Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (38 page)

A pair of black-throated red seed stealers perched on the corral fence for just a moment, cocking their heads at us. The sun brightened their deep red feathers, painting them with gold stripes. The birds chattered at each other for a moment and flew away, spiraling up into the trees. Escaping.

Like we needed to.

I sat, one hand on Windy and one on Kayleen, waiting.

Liam came back, carrying one of the long slender sticks. He stood awkwardly, holding it. Kayleen leaned down and kissed Windy between her ears and on the nose, and then pushed herself to her feet. An eerie calm had fallen over her features. She held out her hand.

“I’ll do it,” Liam said.

Kayleen kept her hand out until Liam handed her the rifle, then she
calmly checked it over, pushed a button in one place, and stood over Windy. Her hand didn’t shake. “I love you,” she whispered, and then she pushed another button. The rifle bucked in her hands. A neat hole appeared in Windy’s forehead, and she lay still.

Kayleen threw the rifle down by the dead hebra, and looked at Liam, her eyes as dead her hebra’s. “Now, I’m ready to fly us back.”

S
hip’s data surrounded me. Creator sang of stars and emptiness, of engines and oils and work. I floated in facts, sometimes moving a single muscle to remind myself I was not the ship.

Over a year and a half of flying alone.

I struggled to recall Chelo’s face, but it fuzzed at the edges, becoming indistinct except around the eyes. They called to me, her gaze in my memory driving a restlessness that roamed my spine.

Chelo demanded something of me, and my fists clenched, knowing what it was, not wanting to face it yet. But I had put it off for fifteen months.

Jenna had sent my father, Ming, Dianne, and Induan to cold sleep within a day of leaving Silver’s Home. For the next week, the rest of us plotted and planned, or as much as possible with as little information as we collectively possessed. Then Jenna sent Bryan and Alicia to cold sleep. She followed.

I flew. Alone. At first, I loved it.

I’d sweated alone every day in the workout room, allowed myself to fall into the ship for hours every day. Typical of Marcus—Creator had a good library. Each day, I researched Islas, and the Star Mercenaries, babbling at the library functions since hearing my own voice was better than no voice at all. My sleep cycles blew off and I slept or woke for hours or minutes or even days at a time. I lost so much weight that I made myself set timers to eat.

We were three quarters of the way to Fremont, or better.

It was past time.

As soon as I started the sequence to wake my father, I pulled out the data button I’d found on the New Making, and poured over his journal, trying to relate the man who talked to me across the years with the one that I had met.

They didn’t match.

The younger David Lee had been much more hopeful, even after they found the original colonists on Fremont. I liked him. But he had allowed himself to become buried in someone less honorable.

The closest equivalent to what happened to him would be for me to lose both Alicia and Chelo. I could kill for that. I shouldn’t—Chelo would never want that. Or my mother. Based on the gentleness of her drawings, I suspected she would have hated my father’s choices.

After he’d slaked his thirst and rested, I brought him to one of the living spaces that we weren’t using, with two available chairs, a small round table, and a little sink. The floors were soft carpet in patterned teal and brown. A hand-carved stylized wooden tree adorned the one free wall.

I brought us each a glass of steaming spicy col, setting them on the table between the two chairs. The welcome scent permeated the small space almost immediately. He remained silent long after I sat down, finally asking, “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

When I didn’t answer, he prodded. “Staying sane a year in a small ship is tough. Hell, a month’s tough. The wind of a long flight drives some crazy. Why didn’t you let me help?”

I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and told him. “I don’t know what to think of you. I looked for you for a long time, but I don’t trust you. Not after what you did.”

He was silent for a few moments, watching me. The tight muscles along his jaw and from shoulder to neck were the only sign he gave of feeling. “I won’t be able to bear it if we get there too late to make it right.”

“Make it right? By saving Chelo? But can you make it right that you sent people to kill other people?”

He met my question with another long awkward silence. When he spoke, he sounded wrung out and emotionless. “I tried to call them off. Right after I met you. I didn’t have the money to do it, but I tried anyway. I didn’t get an answer back.”

