The central hub of this station was the crab, and the various sections added to it over the years, the barnacles. Part of it, and yet individual too. With his job he knew each section well now, and had found each one to be like its own village. Some of the barnacles on that crab might have been dead, their shells still stuck fast. And Jaff knew the station had dead areas. Sometimes in hunting down system faults he and his colleagues would open up long closed doors into sections that didn't show in their plans.
There could be sections that didn't even have doors into them anymore. Layouts redesigned, and areas closed off, and then forgotten about. Plans lost, knowledge lost, over centuries. A man could spend his life exploring this place, Jaff thought, and began to wish he'd come to live here sooner.
The door opened and Jaff glanced up from his beer and his contemplation, and then stared at the group that entered. Starship officers, in uniform. And not battered uniforms with non-regulation additions. The real thing. A woman led them.
It's her. Jaff knew it at once, knew it for sure. It's Bara. She matched the description Maiga had given Chervaz. Blonde hair, long leather coat, the only non-regulation bit of clothing any of them wore. Not bad looking, she wore makeup, which as a starship officer Jaff had grown used to. The women starship officers had always been more presentable than their Army and marine counterparts, in his opinion. The officers took up a couple of tables and two burly marines stood behind the captain.
She's here. She's bloody here! Chervaz will go nuts for this. Jaff thought of contacting him at once, but then decided he had better actually confirm this. He'd look a bit of a fool otherwise. Was the Trebuchet docked here? Oh he hoped so. Maiga's tale of the welded on Chiamajan weapons had stirred him to the core of his engineer's soul.
He still wore his overalls, and that gave him a pass to almost anywhere on the station. So he slipped out of the bar, with a last lingering look at the new group and walked to the docking area. There he checked an information terminal, and using his work access looked up the most recently docked vessels. There it was. Not the Trebuchet itself, but a shuttlecraft, identified as belonging to the ship.
Well, he could call Chervaz now, but still, curiosity made him want to wander along to where that shuttle was docked and see what he could see. Smiling, he shook his head. He'd become another one of Vaz's roving reporters.
So he strolled off, through the docks, dodging the cargo transports, dancing out of the way as a case fell off a trolley and burst open, sending some spiny yellow fruits rolling about the deck. Someone yelled at someone else in an alien language he didn't even recognise, never mind understand.
He passed a colleague, working at a wall panel and stopped to exchange a few words, and borrow a couple of tools as props, having a little premonition of what he might encounter in a few minutes.
He was right. When he reached the bay where the Trebuchet's shuttle was docked he found two large marines, standing guard at the bulkhead door. A transparent panel on the wall let him see into the bay, at the small ship he really wanted to have a nosey at. As he approached, the marines moved to stand right across the doors.
Jaff smiled at them. "Hi, fellas. Station maintenance. I've just got some work to do in the docking bay there."
"Come back later," one of the young men said, folding his arms over his chest, muscles bulging, polished and gleaming in the light.
"Later? Why? Look, I've got a schedule to keep."
"Come back later." The tone didn't even change. These boys were robots.
"Listen, pal, I've got a work order." Don't ask to see it. "I go where the work order says."
"You go where I say." The other one spoke now, more verbose than his partner. "And right now, you go away."
Jaff put on a good show of being furious. Well, not really a show. It wasn't so long ago that he'd have had these guys up on report for defying an officer. He couldn't do that now, but he could certainly recall how to get pissed off by their defiance.
"I'm going to complain, you've got no right to interfere with station operations. You're going to screw the whole schedule to buggery."
This didn't make them repent. One of them shrugged to demonstrate his total disregard for station operations and their sacred schedule.
"Get lost."
Jaff didn't even have to pretend to be speechless. The damn nerve. Arrogant bloody marines. Never liked arrogant bloody marines. One took a step toward him and he decided his little charade could end now. There was only so much he was prepared to do to get a story for Chervaz.
