Tessa held up the box of cricket crunch and gave it a tempting shake. She couldn’t hear the kids behind the plex, but Aya’s mouth formed the words: ‘What? Yes!’
With a quickness Tessa could barely remember having, Aya made her way to the tank exit, grabbing soft support poles to pull herself along. She worked her way down to the floor, then stepped out the airlock, tripping over herself as gravity took hold again. Tessa had never gotten the hang of that, either.
Aya fetched her shoes from a nearby cubby, slipped her socked feet inside, and began to tie them with dogged concentration. As she did, Tessa watched unsurprised as the cling boot kid paused in his circuit and casually threw up. The other kids’ faces contorted in laughter, disgust, and unheard shouts. A cleanerbot undocked itself from an upper corner, its gentle boosters propelling it through the air toward the floating mess. Tessa rapped on the plex again. ‘You okay?’ she called to the kid, mouthing the words as clearly as possible.
The kid gave a weak nod, holding the sides of his head.
Tessa flashed him a thumbs-up. They’d all been there.
Aya ran over as soon as the shoe-tying was complete. She put out both hands with a broad smile, her twin rows of teeth checkered with empty spaces. ‘Yes, please.’
Tessa gave her the box. ‘Careful, it’s hot.’
Aya tucked into the sugar-fried bugs without hesitation. Tessa caught a wince as her daughter burned her tongue. Neither commented on it.
‘Come on, it’s our family’s night to cook,’ Tessa said. They began to walk together.
‘I know,’ Aya said. She frowned. ‘I’m not late, right?’
‘No, you’re not late.’
‘Then how come you came to get me?’ She looked at the snack box in her hands, the realisation dawning that she’d been given a sweet treat before dinner. ‘How come I get cricket crunch?’
‘Just ’cause,’ Tessa said. ‘I guess I’m feeling sentimental.’
Aya tucked a mouthful into her cheek. ‘What’s sentimental?’
‘It’s . . . caught up in your feelings. The way you feel when you’re thinking a lot about the people or things you care about.’
Tessa had stopped looking at her daughter, but she could feel her staring back. ‘You’ve been weird today,’ Aya said.
Tessa didn’t want to have the conversation, and she knew there were parts she’d have to tread extra carefully around for Aya’s sake. But Pop would bring it up the second they were home, so: ‘You’re right, I have been. I’m sorry. Something happened you should know about. Everything’s okay. That’s the first thing you should know.’
Aya listened intently, still chewing.
‘You know how Uncle Ashby went to build a new tunnel?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, there were some sapients there who weren’t very nice’ – she wasn’t sure Aya was ready for Ashby was on the business end of the first shot in what looks like a territory war – ‘and they damaged his ship.’
Aya’s face went rigid. ‘Are the bulkheads okay?’
Tessa put her hand on Aya’s shoulder. She knew why the question was being asked. Despite counselling, despite patience, despite everybody’s best efforts and five more years of growing up, Aya still crumbled at the idea of any breach between in here and out there. She remained uncomfortable around airlocks, she avoided cupolas as if they were on fire, and bulkheads were a matter she fixated on to a concerning degree. ‘His ship’s stable,’ Tessa said. ‘He wrote to me this morning, and he’s okay. There are a lot of repairs to do, but everyone is safe.’
Aya processed that. ‘Is he coming here?’
‘Why would he come here?’
‘For repairs.’
‘There are plenty of spaceports he can do that in. But you should know, before we get home, your grandpa’s pretty shook up.’
‘How come?’
‘Because Ashby’s his kid, and parents can’t help but worry about their kids.’ She tousled Aya’s hair. ‘So be extra nice to Grandpa tonight, okay?’
‘Did they use a gun on Ashby’s ship?’
Guns were another subject of fixation – an exotic, abstract danger Aya knew of from sims and news feeds and whatever kids talked about among themselves. ‘Yes,’ Tessa said.
‘What kind?’
‘I don’t know.’
Aya crunched and crunched. ‘Was it Aeluons?’
Tessa blinked. ‘Was what Aeluons?’
‘The aliens who broke his ship.’
‘No. Why would it be Aeluons?’
Crunch crunch crunch. ‘They have the biggest guns and go to war all the time.’
‘That’s—’ Tessa struggled to unpack that technically accurate statement. ‘The Aeluons have a big military, that’s true. But they’re our friends. They’ve done a lot of good things for us in the Fleet, and they wouldn’t hurt Ashby.’
‘Have you ever met one?’
‘An Aeluon? Yes. I’ve done work with a few Aeluon merchants, a long time ago. They were all very nice. Well, except one. You gotta remember, baby, other sapients are people just like us. There are good people and bad people and everything in between.’
Crunch crunch. ‘Then who shot at Uncle Ashby?’
‘A species called the Toremi.’
‘What do they look like?’
‘I don’t actually know. I don’t know much about them. We can look it up on the Linkings when we get home.’
‘Have you met one?’
‘No. How could I have met one if I don’t know what they look like?’
‘Why were they mad at Uncle Ashby?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think it was about him, just the GC in general.’
‘Why—’
‘I don’t know, honey. Sometimes . . . sometimes bad things just happen.’
The crunching had stopped. ‘Will they come here?’
‘No,’ Tessa said with a firm voice and a reassuring smile. ‘They’re very far away. The Fleet’s a safe place. It’s one of the safest places you can be.’
Aya said nothing. Her mother was sure she was thinking of bulkheads and damaged hulls.
Sawyer
Everybody had a home, and nobody went hungry.
That was one of the foundational ideas that had first drawn Sawyer in when he’d started reading about the Fleet. Everybody had a home, and nobody went hungry. There was a practical necessity in that, he knew. A ship full of people fighting over food and space wouldn’t last long. But there was compassion, too, a commitment to basic decency. Too many people back on Earth had been hungry and cold. It was one of the copious problems the first Exodans had vowed not to take with them.
Sawyer stood in a home now – one of the empties left behind by a family that had gone planetside, now opened to travellers like himself. The grass was always greener, he supposed, but he couldn’t understand why anyone would travel in the opposite direction he had. Colonies had hungry people. They had people without homes. He’d seen both plenty of times back in Central space – sapients picking through trash or carrying everything they owned. The GC tried, they really did, but planets were big and settlements were vast and taking care of everyone was hard. Things were better in sovereign territories, but in neutral colonies like Mushtullo, where trade was the primary drive and nobody could agree on whose rules they should follow . . . well, it was easy for people to fall through the cracks. Sawyer had been mugged twice in the past standard, once by some messed-up woman with a badly installed headjack, then again by someone he never even saw. Just a pistol in his back and a hand he couldn’t identify twisting his arm around to scan his patch and drain his credits. The bank got the creds back, but that wasn’t the point. Someone had been willing to kill for the sake of . . . what? Some new clothes? A few tendays of groceries? That had been the last straw for Sawyer. That had been the moment he decided he was leaving.