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

admirers. “Speaking of the wrenchworks. That must have been Kalo’s Swarmer on the blocks down there? Did the Hero of Hedgehome tell you about how he took out an entire Ceebee orbital installation on one good engine?” She laughed, and the sweet sound drew Triz in close again. “I guess not, seeing as you’re not still down there getting your ear bent.”

Not this again. Triz grimaced. “Kalo and I don’t have a lot to say to each other these days. Shitting stars, Cas, you know that.” It had been Casne who introduced her to Kalo. Triz knew just how much Casne wanted them to hit it off, wanted them to have a gon.

“Well, yeah. But Nantha and I always thought . . .” Casne pulled Triz into the shuttered doorway of the bakery. “He hasn’t told me what happened between you two yet, either.”

Triz raised her eyebrows into Casne’s expectant silence. “Okay? You know I don’t care if you keep sleeping with him. I don’t even care if you want to bring him into your gon instead of me.”

“Triz.” Casne grimaced at the magnitude of that lie. “You know you don’t have to wait till you find a fourth, right? We love you and we want you to be part of our gon. I know you like the idea of a quad but a triad is a good start. Or finish, for that matter. Now, later. Whenever.”

“I know that.” Triz rested her forehead against Casne’s strong shoulder. It felt good, and she didn’t have to meet Cas’ eyes. She knew Casne and Nantha both cared for her, that whatever triad or quad or pent they ended up with would be a beautiful thing. And she also knew Casne and Nantha had been together for about a million turns, and as a triad, they would be Casne and Nantha (and Triz), not Casne and Nantha and Triz, and she wanted a partner of her own to bring to that table. Both so she wouldn’t feel that tiny bit of extra distance, and so Casne and Nantha wouldn’t realize it was there and feel guilty about it. They would always have their own history from before Triz, their private, personal language of Academy stresses and first Fleet assignments that Triz had learned to understand but never to speak. Some people were suns, some were moons, and some were just rocks who soaked up others’ light and warmth. Triz was not a sun.

“All right. As long as you know.” Casne rocked a bit from side to side, making Triz dance with her. “So do you want me to throw someone at you? Not another Fleetie then, but—”

Triz’s face scrunched up; she pulled back a bit to frown up at Casne. “Why would I care if it’s someone from the Fleet?”

“I thought that’s why you and Kalo—never mind.”

She hated how well Casne knew her, and she loved it too.

“Well, do you want me and Nan to ruminate on that one?”

“No! I mean, maybe. I don’t . . .” Triz sighed and rolled her face to the side. Her forehead found the damp heat of Casne’s neck. “I just need time to—to figure things out. All right?”

“Sure. Yes. Sorry.” Casne rolled them side-by-side back into the cheerful fracas of the Arcade; her arm lingered around Triz’s neck. “Let’s just have fun tonight. You remember my friends Lanniq and Saabe, right?”

“Of course!” Triz liked getting to spend time with Casne’s Fleet friends. A little glimpse of life out there in the black, without the unpleasant necessity of actually having to put a Hab behind her. At fifteen, she’d been rescued (though broadly speaking, proper rescues surely involved less screaming and biting on behalf of the rescued) from the bottom of Rydoine Hab, crammed into a spaceship, and pitched out into the void. No more dark familiar recycling caves, only the endless black, swallowing her alive. In her panic to get back, she’d managed to scratch a plastiglass viewport on the ship the Tolvian mendicants had chartered across the Galactic Web from Rydoine to Vivik. Even the other gutterkids had been a little scared of her, then.

“Great!” Casne pulled her around the bend of the Arcade. “They’re at Edillo’s. Come on!”

“Edillo’s,” Triz echoed.

Hopefully, she’d changed enough since her guttergirl days not to embarrass Casne and her Fleetie friends in an upclass joint like that. “Okay. I’ll buy the first round.”

The steward at Edillo’s had given up on his usual hospitality rituals; he couldn’t even contrive to pour drinks himself for the crowd of Fleet uniforms invading the normally quiet lounge. Instead, he sold Triz two bottles of spicewine at a severe markup while he hunched over the opening of his stock cubby. “Glasses?” she shouted over the background din, but he had already turned away to a pair of ensigns who were trying to open the taps drilled into the gnarled moonshine tree that formed the centerpiece of the establishment. When the steward cornered the ensigns and launched into a tirade about the history of the tree and the great-grandmothers who had planted it, Triz gave up. She retreated through the crush of bodies to the pile of cushions in the back corner where Casne’s friends had staked out space.

Casne’s fellow captain, Lanniq Erron-2 Kett, was the most beautiful man Triz had ever met. His skin was a few shades lighter than Casne’s, and like her, he wore his hair shaved down close. His shoulders and waist formed very nearly a perfect triangle, and Triz found herself staring more than once while he recounted heroics from the battle at Golros. Too bad he was already firmly ensconced in a stable triad of his own, or Triz might’ve made a play for him. When he leaned in to take the spicewine out of Triz’s hand, his fingers were warm against hers, and he flashed her a lopsided smile. Maybe she’d make a play for him anyway, especially if Casne was too tired to come back to