Muttering threats of complaints and reports, he hurried off. Once out of the docking area, he found a quiet corner and called Chervaz. As he waited for him to answer, he suddenly remembered Chervaz was out to dinner with Maiga. Speaking of arrogant bloody marines. No, she wasn't so bad. He'd talked to her while repairing her ship and she seemed okay. Still, a cold fish, in his opinion. He preferred a girl who was a little more fun loving. Which reminded him, he should give Sia a call sometime… And he should maybe hit Cancel here and leave Chervaz to enjoy his date. Too late, the call was answered. Jaff shrugged and spoke.
"You are not going to believe who just waltzed into Dav's."
~o~
Maiga sipped her after-dinner coffee. It made her smile to recall that this café bar was one of their customers, so she was buying back a small amount of the coffee she'd sold to them.
Should I have worn a dress? she wondered, glancing around. A few other women wore dresses, but many were casual, like her. She'd chosen a café bar rather than a more formal restaurant. Formal just made her feel she should be in her dress uniform. And dresses weren't her thing anyway.
She turned back to Chervaz, who was talking about the first few weeks running his newspaper. He liked to talk, she could see, and she encouraged him to, so she didn't have to. Hearing him talk about the paper, seeing that enthusiasm shining in his eyes, or listening to him wander off on a tangent, waxing philosophical and presenting about half a dozen sides to each argument and not choosing any of them… So much like Ilyan.
Odd to compare Chervaz with Ilyan. In some ways the two men couldn't be more different, Chervaz bulky, clumsy, strong. Ilyan slim, elegant, graceful and--she smiled--kind of a wimp, when she met him. Physically at least. And the differences went beyond appearance. Ilyan was so confident in his own ideas, so amused and intrigued by everything around him. Chervaz worried about everything, and argued even with himself.
Stop it, she told herself suddenly, sitting forward in her chair, focusing on him, on his dark eyes. Not Ilyan's blue eyes, Chervaz. He's real, he's here, and he's alive. Stop thinking about Ilyan. Stop comparing him to Ilyan. He hesitated at her movement and smiled a little sheepishly.
"I'm sorry, I do go on. Are you ready to leave?"
"Let's take a walk," she said.
They strolled, and he offered her his arm, just like… a gentleman and she took it. Walking up to the circuit, they joined a few more late night strollers. It was chilly up there and she felt glad of the shawl she wore. Another gift from Wixa. Well, a loan, she said, but feel free to hang on to it. The soft fabric gently tickled the skin of her bare arms.
Music sounded, a group of performers in the plaza, entertaining the last of the bar and restaurant patrons. Scents from the restaurants, their back doors wide now, letting out the kitchen's heat and the last enticing aromas of the late sitting. Chervaz didn't talk much now, and she felt no need to fill the silence, happy to walk at his side and watch the stars through the tall windows.
Peaceful. He was peaceful to be around. Even when he was talking away, nineteen to the dozen, she felt peaceful with him. What did that mean for them though? If he asked her to dinner then he had a romantic interest in her, and she did consider him attractive, but was there really a spark there? Enough to make her see him as more than a friend?
Perhaps it would come with time.
Perhaps other things would too. Trust. One day, would she trust him enough to tell him who she really was? Who she
had been? Did he really need to know? The old Maiga, maybe she had died back on Chiamajan , along with the rest of her friends. Couldn't she be someone new here? Chervaz was. He had reinvented himself, from starship officer to newspaper editor. He'd understand the need to become someone else now. Not just individuals, the whole human race, what remained of it. To survive, it had to do the same as Maiga, and Chervaz. And Jaff and Wixa. Become something else. Change is life. Stagnation is death.
She sighed. Well, her thoughts took a cheery turn as always. The sound of her sigh made him look at her, worried and she smiled to reassure him, fearing he believed she was bored.
"Would you like me to walk you home now?"
Ever the gentleman. She should offer to walk him; she could protect him better than the other way around.
"Thank you."
They kept walking, heading for the lifts, when his Snapper gave a chirp. He winced.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I… just with the paper, I'm always in touch, well, I forget to shut it off."
