Local Star, Aimee Ogden [ebook reader that looks like a book txt] 📗

looked too much like the astronautics celebration, except instead of playing out against a background of black, they rippled over the cracked face of an Arcology, one of the little dome habitats that studded the surface of Hedgehome. Tiny dolls spilled from the wound in the plastisteel surface. Not dolls at all, though. Dying planet-siders. Triz’s fist ground against her lips as she swallowed hot bile.

The newsreader went on: “Previously hailed as one of the heroes of the battle at Golros, the captain is being held by Fleet Admiralty pending an investigation on charges of war crimes. On the line with us now, we have Mer Dustald-1 Alderly, CFS Vice Admiral, retired, who served with Strategy during the Cluster Campaigns, to discuss what this means for the Fleet. “

“Tactics like these do not represent the Fleet I served in.” Mer Alderly’s voice cracked, with age and with the strain of her agitation. “Maybe it’s a little easier to clear a defense installation in record time when you’re willing to weaken its base by destroying the friendly civilian habitation downlevel. Those people had suffered enough already at the hands of the Ceebees. The Fleet should have arrived as liberators. Instead this upstart captain made us murderers. And for what? A shot at an early promotion?”

“Vice Admiral, do you believe that when the charges are read tomorrow, we’ll learn wh—”

Triz slammed her wrist fob against the wallport and the screen went black and silent. She rested her forehead against the wallport for the space of a long, shuddering breath, and when she sat back, another light had gone on in the quadhome.

Quelian stood in the space between the portlounge and the galley. Already dressed for the workday, in a gray worksuit nearly the twin of Casne’s uniform, the rich undertones of his skin, the copper and bronze of exposed wires, had bled away; he looked like his own ghost. He’d always been a small man, practically a miniature next to his statuesque spouses and daughter, but now he’d all but shriveled away. “We ate with her last night,” he said. “She didn’t say anything about this.”

“It’s not true.” Triz’s fists balled in the soft fabric of her trousers. “Casne would never—she’d never. Someone’s doing this to, I don’t know, get back at her for Golros. Or something!”

Quelian shook his head. “Fleet service changes people. When you fire a Tactics array long enough, you start to forget what you’re firing at. Who you’re firing at.” His lips thinned and he looked away from Triz. “This quad builds and the Fleet destroys. We’ll be lucky if the whole family isn’t dragged down with that kind of reputation tagged to our name.”

“Your reputation?” Triz flung a pillow at him, but he raised a hand, and it bounced harmlessly to the floor. “That’s your daughter you’re talking about!”

Casne’s mother, Veling, peered out of the bedroom doorframe. Idha and Othine, Casne’s daddy and damu, were just behind her. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s this about Casne?”

Quelian stared at the ceiling just over his wife’s head. The vein in his forehead quivered as his jaw clenched. “Your daughter’s been arrested,” he said through his teeth. “War crimes, they’re saying, and by what I just saw, they’re not wrong.”

Othine gasped. Idha, forehead furrowed, put his hand on eir shoulder. They both looked to Veling to speak first, which was exactly what she did. “That’s absurd.” Veling resembled her daughter so strongly; the sudden tears tracing the lines of her face carved a fresh canyon of grief through Triz. “That’s Casne you’re talking about. No child of this quad would do such a thing, Quelian, you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking—”

“I came here to see what we were going to do about it.” Triz pushed to a stand and stumbled on the uneven footing of the shifting cushions. “I didn’t think you were going to . . . Quelian, you’re a Justice tribune. Can’t you talk to the Fleet? To Admiral Savelian or the—the Interior Watch?”

“He can’t pull strings for her now.” Veling’s word rasped sandpaper-rough over Triz’s skin. “Even if those strings were attached to something worth unraveling, and Triz, I don’t know that they are. The Admiralty doesn’t, and shouldn’t, come running when a tribune snaps their fingers. You know that. How would it look if her father tried to use his influence like that?”

“I know.” The words broke out of Triz, a surrender she wasn’t ready to signal. “Do you—?” The question died unasked in her mouth, and she swallowed it, fetid and whole.

Unasked, but not unanswered. “No. I don’t believe Casne could ever do such a thing.” Her eyes cut sideways at Quelian. “Of course, people change. But what you’re talking about is more than just change. My daughter didn’t suddenly abdicate her entire sense of self after five years in the Fleet.”

“. . . Okay.” Triz’s hands had balled into fists in the fabric of her worksuit. She pressed her fingers flat instead, smoothing over the deep lines she’d creased in. “I just want to do something. I need to do something. What do I do?”

“Go to work,” Quelian said. “There’s a pile of Skimmers waiting for us in the wrenchworks and a Parallax moored outside that’s not going to spontaneously regenerate its lateral atmospheric stabilizer.”

“Quelian.” Veling’s voice lanced into her quadspouse like a well-cracked whip. Quelian flinched and looked away. “You will not take this out on Triz.” Veling pushed past him to take Triz’s hands in her own and cast a frown over her shoulder, which Quelian ignored. Veling and Quelian had always been the most diagonal in this quad, both doting on their single quadborn child in their own ways. Veling had always been especially kind to the guttergirl stray who had fallen into the family’s orbit.

“We’re going to figure this out,” Othine said, putting on a smile—for Triz’s sake, she thought. “The people of Vivik know you and trust your judgment. And they know and trust Casne,