Warchild Read online

  With two carriers in dock and a handful of merchants, the concourse was busy. Even so you saw the dinginess of this deep-space station—nothing like Basquenal, a Rim Guard station that boasted high-end dens and cybetoriums for kids. You didn’t notice many children here. The paint on the walls looked covered in ashes. Some of the walls were even blast-scarred with signs plastered over the holes, warning of open power cables. The bazaar tables displayed cheap trinkets and bold items that mostly soldiers would like, and were manned by tired-looking, gaudily dressed men and women. Food scents from a dozen different cultures warred with one another in your nose, making you hold your breath. Your stomach clenched.

  All around you black uniforms walked, yet you couldn’t speak to any of them.

  Falcone tugged you toward a glass-fronted restaurant, out of place compared to the other bland entrances. People watched you—you, not Falcone—but most of them seemed no more dangerous than who you were with already.

  Falcone sat you down and went to take his own seat when the station gave a great boom.

  You twitched and saw people running. That sudden. As if you’d blinked and awakened in a different place. Funnels of black poured by the glass windows. The station boomed again, louder this time, and the glass shook. The spice bottles on the table fell over. Falcone reached to grab your arm.

  On the table was a fork. You had it in your hand now. You slammed the prongs into Falcone’s fingers.

  He yelled. People dashed from their seats and out the restaurant. You dived among them, small and lost in the trample of legs. Voices talked over the station comm. Another voice yelled louder behind you, but it was swallowed in the noise the station made. Fires leaped up inside the walls. Larger bodies shoved you along. A black arm brushed close and you grabbed it.

  “Sir—”

  The arm knocked you back and kept running. Most of the activity headed toward the dockring’s main access. By force you ran there too, following where you saw black.

  “Help—sirs—”

  One of the soljets hauled you along, then shoved you out of the way toward one of the merchant ships. She didn’t even look.

  “Get off the dock, kid!”

  “Wait!”

  She ran off. Black uniforms poured up carrier ramps. Soon the dockring would be clear and someone from Falcone’s ship, or Falcone himself, would catch you. You tried to grab another uniform sleeve but suddenly the station shuddered again, knocking you off your feet. You fell hard on your elbow and yelped, but nobody heard. All above you men and women scattered. A soljet said to his comrade as he ran, “They’re docking!”

  Way down the dockring, almost out of sight from the curve of the walls, a small explosion went off at one of the locks. You hauled yourself up, moving slow in the rush. Your head pounded and smoke stung your eyes. You held your arm and tried to veer toward one of the carrier ramps.

  Then new faces poured out of that blown lock.

  They weren’t human. They were tattooed, with skin in colors you’d never seen before on a face except as a mask. They shot at the soljets, sharp bright pulses. The soljets stopped boarding, knelt behind cargo bins, loaders, and ramps, shooting back in stiff streamers of bright red. It was a noisy station festival, full of light and color, except people were dying. Merchants and Chaos citizens caught in the cross fire fell.

  You froze. You had never before seen an alien. They came closer around the dockring, moving with the precision of skill and focused aim. They wore long outer robes that fluttered behind them, as if they were flying. None of the soljets paid attention to you now.

  Someone grabbed you over the face. You recognized the smell of the hand.

  You bit. He released you and you ran straight into the platoon of soljets ahead of you.

  “Drop that gun!” one of the jets yelled.

  Falcone might’ve been chasing you. You didn’t look. You ran as fast as you could. People screamed at you to stop and get out of the way. An alien face looked at you from across the decreasing distance of jet-occupied dock. The eyes were completely black.

  A fist slammed into your back and threw you to the deck. The last word you heard wasn’t one you understood.

  * * *

  X.

  That was all I remembered about Falcone. It was enough.

  PART II

  * * *

  I.

