Stone in the Sky (16 page)

Meanwhile, there were hours to fill and nothing to do. To pass the time I played simple games with Trevor when I wasn't near a window staring out at the streak of stars. My mind had weeks to meander, but I had to keep sharp.

After two weeks, I left the Nurlock ship for a Dolmav one that was heading to the Nomi system where the last coordinates I had for the
Noble Star
were. But I knew that it had likely moved on. I hoped that it had left a trail for me to follow.

“I'm sure they've been looking for you,” the Dolmav crewmember said as she helped me through the airlock.

“How do you mean?” I asked, hopeful that there was news of the
Noble Star
.

“We've got some Humans traveling with us.”

The Dolmav must have assumed that I was with them and happily brought me down to the quarters where the Humans were. I felt eager. This would be my first chance to let the Wanderers know that they should steer clear of anyone claiming to resettle them.

She banged on the door, and the quarters opened. These were not Wanderers. There were five Humans wearing Imperium uniforms in the room. I had worried about being alone while I was traveling, and now among these Humans I was in more danger than ever.

*   *   *

“Hello,” I said when they all looked up at me as I entered the quarters.

“Going out or coming back from a run?”

“Going out.”

“I'm Ashland. This is Blattberg, Cullen, and Digger,” the one who was a leader said. She was tall and blond and looked like she spent too much time in the Sunspa.

“Safti McGovern,” I lied, using the fake name that Hendala had gotten me.

“We're coming back,” Digger said. He was a redhead covered with freckles.

I nodded.

“Got about 300 between us,” Blattberg said. He squinted when he talked and had a nasally voice.

“A pretty good haul,” Cullen said. She looked like she was the smartest one in the bunch. I would have to avoid her.

“I was hoping for 500,” Ashland said sounding disappointed. “For the bonus.”

My stomach sickened as I realized that they were talking about Humans.

“No one's got 500,” Blattberg chimed in. “It's too hard to track them down on ships, they skip around so much.”

“It's not like they're going anywhere,” Digger said.

“They could be, if they listened to us and stopped just roaming around aimlessly,” Blattberg said.

“And then it's not like there are that many suitable for colonization when you do find them,” Cullen said.

I had already seen that they were taking the healthy and the young. The ones you'd build a real colony with.

“What's your best number?” Blattberg asked me.

“Fifty,” I said, trying to come up with a non-competitive number. “I've only just started.”

“Just in from Earth?”

I nodded. “Where did you send them?” I asked.

“We're a Marxuach crew. You?” Cullen asked.

“Andra,” I said, picking the colony that I thought was currently the farthest away from us. I took a side glance at Cullen to see if she was buying my lie.

“You're a bit far for Andra,” Cullen said suspiciously.

“Like I said, I'm on my way out. I was just at Bessen for some intel.”

“And then they sent you out alone?” Cullen said looking at me funny.

“I'm not alone,” I said using my bartering skills to shift focus, I pointed to Trevor. “I'm meeting up with my group in two jumps.”

“What does it do?” Ashland asked, going up to Trevor and examining it. I quietly sighed in relief that my tactic had worked.

“It's a mining robot,” I said. “I'm to give it to the colonies to help with the settlement.”

I flipped some switches on Trevor to show how it could mine and perform simple functions.

“You can see how useful these would be on a planet that you're trying to break in. Good for mining, plowing, protection, entertainment. They're going to bring them to every colony.”

“That's a good idea,” Digger said. They poked and prodded Trevor some more and somehow Digger managed to slide open a very hard to see secret side panel that exposed an orange button.

“Don't touch that,” I said, pushing his hand away from the button.

“Why?” he asked.

“It's so that an operator can blow the unit to get through an especially hard piece of bedrock or in the event of a cave in,” I said.

Digger put his hands down and backed away. I actually had no idea if that was something that Caleb had fixed, but I wagered he would have.

The other Imperium officers nodded as though that made sense.

“You're going all the way to Andra?” Ashland asked.

I nodded.

“Going to start out and work my way in,” I said.

“We're going in concentric circles,” Ashland said.

“They don't always let me stop off at a colony, though. How often do you go to Marxuach? I hear they have beautiful lakes there.”

I had no idea what kinds of lakes were on Marxuach, but I was betting that they had never set foot on a colony. I wanted some confirmation of my suspicions.

“We don't even have time to go to Marxuach. We just gather the Wanderers we can and put them on alien ships that Earth Gov has hired to transport them there.”

Hired transports. Alien collaborators.

“Different colonies, different protocols I suppose.”

They nodded.

“Where you from back home?” one of them asked.

“Southwestern United States,” I said.

They all chimed in with their home region. I noticed that when each person said their home, their eyes lit up. That's what having a home did to you. It lit you up.

I'd earned their trust, but I didn't want to talk about Earth. I was going to be caught if I talked too much. They would know I hadn't been there for years if I spoke about it.

“I'm very tired,” I said. “Space lag.” They all nodded in understanding, and I said my goodnights and then zipped myself into my sleep pod. The Imperium Humans stayed up for many hours, and unable to sleep from fear, I listened to them as they played cards and babbled about their missions.

They reminded me of Reza, Caleb, and Els when I had first met them. Young excited cadets making their way out into space. It made me sad that they had no idea that they were being betrayed. I envied them their innocence.

They laughed at how dumb they thought the Wanderers were.

“One fought me tooth and nail! Don't they know that we're taking them to a better life?”

“I hear that all that space travel makes you stupid.”

