Tin Star (7 page)

He ever so slightly lifted his wing and revealed a deep discolored scar. It was a gash that looked as though it had nearly killed him. But here is where we differed. His scar made him stay—mine made me ache to leave.

There was a strange silence between us. Our friendship was ending. I would likely never see him again once I left. I knew that if I could help it, I would never set foot again on the Yertina Feray. I would find Brother Blue and make him pay for harming me and contributing to the death of my family. And then I would go to a colony and I would settle there as I had always planned.

I put my arm on Heckleck’s appendage.

“Thank you for everything.”

It seemed clumsy and not grateful enough, but it was the only thing I could say.

“The Imperium is corrupt. This station is also corrupt,” Heckleck said. “We are but a buffer between the mad and the free. But it’s safer here, or on the Rim, if you can get there. You should take my advice. Hide.”

“No one, not even those that live on the Outer Rim, are undeclared,” I said. “Everyone has taken a side.”

“Well, I haven’t,” Heckleck said. “I’m on my side.”

But I was excited by the possibility of change. Couldn’t he see that? No, likely he couldn’t. That was one of the troubles with some aliens, they couldn’t interpret body language and social cues in other species. Heckleck failed at recognizing subtleties, which is why I was such an asset to him. One of the things that had helped me to survive was my ability to read aliens and mimic appropriately.

Still, it was nearly impossible to say goodbye.

“I suppose this is where we part, Heckleck,” I said.

“I’m sorry to see you go,” Heckleck said. “As my comrade in trade, I ask you one favor.”

I looked at Heckleck. If he was cashing in a favor, then he was quite serious about what he was saying. Favors were valuable. And Heckleck never liked to owe anyone.

“Name it,” I said.

We touched arms to seal the deal, as was the Hort way.

“Please don’t help them find me if they come looking. They always round up Hort in the first rounds of exterminations.”

“It’s labor work, not death camps,” I said.

“Regardless. It’s our appearance that often offends so many species and we breed so quickly that new regimes like to cut down our numbers when they can. They excel in keeping us Hort a Minor Species.”

“I promise,” I said.

“Good luck to you then,” Heckleck said. And then he disappeared down the corridor.

My heart was heavy as I turned to join the other aliens looking for a way out of here. The thought of being alone again triggered something deep inside of me. A panic that made me want to pull out all of my hair. I had to keep reminding myself that I was leaving, not the one being left. Once I mixed in with the rabble who usually waited at the docks begging for day jobs, I began to feel excited again. Here now we all waited on the line hoping to get chosen for job on a planet with a choice position in the galaxy.

Soon
, I thought.
Soon.

In just a short while I would find Brother Blue, and I would hurt him.

How I longed to set foot on a planet. I could feel myself nearly there. I tried to remember what a sun looked like in a sky.

“Next,” an Imperium guard shouted.

“Human,” I said.

The Imperium Guard looked up at me. She was about to enter me into the system to match me with an appropriate planet when Tournour stepped up. I wished Tournour would go busy himself with overseeing some other piece of business.

“This one is no good,” he said. “You know how it is with these Humans. Weak immune systems. Poor stamina. The planets you’re recruiting for here would kill her in a month.”

If I could kill someone with my eyes, I would have killed him at that moment.

“I’m strong. I can work,” I said, hoping to get the guard to pay attention to me and ignore Tournour. I wouldn’t let my chance of getting off the station slip away so easily.

“If she were headed for a place like Nuvia, or Canlaghan, then I would say take her. On those planets she’d have enormous strength,” said Tournour.

“Great,” I said. “Send me to Nuvia or Canlaghan.”

“We’re not shipping there,” the guard said.

Tournour was standing there, and I could not look at him or I would explode. I needed to remain calm in order to make sure that I was assigned to a ship out of here. He had the power to throw me into the brig if he saw fit, and that would ensure that I wouldn’t leave.

“Well, I am fit to work,” I said. “Your announcement said there was work for anybody.”