  When I woke up it was a different ship. I could tell by the whining pitch and the rhythmic thud-thud of its drives. I was in a small room with only a flat black mat on the floor, which I lay on, stomach down. Naked. Covered in a blanket and bandaged around my chest and back. I felt the soft fabric. My body hurt. It was an effort just to blink and I wanted to sleep. For a long time. Maybe forever.

  Deep breaths pulled in warm air, not cold like on Falcone’s ship. My stomach coiled. If not Genghis Khan, then where?

  The walls were bare, clean, and painted pale yellow, with broken red lines running around just below the ceiling. Stenciled every now and then beneath the lines were small curving shapes, like the thorny flowers my mother used to keep by her bedside in skinny bottles. The lights in the bolted ceiling were square and bright. At least I had lights.

  It didn’t smell like a pirate ship, all cold and musk. It didn’t look like any merchant I’d ever seen.

  I was facing the hatch. The lock release chimed and an alien walked in.

  For a second the shadowed head gave a scary silhouette before I realized he wore some sort of cloth wrap that covered his scalp and draped down around his shoulders. His clothing wasn’t like anything I knew. It coiled around his body in wide strips, covering him completely from ankles to throat, deep gray. Draped over that was a loose black robe with those same thorny markings running up from hem to collar on the right side. For some reason he was barefoot. That was strange on a ship that could get cold or get blown. Blue tattoos dotted his toes and feet, disappearing into the strips around his legs.

  I blinked, forcing breaths out, and made a small sound, I didn’t know what. Help. Go away. All the stories about strits came to mind in a rush. How they would eat you—

  He crouched smoothly and the shadows fell away.

  It wasn’t an alien.

  His face seemed to shift between human and the strit ones I’d seen before passing out on Chaos—the odd skin tones and black eyes. His eyes were dark around the pupil but not all black like the aliens‘. He had a twisting, dark tattoo that crept up one wide slanted cheekbone, around the outer part of his right eye, and dipped like a tail to the middle of his forehead. It kind of resembled the flower designs on the wall.

  He was human but I didn’t see a human expression on his face, not even a mocking smile like I was used to with Falcone. He just stared at me steadily like some kind of animal, the kinds I’d seen in my primer. The ones that ate meat. Crouching there on the balls of his feet, hands folded in front of his knees, he looked ready to pounce.

  I couldn’t move. He touched my back. My hands clenched but there wasn’t anywhere to go, nothing to do. The room was too small and my breathing too loud.

  His fingers were feather light and they didn’t stray. I couldn’t see what exactly he did, but I felt him fold the blanket down and check the dressing. Just lifting the bandage.

  My skin pulled and I hissed, tears squeezing out the corners of my eyes. He gave no sign that he heard. After he was finished he folded his hands again and looked into my eyes as if he had never moved. All his gestures seemed lazy because they were slow, but I knew they were just deliberate. Not wasted.

  “Your name, what.” He used a soft voice. His accent was heavy but I didn’t recognize it. The way he said the words didn’t seem like a question.

  “Jos Musey.” To my own ears I sounded terrified. He smelled different. Not like cigret smoke or sweat or steel, or food just eaten. Not like any perfume. It could have been body oil and some sort of spice. The air of the ship smelled of it, I had smelled it before he came in. It swam around my head, totally different from
Falcone.

  But that didn’t mean a thing.

  “Jos Musey,” he repeated awkwardly. His hand brushed against his leg and suddenly he held an injet.

  Injets. Drugs. Falcone sometimes threatened with them.

  “No—wait.”

  He ignored me. The narrow, flat point of the injet pressed my skin. Then came the sudden click of the release.

  “It is necessary,” he said before my eyes shut.

  * * *

  II.

  When I next awoke it wasn’t on any ship. Around me was silence, like the deep inside of a station den, where the gulping sound of energy towers couldn’t even get through. The ceiling was lacy white and divided by large eight-sided shapes, high above my head. I lay flat on my back on a firm mat on the floor. My back didn’t hurt anymore and that was a relief, though my limbs felt heavy and achy. The room had a tall window and sunlight bled through the hole-filled curtains, making designs on the rich red rug.