This wasn’t new information—he’d told us all that after we got out into free space. I leaned in, watching him. “Can anyone besides you cancel the contract?” It had dawned on me after we all left that Marcus could have raised the fifty thousand credits as easily as sent us off. It disturbed me that I hadn’t asked him why, didn’t really know why he chose as he did. “If someone pays them enough, will they stop? Just take the money and not do the job?”

He shook his head, and for the first time since he came in, he looked away from me, as if admiring the tiny branches of multicolored wood on the tree sculpture beside us. “I don’t think so. That’s not how the contract is written, and it’s not how they work.”

I sipped my col. “Can you call and talk to them?”

“Not from a moving ship to a moving ship, not at the distances and speeds between us. You should know that.”

I didn’t. Maybe I should go get those credentials the Port Authority had wanted someday. He looked at me like some deep hunger drove him. Was he hungry for me? The way I had been hungry for him all my life?

I kept some distance between us. I wasn’t ready yet.

“So why did they take this job? Islas only accepts jobs that also further their own goals.”

He shook his head.

He wasn’t stupid. “What about the unrest back on Silver’s Home? Silver’s Home and Islas are squaring off. Doesn’t this maybe relate? The Port Authority came to stop me because they’re afraid of an incident between us and them. So they don’t think this is just about vengeance.”

He winced at the word. Swallowing hard, he leaned back in his chair and regarded me for long moments. “I don’t know. I didn’t care when I made the contract.”

“Do you care now?”

He nodded, his smoky-blue eyes fastened on mine, blinking as if tears hid behind them. But if so, he held them back.

I kept pushing, knowing it was cruel. But something in me had to do it. I told myself it was to see what he was really made of, even though I knew it was partly from my own pain. “So what would they want? Why were they even willing to go to Fremont?”

He swallowed. “I haven’t been paying that much attention to the war news. There’s always war news. Just more lately. I thought maybe the Islans just wanted to see Fremont for themselves since we claimed it.”

“Can they challenge your claim?”

“Not legally.”

“What happens if we have to fight them?”

He laughed then, a bitter laugh. “We can’t fight Star Mercenaries. Not with this little ship and a handful of people.”

I held my tongue, waiting for him to say more.

It took him a long time. “If we did, they might use it as an excuse to push the war harder.” He looked around the room, avoiding my eyes. “No—we have to get your sister and whoever else we want to save, and leave.”

He was so sure of himself, I didn’t argue. I wanted to, wanted to tell him a million stories about Artistos. The good stories. I held my tongue, but I didn’t agree with him, and I made sure he knew it by the way I didn’t say anything, with the set of my body.

Let him read me however he wanted. He hated them all; maybe he didn’t want to fight because he really wanted the original humans dead. I loved more people on Fremont than Chelo and Liam and Kayleen.

I’d decide if we left or fought.

He didn’t deserve to do it—he’d already decided to kill them all once. This was my ship. Chelo was my sister, and Artistos had been my home.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. I got up and walked out, taking the empty glasses, buying myself a few moments to let the anger roll away.

I hadn’t woken him to fight, even though I hadn’t been able to stop myself so far. I refilled the col glasses and rummaged around for some way bread.

Should I give him a chance? We were trapped in a small place hurtling through the vastness of empty space between tiny planets.

We had time. I forced myself to stay out of the comfort of the ship’s data and focus on the person I’d woken up.

I went back and asked, “What was Mom like?”

He winced, shifting, physically uncomfortable. “I can still barely think about her, even though in some ways I hardly remember her. I don’t suppose you can understand that?”

“Sometimes it’s hard to see the details of Chelo’s face. Especially when I try to remember them.”

He smiled softly and I reached over and touched his hand. He smiled back, the warmth of it lighting his eyes.

“I’m sorry. Your mother was beautiful. Not in the way some women attract the eyes of everyone around, but subtler, inside. Everyone who knew Marissa admired her. Strong—she was so strong. She fought side by side with me before she got pregnant with your sister.” He paused, sipped his col, his gaze turned inward as if memory was taking him backward. “The pregnancies we chose were acts of colonization—not of war. There was a fabulous geneticist on board—Susan Zeni. We worked with her to design you to succeed on Fremont. It didn’t cross our minds that we wouldn’t stay, especially early on. We had a clear claim to the planet. When we learned they didn’t have a ship to fly away on, we offered to let them stay. Why didn’t that stop them?”

