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

the company of a known war criminal.” The holes in Rocan’s face held Triz’s attention; even deprived of his implants, he seemed to be staring at her, boring holes through her to match his own. “Apparently, our settlement of clusterward space has been ill-received in the Confederated Worlds.”

The guards guided Rocan into a cell and sealed the barrier behind him. “Citizen,” said the senior officer, turning to Triz. “Casne Vivik Veling isn’t authorized for visitors at this time.”

“You destroyed two Habs and an Arcology to take Hedgehome!” Triz ignored the guard. Her lip curled in disdain. “You almost exterminated the native intelligence on Golros.”

“I think you’ll find we have recorded evidence to show that it was our friend the Captain here who demolished the Arcology on Hedgehome.” Rocan counted on his fingers. “And the Habs were given instructions to evacuate; their choices to the contrary don’t rest on my shoulders. That sets us at a tie, although I’m disinclined to measure Golros’ so-called alien . . . ‘intelligence’ against the actual human lives ended by Captain Casne. And what more do you suppose the Interior Watch will turn up if they start going through footage of the previous combat she’s seen?”

“Citizen—” The guard put his hand on Triz’s shoulder.

She shrugged it off, jumping away from him. He didn’t want to hurt her or overpower her, and she used his reluctance against him, dancing around a chair in the corridor to buy herself another moment. “You can’t leave her in here with him!”

“I didn’t kill those people.” Casne spoke to Rocan as if no one else were in the room. Her lips pressed bloodlessly together as she remembered the rules that compelled her not to talk about her case. She jerked her head side to side. “And your math doesn’t check out.”

“Casne is a hero,” Triz spat, putting herself between the two cells, “and you’re the human in a robot suit who thought he could get away with stealing two planets out from under the rest of the galaxy. Don’t you dare compare yourself to her.”

Rocan smiled. Unlike the wreckage of his eyes, his teeth were all too human, neatly lined up but faintly yellow for their years. “She’s more like me than she is like you, a grease stain someone forgot to wipe off the floor of the wrenchworks.”

This time the guard’s hands closed around both of Triz’s arms. “Say your goodbyes, citizen. It’s time to go.”

“Is that a Rydoine accent I detect in you as well?” Rocan pressed. “But not an upper Hab accent, I think. Was it the good captain who pulled you out of the recycling pits and raised you up to something like humanity? Or have you just attached yourself to her for the duration, like a watersys barnacle with delusions of grandeur?”

“Shut up,” Triz said in disgust. The same words cracked out of Casne with a force Triz couldn’t have matched on her best day. The pure acid of Casne’s tone surprised Triz. It occurred to her that she didn’t really know who Casne was, couldn’t swear that the woman who flew for the Fleet and the one who sat down at Remembrance dinners in the quadhome were one and the same. Sometimes it hurt to remember that distance, but right now, she reflected Casne’s incandescent anger like a tiny, angry moon. She didn’t believe, not for a second, that either of those women could’ve destroyed a living Hab. “Shut. Up.”

“I think we’re done here.” The guards steered Triz away from the cells, gently but firmly. She craned her neck, wanting one last image of her to leave with.

“It’s okay, Triz,” Casne called after her. Triz planted her feet, pulling the guards up short. “The Fleet will do the right thing by me.” Casne might even believe that. Triz, on the other hand . . . “Just . . . look after my folks. This must be awful for them.” She leaned toward Triz, her forehead glimmering faintly where it touched the barrier. “And for you. This was supposed to be a happy visit.”

“So we’ll have twice as much celebrating to do, once you’re out.” Triz put her full effort into a grin that quickly ran out of fuel. “Cas . . . if they do figure this out and let you off, is your career going to be okay?”

“The Fleet will do the right thing by me,” Casne repeated, which was not at all the same as “yes.”

When the door closed behind Triz and the guards, it felt like closing the recycling pit hatch on a burial.

Chapter Four

Triz drifted downward from Justice, first across the open escalators down to the Arcade, and then around each spiraling level, past the ‘shine sellers with their sputtering still and the sizzling griddles of fatty sausages and flatbreads, past strings of beads and squares of shimmering scalecloth. Usually, any spare time to browse the Arcade would be a welcome holiday, but right now, every step raised her blood pressure. Unbelievable, that everyone else went on with their lives while Casne was pinned in Justice above.

And yet when she reached the lowest level of the Arcade, Triz gravitated to a lift and fobbed in a request to be carried downhab. The wrenchworks exerted as much pull on her as the local star did to the Hab. The wrenchworks was a place where she always knew which end was up. Everything was up when you hung out at the bottom of the Hab all the time.

But when the lift doors opened, Triz found she wasn’t alone. Quelian had stripped the warped plastiglass from the cockpit of a Skimmer. The plastiglass reformed its original shape after an impact or even a puncture, but when overheated by the superheated blast of a plasma cannon, the substructure memory of its original architecture was destroyed. He’d begun to paint a layer of sealant on the cockpit frame to prepare it for the replacement.

The soft swish of the lift doors closing behind Triz made