortunately, his persistence paid off, and he found supplies in the Hansa base camp. He returned slathered with ointment, which he promptly applied to his daughter as well.

She kept blinking her eyes against the dazzle of sunlight reflecting off the rocky canyons and mountains. Everything looked so different. When Jan saw how his daughter stared at the alien landscape, he tousled her short hair. “Don’t worry, girl. Our new colony home will be more attractive than this, warm and green, a place to settle down and take it easy for a change.”

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Orli brightened, though she didn’t mind the desert scenery at all.

“Have they told you where we’re going? Do you know the name of our planet?”

“It’s just the luck of the draw, I think. We’ll find out when they call our number. They’re afraid people would start arguing over planets, trading assignments and messing up the Hansa’s record-keeping.”

Orli sat down in the dirt outside their tent. “You’d think they’d at least give us a bit of background, so we could plan.”

“Don’t worry. They’ve scouted these worlds, and they wouldn’t send us to a place unless we could survive just fine there.”

The colorful tents looked like jewel-toned mushrooms that had sprung up on the canyon floor. To prepare for the influx of new personnel, EDF

engineering squads had cleared an expanse of the desert, using high-energy beams to melt the sand and dirt into a level glassy plain where shuttles could easily land and take off. Every day, new ships full of supplies or eager colonists dropped down into the bright sunlight. Rheindic Co had been an abandoned place not long before; now it was a boomtown.

Her father opened two packages of rations he’d retrieved from the distribution point. They ate a chalky fruit-flavored pudding that was supposedly full of protein and vitamins. Orli saw him frown at the taste, but she elbowed him in the ribs. “Anything’s better than mushroom stew, isn’t it, Dad?”

“That’s looking on the bright side.” Jan extended the awning from their tent, propping it up with the poles so they could sit in the shade. As the dusk painted the sky with colors and the temperature dropped, Orli went into the tent and rummaged through their possessions to retrieve her synthesizer strips. She played music quietly, tunes of her own devising. It soothed her, and her father tried to hum along, though he’d never heard these particular melodies before.

Jan sat looking bored but smiling. “Oh, I hate this waiting. Maybe tomorrow they’ll let me help out somewhere in the main complex.” He glanced over at her, musing. “Say, why don’t you go make friends with some of the other children? I’ve already seen a dozen or so your age.”

She had thought about it herself, but decided against the pointless exercise. “I’ll wait till we get to our colony, Dad. Then I can establish a long-term friendship.”

“Friends are friends, girl. One for a day is better than no friend at all.”

Orli had never had many playmates, since she needed to spend so much time just keeping her father from doing too many ill-advised things.

She liked telling stories and imagining games, but work in the mushroom fields had taken up her time on Dremen. Maybe on the new colony she would find someone who shared her interest in music. “I’ll try when we get where we’re going, Dad. I promise.”

For the next few days Jan volunteered his services at the supply-distribution center. Most evenings he wandered among the tents and struck up conversations, describing Dremen and asking other people about the planets they were leaving, while Orli practiced on her synthesizer strips.