I didn’t have an answer.

“I’m wandering, aren’t I? Marissa always had kind words for people, and she always believed in a good outcome, no matter how bad it seemed. That was her strength.”

Like Chelo.

“She was a fabulous mom. The day Chelo was born was the happiest day of her life, and when you were born, her eyes glowed with that same love, that same strength. I saw our future in her eyes, in your tiny forms.” He wasn’t talking to me. Maybe to himself, or to my mother. “You were so wonderful to hold, to be with. You smelled of Marissa when I held you, like her warm milk and her sweat, and your skin felt like it had been bathed in her softness and her songs. She used to sing to you both….”

He shook himself, as if he couldn’t bear the feelings his own words drew out of him. When he stopped and looked at me, his eyes were as tender as I’d ever seen them. I wanted to look away, to break the intensity down to something I could handle.

Instead, I reached a hand out for his, taking it long enough to feel his warmth.

He continued. “Time passed, and they started killing us, and I remember how her eyes snapped with anger at them—and fear for
you—when we first took you to the caves to hide. We swore we’d win for you all, for the children of Fremont.”

Maybe I could tap that when I needed him to help me save the people of Fremont.

And tomorrow, I’d start the day with something simple, like a game of chess.

M
y father was again frozen, and for the moment, only Alicia and I breathed on board Creator.

I had already started the sequence to wake Jenna. Alicia leaned over to me, whispering, “Our last moment of privacy.” Her eyes flashed with heat and she suddenly disappeared, the flicker of movement catching my eye as her mod didn’t quite keep up with color changes in the doorway. I laughed, racing after her footsteps, following her all the way to our sleeping space.

Creator
woke us in time to head to Medical to sit beside Jenna, watching her wake. “We wanted to wake you before we woke Ming,” I said. “We’re just a few months out, and I want to know why she’s aboard before we get there.”

Jenna set her glass down carefully, coughed, and leaned back in her chair. “So do I.”

Her voice still sounded scratchy. “You haven’t woken anyone else up—not Induan or Bryan?”

“No. My father for a while, but he’s frozen again.”

Jenna glanced at me with concern.

“It was okay to be up with him. Really.” It had been. He was good at chess. When we avoided charged subjects I liked him a little.

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Joseph, but besides you and Alicia, the only people I trust are Tiala and Bryan. Maybe Dianne, since Marcus picked her specifically to help you. I don’t trust Ming.” She glanced at Alicia. “And I’m not sure about Induan.”

Alicia scowled, sighed, and glared at Jenna for a long moment before she said, “All right. But you can. You’ll see.”

I refilled Jenna’s water glass, giving her a few moments to think. She stood and started pacing. Even newly woken, wildness suffused her movements, more like the Jenna I’d known on Fremont. It felt like being in the room with a predator.

I handed her the glass. “How are we going to decide whether or not to trust Ming?”

“Trust is earned,” Jenna snapped. She stopped pacing and drank. “We’ll figure something out.” She looked at Alicia thoughtfully. “Maybe your risk-taking skills will come in handy here. Let me know what you think of Ming.”

“Meaning if I like her, you won’t?”

Jenna just laughed. “Let’s get Tiala and Bryan up, first. More backup won’t hurt us.”

J
enna and I and Bryan sat in a row on hard metal chairs by Ming’s bed, waiting for her to wake. She was not, as far as we knew, a Wind Reader. Essentially a stowaway, she undoubtedly expected to be interrogated.

Jenna wanted us in here when Ming woke. So we had come now, even though we expected the process to take another hour or so. Like everyone, Ming seemed vulnerable and small as her body took on color. Her firm musculature gave her excellent form, even lying down; enough to attract. Slender without being thin: compact. Small, with a face that looked elfin now, while every other time I’d seen her awake it had been painted with intensity. I pointed at her calves. “She must work out like you two.”