“The Phobos guy,” said Nib. “The one who sold weapons to the Toremi.”
“Oh, right,” Bear said. “That asshole.”
“I don’t know who we’re talking about,” Ember said.
“Ever heard of Phobos Fuel? Big ambi distributor?”
Second biggest, in Human space, Rosemary thought.
“I guess,” said Ember.
Bear pointed at the pixels. “Well, the dude who owned the company apparently had an illegal weapons business on the side. That’s where his real creds came from.”
“You’ve got illegal weapons.”
Nib crossed his arms. “Ember, there is an enormous difference between making weapons for fun and selling gene targeters to both sides of a interstellar blood feud.”
Ember raised her eyebrows. “Gene targeters? That’s… wow. That’s fucked up.”
“Yep,” Bear said. “And now he and his buddies are going to jail forever.”
Jenks shook his head. “Why can’t people just stick with bullets and energy bursts and be happy about it?”
“Because people are assholes,” said Bear, dutifully keeping his head down. “Ninety percent of all problems are caused by people being assholes.”
“What causes the other ten percent?” asked Kizzy.
“Natural disasters,” said Nib.
The projector showed a cuffed and humiliated Quentin Harris the Third as he was marched from the courthouse to a police skimmer. His face was unreadable, his suit immaculately stitched. Angry protesters pressed against the energy barriers that surrounded the courthouse. Cheap printed signs danced over their heads. “THERE IS BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS,” read one. Another held a pixel insert of a bloodied Toremi carrying a mangled corpse. Below the insert was the Phobos slogan: “KEEPING THE GALAXY MOVING.” Other signs were more simple. “WARMONGER.” “TRAITOR.” “MURDERER.” The barriers holding them back bulged like overfilled pockets.
The reporter continued his calm tale of biological warfare and greed. Rosemary focused all her energy toward her eyes. Do not cry. Don’t cry. You can’t.
“Rosemary, you okay?” Jenks asked.
Rosemary wasn’t sure how she replied, something about being fine and just needing some air. She excused herself, walked steadily down the hall, and exited the homestead.
Outside, the ketlings continued their chaotic dance. The sun was setting behind them, transforming the scene into a macabre shadow puppet show. Rosemary was unfazed. The ketlings did not feel real. The homestead, the siblings, the moon beneath her feet, none of it felt real. All she could think of was that pixelated face on the projector, the face she had traveled across the galaxy to get away from. She tried to breathe slow, tried to fight back the raw, smothering feeling blossoming within her chest. She sat down in the dirt and stared at her hands. She grit her teeth. Everything she’d worked so hard to bottle away when she left Mars was bubbling up, and she wasn’t sure she could push it back down this time. She had to, though. She had to.
“Rosemary?”
Rosemary jumped. It was Jenks, standing beside her. She hadn’t heard the door, or his footsteps. She barely heard the ketlings droning overhead.
“What’s wrong?” His hands were in his pockets, his eyebrows knitted together.
As she looked him in the eye, something within her broke. She knew it might cost her the goodwill of the crew and her place on the Wayfarer, but she couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t keep up the lie any longer.
Rosemary looked away, out past the ketlings, across the rocky crags, all the way to the unfamiliar sun. Its light seared into her eyes, and remained there, heavy and orange, even as she closed them. “Jenks, I haven’t… I haven’t been… stars, you’re all going to hate me for this.” They would. And Ashby would fire her, and Sissix would never talk to her again.
“Doubtful,” Jenks said. “We like you a lot.” He sat down next to her and hit the bowl of his pipe against his boot. The tightly packed ash came loose and tumbled to the ground.
“But you don’t, you don’t know… I can’t do this.” She leaned her forehead into her palm. “I know I’m going to get kicked off the ship, but—”
Jenks stopped fussing with his pipe. “Okay, now you have to tell me,” he said, his voice stern but calm. “Take all the time you need, but you’re telling me.”
She took a breath. “That guy on the news,” she said. “Quentin Harris?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s my father.”
Jenks said nothing. He exhaled. “Holy shit. Oh, Rosemary, I’m… wow. I’m so sorry.” He paused again. “Shit, I had no idea.”
“That was the point. Nobody was supposed to know. I shouldn’t even be here, I’m not—I lied, Jenks, I lied and cheated and covered things up, but I just can’t do this anymore, I can’t—”
“Whoa, hey, slow down. One thing at a time.” He sat quiet, thinking. “Rosemary, I have to ask this, and you have to tell me the truth, okay?”
“Okay.”
His jaw was firm, his eyes wary. “Were you involved in… in what he did? I mean, even just a little bit, doctoring forms or lying to the police or something—”
“No.” It was the truth. “I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know anything until the detectives appeared at my apartment and spent the morning asking me questions. They knew I had nothing to do with it, and they told me I was under no obligation to be involved with the trial. I didn’t even have to stay on Mars.”
He searched her face, and nodded. “So… okay.” He laughed. “Stars, that’s a relief. I thought I was going to hate you there for a minute.” He patted her leg. “Alright, you’re innocent. So…” He looked baffled. “Rosemary, sorry, but what the fuck is the problem here?”
She was shocked still. “What?”
“I mean, okay, I get that you’re going through a lot right now, and by a lot, I mean some serious emotional shit that’s going to take us dozens of bottles of kick to work through, but why lie about it? If you’re not involved, then why would you think we’d care?”
Rosemary was unprepared for this. Months and months of worrying and dreading, and he didn’t care? “You don’t understand. Back on Mars, it didn’t matter that I hadn’t done anything. Everyone knew who I was. All the news feeds, it was nothing but our family history, even vacation pics and things like that. All focused on my father, of course, but there’s little me, smiling and waving at his side. I don’t even know how they got that stuff. And it was all paired up with medical experts talking about what targeters do to you, and all those news people yelling about corruption. You know the feeds, they never stop once they get their claws in. My friends stopped talking to me. People would yell things at me out in public—‘hey, your dad’s a murderer,’ as if I didn’t know what he’d done. I’d been applying for jobs at the time, and nobody called me back. Nobody wanted my family’s name associated with their business.”
“But your name’s Harper,” Jenks said.
She pressed her lips together. “What would you do if you wanted to get away? I mean really get away, so that nobody knew who you’d been before?”
Jenks thought. He gave a slow nod. “Oh. Oh, I think I get it.” He reached out his hand. “Let’s see it.”
“See what?”
“Your patch.”
Rosemary hesitantly lay her right wrist in his palm. She pushed up her wristwrap, exposing the patch beneath. Jenks leaned in, studying it closely.
“This is fucking amazing work,” he said at last. “The only way you can tell it’s new is by how it healed. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was a genuine replacement for a fried patch.”