  I had never seen sunlight like that, an intense hot yellow, not even on stations that rotated to face the sun. Maybe this station was just really close to the local star, like Siqiniq in the Rim. I had never been in a room like this either, more expensive-looking than any den I had ever stayed in with my parents. Nothing about it seemed out of place. The red shapes on the walls looked like the knotted design I remembered from the ship and that strange man’s face—hugging thorns that seemed to connect the four corners of the room and touch every piece of reddish-black furniture. A shiny black screen stood loosely unfolded by the far wall. Painted on it in white were more swirls that might have been an alien with arms outstretched as if to fly. All the furniture was low to the ground, as if you were supposed to sit everywhere— a table, a smooth box with drawers and a mirror above it, all shiny like the screen. Not used up like things on Falcone’s ship.

  I remembered Falcone’s people, the people he wanted me to meet. Rich people I was supposed to impress and look pretty for.

  I rolled over to push myself up and caught a shadow as it lay across the rug. Someone was sitting in the corner by the window, watching me.

  I had on clothes at least, a belted blue robe that reached my ankles. I got to my knees and looked at the corner.

  It was the same man from the ship. The human that seemed alien. He didn’t look as old as I’d first thought. His hair hung to his shoulders, dark brown and a little wavy, instead of tied up in that scarf. It made his face seem less cold. He sat on his haunches staring at me, wearing the same wrapped clothing as before, but pure white. He didn’t move.

  I shifted away, to see if that made him do anything. He just blinked. I touched my back, the soft robe, pressed my spine. It didn’t hurt at all. He must have used bot-knitters on me but I didn’t remember feeling the itches. I didn’t remember anything except waking up that one time. He could’ve done anything while I was asleep.

  My insides twisted, burned.

  The air seemed thin and my movements a couple seconds too late. How long had I been out?

  You weren’t supposed to speak unless asked a question. So I didn’t ask.

  Since the man in the corner didn’t do anything, I looked at the curtained window, at the sunlight making art on the floor. Slowly I stood and went toward it.

  “No,” he said.

  I stopped and looked at him.

  “You are not strong,” he said, in that accent that made me have to work to understand him. His eyes grabbed on to me.

  I folded my arms against myself. He was talking. Maybe he wouldn’t mind if I talked too. “What did you do to me? I was shot.”

  “High set paralysis pulse from a Trenton PE sidearm,” he said, with what sounded like distaste. “You are small. It burns you badly, nearly to death if I don’t fix.”

  “Why did you help me?”

  He didn’t answer. He rose smoothly. I backed up a pace. He took one step to the window and touched the wall by the curtain edge. A screen came down behind the curtains, shutting out the sun. Lights in the ceiling opened automatically. I stepped back again when he looked at me. He wasn’t as tall as Falcone but I didn’t like the slow way he moved. I didn’t like this room and its silence.

  He said eventually, “The man that shoots you, who.” His voice rose and fell in all the wrong places.

  I tucked my forearms into opposite sleeves. So he didn’t know Falcone. Or made like he didn’t, for some reason. “A pirate.”

  “A pirate, who.”

  His focused face made my hands cold. I tried to keep looking at him, the way Falcone liked it, but his stare was worse than Falcone’s. I couldn’t see anything in it, what he wanted or expected.

  “The captain of Genghis Khan,” I said. “Falcone.”

  This didn’t seem to affect him either. “He shoots you, why.”

  “Because I ran away.”

  “You are with Falcone, why.”

  “I’m not with him.” Slowly I moved to the other side of the mat away from this man.

  “He wants you, why.”

  “He’s a pirate.” I tried not to sound afraid or rebellious. This man hadn’t moved from the window but I remembered the injet he’d somehow slid from those clothes with no pockets. I glanced at the door. It wasn’t marked by anything except the division in the wall. It had a slide latch and a narrow gap near the floor, not like ship hatches.