Maiga just nodded to indicate no problem. Her own Snapper was on, in the small bag she carried. Small, but enough room for her knife.
"It's Jaff."
"Late with the rescue call isn't he?"
Chervaz looked quite shocked and that made her smile. Less sense of humour than her, and that was quite an achievement.
"I'm joking. Answer him. It could be something worthy of your next front page."
"I hope so!" He laughed and answered the call. Jaff's voice came through.
"You are not going to believe who just waltzed into Dav's."
~o~
She had gone by the next morning. In fact she had gone from Dav's by the time Chervaz and Maiga arrived. Maiga didn't want to go, but Chervaz had asked her if she'd at least come to identify Bara, and introduce him. He wanted an interview with her.
So she'd been quite pleased to find the Trebuchet's officers gone from the bar. They were still on the station, according to Jaff, the shuttle was still there, but he didn't know where they had gone. In the morning, the shuttle had gone too.
"Jasini said she saw them in the human sector, lowest deck," Wixa said, as they closed up the cargo hatch of the Friss from inside. "She said they seemed to be giving people small parcels of something."
"What was Jasini doing on the lower deck? Slumming it?" That deck had only partly been converted into smaller quarters. Lots of drifties had ended up down there, living communally, in the barracks room, the cheapest rent, while they tried to find some work other than casual day labour.
Wixa smirked, obviously finding the idea of Jasini down among the barracks boys amusing.
"Cloud had got down there, apparently. Maybe she's got herself a boyfriend. Maybe you'll soon be getting a kitten after all."
"I doubt anyone down there has a cat," Maiga said.
"True," Wixa said, nodding. "Hatch sealed." She reported and they climbed the ladder to the living area and the cockpit. "If anyone down there had a cat, they'd eat it."
"Wixa!"
"Sorry. I wonder what they were giving away. In the parcels, I mean."
"Whatever it was, it was stolen goods," Maiga said, sure of it. Damn pirate, what the hell was she up to? Why did she have to come here? And why did she have to come last night?
"How was your date?"
Could Wixa read minds?
"Fine." She could mind read the rest if she wanted to. Fine, until that call about the damn pirate. Maiga signalled readiness to the traffic control computer and sat back, waiting for permission to depart.
That had been the end of the date. They gone down to Dav's and then when she hadn't been there, talked with Jaff, until Chervaz fulfilled his promise to walk her home. Except Jaff came along too and the three of them talked about Bara all the time. Well, those two did.
She'd dreamt later, about Ilyan. The two of them had been in a huge ballroom. Though it was barely a room, it seemed to have no roof, and the stars shone over their heads. And they danced, she wearing a long dress that swirled and flowed around her, him wearing a black suit, the kind she'd seen in old pictures. His hair hung loose down his back, gold spread across the black cloth.
So handsome and intelligent. Such good genetic material. That's what women were encouraged to look for, good genes. They were not meant to fall in love and certainly not to think about old fashioned words like ‘husband' and ‘family'. Provide High Command with another healthy soldier and get back to work quick.
"Wixa…" She hesitated a moment, not sure if she wanted to start this subject, but then she went on. "Did you ever have any children?"
Wixa looked at her, appeared taken aback for a moment. Caught her off guard. That's rare enough. Then Wixa sighed and looked away.
"Yes. I had a little boy."
"And is he… Um, do you know if he's still alive?" She winced at the question, which felt so cold and awkward.
"He's not. He was ill, when he was born. Disabled. There wasn't anything they could do. They said he would only live a few years."
A long silence followed, relieved only by the chirping of instruments on the panels. Eventually Wixa spoke again.
"They said they'd take care of him, give him the best quality of life they could, that I should go back on duty and just try to put him out of my mind. But I thought… He had so little time; I wanted to share at least some of that time with him."
"So, you stayed on Earth with him?"