“I didn’t realize there were any of your kind this far out,” the guard shook her head in disgust.

“She’s our only one,” Tournour said. His antennae were twitching from side to side, but he kept his eyes fixed on me.

“When I was running cargo in the core they kept hitching passage,” the guard said. “They’re never going anywhere, just always going. Do you have a particular interest in this one? I don’t judge.”

Tournour made a noise. The guard was Brahar. They were the species who had instigated the coup and led the Imperium with the other four Major Species. I knew that the Brahar and the Loor had no love for each other. They shared a solar system and had been each other’s first contact and first alien enemies. The Loor and the Brahar made up the oldest of the Major Species and were the first to strike out and explore the stars.

“Well, Human, we are not taking your kind today,” the guard said.

Then she waved me away. But I would not give up my spot. I stood in place, ignoring the complaints of those anxious aliens waiting behind me.

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“Why don’t you come along with me, Tula,” Tournour said. He took me by the elbow and made an attempt to lead me away.

“Stay out of my business, Tournour,” I said shaking him off. I knew that if I stayed here now, he’d slap me with a fine or a night in the brig, but I didn’t care.

“I would like to work,” I said. “I’m a quick learner. And I’m stronger than he thinks.”

The guard laughed.

“No doubt,” she said. “I can see that you are feisty.”

I wondered if I was supposed to bribe the guard. I slipped my hard saved currency chit onto the table.

The guard looked at the chit and then back at me. Then she looked at Tournour who shook his head at her. It was clear that my bribe had been trumped.

“Consider yourself lucky that I don’t accept your volunteering,” the guard said, waving me back to the living space. “Move along.”

I took back my currency chit.

Tournour was close on my heels, as though he were ensuring that I actually went back to the underguts and didn’t try to steal back and get through with another guard. When we were alone in a passageway I turned on him. It took every ounce in me to not punch him.

“Why?” I said. “Why did you block me from leaving?”

“We take care of our people here, even of a species like yours,” he said.

“My affairs are none of your business,” I said. “I am not one of your people.”

He looked surprised.

“You are a citizen of the Yertina Feray,” he said.

“I’m not! I don’t want to be here! I want to get off of this station and move on with my life!”

“I’m sorry that you feel that way,” he said.

“That’s not good enough,” I said.

“It’s illegal to disobey a constable’s orders,” he said. “You’ll have to come with me.”

In all the time that I had been on the Yertina Feray, I’d done plenty of questionable things that Tournour knew about. By far my tantrum was the mildest of my infractions. So I was a bit in disbelief that he was actually hauling me in. I knew that the more I argued, the worse my sentence would be. I bit my tongue and followed him.

“Troublemaker?” his superior said.

“Disturbing the peace,” Tournour said and put me in the brig. It was clean and empty.

“Humans,” his superior said.

They kept me there for three days. When I was finally free, the Imperium ships and troops were gone.

I went to reclaim my bin and put away my things. The underguts were practically empty. I knew not to bother looking for Heckleck, but before I went to sleep, I took a walk around the now quiet living area. Those who had not been recruited were looting the now abandoned living spaces. Some were moving into and taking over the empty larger bins.

I took nothing. But I did note who looted and who didn’t. I made a mental note to tell Heckleck that I would not deal with them.

After a few days of wandering the station, which before seemed empty but was now practically soulless, it became clear that those Minor Species who were considered undesirables were gone. And none of the Minor Species whose planets were known to be collaborating with the Imperium had been taken for hard labor. I had never concerned myself with who or what was running things, but it didn’t take much observing to know that what the Imperium were doing was best for some but not for all. The Imperium had established a hierarchy of which species were not civilized enough to their mind to merit status.

With Heckleck in hiding, and the station so empty, my thoughts turned to my mother and Bitty. I missed them and hated that they were dead. I realized that even though being stuck on the Yertina Feray felt like a kind of hell, that I had been lucky to be stranded here and to be alive. That was already more than my mother and Bitty would ever have.