  “You run from him, why.”

  The large room was shrinking. It got harder to breathe.

  “He—he’s a pirate.” I didn’t want to say anything else.

  “You are with him, how much time.”

  “How long? I—I don’t know. A year, standard? I don’t know. He had me… he kept me locked up most of the time.”

  Where was Falcone now? Did he know where I was?

  Where was I?

  “What do you want?” I asked carefully.

  The man stepped toward me. I backed up quick and he stopped.

  “You are with Falcone, how. Falcone has you, how. Why.”

  “I’m not with him, I ran away.”

  His eyes tightened. He said more slowly, “You were with Falcone. How. Why.”

  “He just took me. He just attacked my homeship and took me.”

  “Your ship, where.”

  “It’s dead. Mukudori. He told me it was dead.” I looked into the dark eyes. “Do you know it?”

  I didn’t want to hope. But maybe this man had information. Maybe I could get it from him. Somehow.

  “I do not know your ship,” he said. “Yet. Your age, what.”

  “Nine. Falcone said nine. EarthHub Standard.” Which didn’t mean much to kids in deep space, Falcone said. Because life was harder than in Hubcentral, he said.

  Maybe on pirate ships.

  “Only nine,” this man said, and for the first time his gaze slid away, to the wall.

  He gave no clues. Why didn’t he just tell me what he wanted? Games. It was always these grown-up games.

  While he looked at the wall I stared at the tattoo on his face. It was strange, and he smelled strange, and this room was strange, with its silence and all of its straight, perfect black and red furniture and thorn designs. I didn’t like it any more than what was on the Khan.

  I looked at the door again. If I bolted, I bet this slow-moving man would move a lot faster. And there’d be a fight and he’d probably hit me. So I didn’t move. Eventually his eyes found their way back to me, but I still couldn’t read them. If they were interested they didn’t show it.

  Maybe he was going to sell me anyway.

  “Mukudori,” he said suddenly, as if he just remembered, stumbling around the name. “That means what.”

  I rubbed my nose. “Starling.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Small star, yes.”

  “No, a bird. A starling. An animal that flies?” We’d all learned the origin of the ship’s name by the time we could read. His eyes didn’t change so I wasn’t sure if he understood. “How come you don’t get my language?”

&nbs
p; “I don’t speak it first.”

  “Are you strit?”

  His eyes flared. It was the only sign of anger, but it was enough. “That is an insult.”

  I didn’t understand. He wore what looked like an alien tattoo. And I had a sick feeling about where we were. I was pretty sure we weren’t near Earth. He would never have been allowed near Earth looking like that. “You’re a symp, aren’t you? Not a strit, a symp?”

  He frowned. “You say striviirc-na, not strit. You don’t say symp.”

  “Why not?” Everybody called them strits and symps, not striviirc-na and sympathizers.

  “It is rude,” he said, and took a few wandering steps around the room, over the red rug, which landed him closer to me. “I call you Hub scum, yes. Pirate bastard, yes. Same thing.”

  I moved away again. “Oh.”

  “You do that, why.”

  “Do what?”

  “Step back.”

  “Because.” I shifted, scratched at my arm. The robe was slippery against my skin and for some reason it made the cold spread through me. “I don’t know what you want.”

  “I want you not to be afraid.”

  I’d heard that before, enough times to know it was a lie. “I don’t know you and you’re a symp.”

  That should’ve got me hit. But he didn’t move.

  “And you know about sympathizers, what,” he said instead. His eyes widened a bit and he shrugged slightly, a gesture I couldn’t read. He gave weird signals.

  I didn’t answer. It was probably a lead-in for some blame and abuse.

  He kept looking at me. And waited. So I said reluctantly, “You started the war.”

  “How.”

  He didn’t tell me the answers like Falcone. Maybe he really wanted to know what I thought, but I doubted it.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Jos Musey-na,” he said. “You can speak all right. I hope to know what you know.”