“It makes
you
stupid.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“Seriously, those Wanderers should be thankful that we're out here rounding them up and giving them a home.”

“They've been away from planet life so long that they've got some strange ideas about it.”

“Did you hear that there was a group that went to Bessen to complain about the resettlement project?”

“They are idiots. Good thing we're here to show them how to be civilized.”

“Which colony do you want to live on when your tour is done?”

“Me? I want to go to Killick, the first colony.”

“Man, I want to go back to Earth.”

“I've already put currency for a house on Kuhn. They say that it's greener than any place on Earth.

It was hard to go to sleep to their talking. It wasn't their fault that they were so wildly misinformed. They were ignorant, and I couldn't help feel a bit sorry for them knowing that one day they would realize the horror of the lie that they'd helped to perpetrate. I wanted to climb out from my pod and shake sense into them. But now was not the time. Eventually, I was able to drift off.

When I awoke, I waited until I heard them leave the quarters before I unzipped myself.

I had to get off of this ship soon. The longer I stayed on this ship, the easier it would be for me to lose my cover. I went directly to the Dolmav First Officer to request a transfer to new quarters and then to the next ship.

“I thought you Humans liked to be together,” the First Officer said.

“Don't you long for time away from your crew members?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I can pay,” I said.

I traded everything I had with me in my bag, three Loor protein paks, an all-planet emergency blanket, some dried flowers from Tallara, and a piece that had fallen off of Trevor.

Within an hour I had my own private sleeping pod and a simple child's jumpsuit that fit me poorly. I commanded Trevor to stand guard.

Then I went and sent my message to Tournour on the Yertina Feray.

Message to Tournour.

Message: Tournour. Constable. Yertina Feray.

Ship:
Snake's Kiss

Species: Dolmav

Water: Stagnant

Sweets: Half

Salts: One

Inquiry about quarantine?

And another message in bottle to Caleb and the
Noble Star
.

Message to
Noble Star
from Tula Bane

Seeking: Passenger Caleb Kamil

Request: Rendezvous point

It was five days before I got a message back from Tournour.

Message:
Safti
McGovern.
Snake's Kiss.

Inventory: Zero Zero Zero.

Status: Blue

Notes: Wind season just begun. Associate safe.

 

22

Between the difficulty of travel, the sporadic messages from Tournour, the failure to hail or pinpoint a location for the
Noble Star
, and the crushing loneliness unlike I had ever known before, I was beginning to get discouraged.

I felt doomed to flail through space like a cork on an ocean. Not having an end in sight, just following the tides of where the ships ebbed and flowed.

The search for Humans was time consuming and exhausting. It took me two more jumps before I hit a ship that had Wanderers on it.

I learned that every ship was different. Some had comfortable quarters. Some had sleep pods. Some had full crews. Some had skeleton crews. Some were large and new. Some were old and could barely run.

All of them were like dropping into mini-worlds with politics and hierarchies that I didn't understand or belong to.

The view was always slightly different or dark on the different ships. While on the Yertina Feray I could feel the gradual spin of the station; with each ship I traveled on, I could feel it gaining speed and slowing down. What I liked on them all was the blur of the stars through the windows as we were moving forward.

Forward.

It was something I hadn't done in so long. I had been so stuck.

Trevor played me music. Trevor played simple games with me. Trevor played the shipping news. But it was a poor substitute for a friend. I missed having friends. I wondered about Thado and the arboretum. I tried to imagine Tournour's day-to-day rounds. I pictured Reza braving the windy season on Quint.

So when the Per crew members confirmed that there were Wanderers in the lower decks, a part of me had hoped that I could at least be social for this part of the journey.

From what I'd seen and heard I knew one thing—the Human Wanderers were wary of anyone that they didn't know. As usual, my first order of business was to send a message to Tournour, secure in the thought that someone knew where I was, and my plea to the
Noble Star
. After that was done, I mustered up some courage and went down to the lower decks.

Before I even got there, I could tell these Humans were a far cry from those I had seen on the space elevator port. They were noisy. They were laughing and screaming and maybe even singing.

I could barely make out the words due to their strange accent.

Oh, make me a golden thread. Make me a golden thread. So I can follow it home. I'm going home.

They were cooking food on makeshift grills. I didn't see livestock, and then I realized that perhaps they caught and cooked the ship's vermin.

One of the Humans noticed me as I stepped into the hall. He made a whoop sound. Others looked up and followed suit, making whoops, which I took to be some kind of greeting.

There was the distinct hubbub as the message was passed down the tents, which they had spread all down the hall of this deck. A bearded man popped his head out from behind a flap and came up to me. As he walked up, he removed his outer shirt to reveal his inked up arms, chest, and back. He hesitated though, when he saw that I was covered up with long sleeves and long pants, and that I had no tattoos visible on my face.

“Where is your story?” the bearded man asked while he sized me up. He spoke in a strange accent—a mishmash of various Earth languages with words that I couldn't understand. Even the nanites had trouble translating since it was so close to my own language, but also not.

Up close, I could see the intricate detail of his tattoos. His bare arms were covered, and so were his chest and his legs. The tattoos even crept up onto his neck. The tattoos depicted ships and star systems. I could recognize some of the ships, a Dolmav freighter on his forearm, a Loor passenger liner on his neck, a Per hauler on his leg. They were all different shapes and sizes, some overlapping one another. They were beautiful. By looking at them, I could almost read this man's journey through space.

“I have no story,” I said.

“Everyone has a story,” he said, reaching to me to pull off my shirt. I held him off.

“I have no tattoos.”