Sometimes I dreamt they were alive and in pain and calling to me. When I awoke, my resolve to avenge them doubled. It was the only way I could answer their cries.

Somehow I knew that Heckleck had been right to hide and that I had been spared, and it was due to Tournour’s intervention.

I resented that it was time to tuck into small places and keep a low profile.

Now I would owe Tournour another favor that I couldn’t repay not only because the favor had been too big but because he had left with the Imperium ships.

The Imperium wanted a sympathetic infrastructure running all of the planets and stations under their jurisdiction, so there was a shift of personnel as the old planetary delegates that ran the station under the League of Worlds were removed and the Yertina Feray awaited Imperium-installed delegates to run the station. For now, except for the gutter dwellers, some low-ranking aliens to keep the station up and running, a few of the Imperium Guard, and those who had made a home here, the Yertina Feray was a ghost town. What was surprising was that Tournour, who was not in charge of anything, had been called to leave.

Since there was no infrastructure to accommodate them during this time, most ships that approached the station were turned away from docking. Travel, which was already tightly restricted, became nearly impossible. Word came down that from now on in order to leave the station or to travel in Imperium space, a travel pass was required. Even currency would not get you anywhere without a pass. Everyone was stuck. The station seemed to be in hibernation.

It was during this quiet time that Heckleck reemerged, knocking on my bin as though he had never been away.

There were rumblings in the underguts and above levels about what was going on but no certainty, and it infused a diet of steady fear in everyone. I was learning that uncertainty was bad for business. People were more conservative when they were afraid, and hungry. Even the most civilized started to become a little feral. I could see that Heckleck’s and my way of living could not survive an empty station.

“Shall we go gather ourselves a meal from the arboretum? Thado is sure to have too many edibles on his hands,” Heckleck said.

I nodded. I knew better than to ask where he’d been as we walked to the arboretum.

We made our way up level by level. Every door was closed. Every store was shuttered. Even the cleaning bots were quiet and in their charge stations. It was normal for many doors and quarters to be boarded up and in disarray, but even this was unnerving. If I didn’t know for certain that there were at least two hundred people on the station, I would be certain that we were alone.

“It’s quiet. Even Tournour’s gone. It’s a little lawless right now,” I said as I picked through the basket of vegetables that Thado had set out for us.

“Someone will be back to keep us all in order,” Heckleck said. “The Imperium will place their puppet administrators here to run the Yertina Feray.”

I remembered the stories I’d heard about the dead and forgotten space stations left to die.

“Do you think we’ll be forgotten?” I asked Heckleck and Thado. When I spoke the words, my tongue felt thick, and things seemed unreal.

“We’ve always been forgotten and still managed to exist. Things will return. They always do,” Thado said. He passed us each a glass of pressed juice he had prepared.

“I never pegged you as a hopeful one, Thado,” I said.

“I’m not hopeful, I’m experienced,” he said. With so few on the station, we were all eating well from the arboretum. The situation had its tiny perks after all.

“But no one has returned yet,” I said. It had been over a month.

“They will come,” Thado said. “You will see.”

Thado had calmed me before when he’d found me in those first few months, trembling in the arboretum, shaking for reasons I couldn’t understand. His voice was mellow and low, and I would focus on it and the panic would subside.

“We’re far away but not as far as some, and if the Imperium wants to expand, we’re strategic,” Heckleck said. “We’re still useful as a light skip point.”

I had to take Heckleck and Thado’s words on this. They were more universal than I was in these matters.

“The Imperium wants control of its rabble, and even if it doesn’t have enough of a military force to occupy every planet outside of the Central Systems, the Imperium knows that if the fringes are left to the fringe, rebellions could breed like simple life forms that take over if not kept in check,” Thado said.

Heckleck stretched his little wings out and began to thrum.

“The people that they place here will keep the rabble from behaving in a manner that is unsuitable to Imperium plans,” Heckleck said. “Never underestimate the power of a lowly bacteria to evolve and thrive.”