"Yes. It was hard, with his problems. But I'm still glad I did. He was… my little boy. Tam. I called him Tam. Anyway, he got really ill when he was nearly two and they said he was suffering and that it was for the best to let him go now, let him…slip away. So…"
She broke off and looked away. Maiga didn't ask any more. Wixa's hand rested on the arm of the co-pilot's chair and Maiga reached out and touched it, resting her own hand over the skin that for the first time she noticed felt quite thin and delicate.
Then the computer signalled permission to take off and Maiga sat forward, starting the departure at once. A moment later Wixa joined her, voice steady now.
Maiga wondered about the man who'd been Tam's father. Did Wixa still think about him, the way she clearly still thought about her son? Or had he just been good genetic material? Had she ever thought about what it would be like to live with him, share her life with him? Or would the very idea sound quite bizarre to her?
"Clearing the station," Wixa reported. The Friss moved away from Hollow Jimmy, manoeuvring past the ships orbiting the station, those either too large to dock, or that preferred to stay outside and send shuttles instead.
"Prepping star drive," Maiga said. "Course laid in. All secure?"
"Yep."
Maiga rolled her eyes. "I'll take that as an ‘All secure, Captain.' Engaging star drive."
She saw it then, just before they went to light speed. It still orbited the station, dim in space, no running lights and too far from the light of the station to see anything but its mix of elegant and distorted lines. The Trebuchet.
The sight of it made Maiga afraid suddenly. She wanted to go back and take care of… Well, what exactly? She didn't even know. She just knew she hated the idea of that woman running around loose on her station.
Wixa's voice came quietly from the other chair. "You saw it too?"
"Yes. She's still there."
Chapter 11
Major Jax had a personal code. She never sold herself to a man she outranked. A woman had to have some standards. Now as she watched the girls sweeping up broken glass from the reception area, she had to admit that a lot of her previous standards had started to slip.
The girls swept up, because Jax could no longer spare the money for cleaning staff. And her three so-called guards were down in Dr Sheni's clinic getting patched up. Well, three of her four guards. The other one had run away when the trouble started. Obviously decided he wasn't getting paid enough for this crap. He was probably right.
Now she had to find the money to repair the recep
tion room. As the commanding officer of the facility she was under no obligation to service clients, but had found herself doing so more and more lately, as money became tighter and tighter. And that standard about only men who outranked her would soon go by the wayside. Possibly already had. That one the other night, he had to have been a lieutenant. She had no way to check any more, that was the problem.
Back in the old days, every man who came in to the brothel had to show his ID. Any trouble and not only would he get a hiding from her guards, she'd report him to his CO. Then everything fell apart. The recall order came and her guards left. So many of the humans left, only the lifers staying behind. Then the news came about Earth and the humans started coming back. But they were desperate, frightened creatures, seeking sanctuary, not men on leave looking for fun.
When they came here now, they wanted to forget their troubles for a few hours. But underlying everything was always an undercurrent of tension. That had exploded last night.
When the humans started arriving back on the station she'd hired new guards. Hiring them felt so strange. Not just requesting suitable men be assigned to her, but hiring them, negotiating pay, weeding out the ones who were going to be more trouble than they solved. And even then, the ones she'd found were useless. Quickly overwhelmed in the fight last night she'd had to wait until station security arrived and started busting heads and dragging people off before the place stopped resembling a war zone.
"Wow they weren't kidding."
Jax looked up at a woman standing at the door. A very plain-faced older woman, with short hair and dark clothes. Jax looked at the girls still clearing up the mess.
"Go and make some tea," she ordered them. Nervous of the snap in her voice, they hurried off.
"I take mine with sugar," the woman at the door called after them. She stepped inside, avoiding the broken furniture. Jax saw she had two big men with her, though had enough restrain to leave them outside.
"Fuck off, Etta," Jax said. "If you've come to gloat--"
"I don't want to gloat. Though the words ‘I told you so' are making a break for this conversation."
"Funny." Jax picked up a piece of plastic she couldn't even identify and tossed it into the heap in the middle of the floor.