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

Triz’s place tonight. One small catch: he was a Light Attack pilot. But one night wasn’t a gon and after all, Triz told herself, no one was perfect.

Then again . . . his smile had dropped off his face, even before he had the spicewine open. Triz remembered Casne had told her not to bring up his family tonight—something about his nephew falling in with the Ceebees, with no word from him since the battle at Hedgehome. That sounded like the kind of thing that would severely overshadow even a ringing victory like the one the Fleet just enjoyed.

“We were just getting to the good part,” Lanniq said, by way of greeting. He got the sealer off the wine and drank a mouthful. No one asked about the missing cups. “But I don’t tell it as well as Kalo. Where is he?”

“You don’t tell it as well as Kalo because you don’t do the sound effects. You gotta do the sound effects.” Saabe, a lanky lieutenant from the low-grav colony on Andeus, leaned in to reach for the wine bottle. E took a deep swig and gargled it violently, miming with eir arms a starfighter in flight. Casne elbowed em hard, making the bottle jump in eir hand; Lanniq rescued it and Saabe sat back, chagrined. “Anyway, old Pokey is probably spilling his heroic saga to the poor greasemark stuck with him in the wrenchworks. Maybe making time with them, too, if he’s lucky. He’s been churning heavy atmo since before Hedgehome, poor guy.”

Triz stiffened. “Looked to me like the only thing spilling in the works was the entire flight assembly of ‘Pokey’s’ Skimmer. Do you cockpit jockeys know you don’t win a fight by collecting the most shrapnel with your fuselage?”

“Lieutenant,” Casne said, a little louder than was necessary to cut through the background chatter. Saabe’s spine straightened as if by instinct. “Do you remember my partner Triz, who works? For my father? In the Vivik wrenchworks?”

“Oh! Shitting stars.” Saabe scrambled to make room on the cushions for Triz to slide in between em and Casne. “I didn’t recognize you without your, I mean, when you’re not—you and Kalo were, uh.” E jumped when Casne cuffed em amicably on the back of the head. “Sorry.”

“It’s nothing. Just pass the wine.”

She’d just raised the bottle to her lips when a four-note fanfare played over the bar’s speakers. The strangely upbeat tone covered the lowkey rhythm of the music beating a moment before, and the lights flashed on and off to match the beat. She didn’t recognize it as one of the Hab’s alarm codes. She took a big gulp before noticing the three Fleet officers around her had gone stiff. “What does that mean? What’s going on?”

“It’s him,” said Casne, standing. She waited just long enough for Triz to catch up before shoving through the throng of patrons who now crowded toward the door out onto the Arcade.

Thanks to Casne’s imposing figure, they made their way up to the railing that looked down into the lower levels. A moment later, both Saabe and Lanniq butted up against them. Triz wanted to ask again exactly what was going on, and whether they were likely to lose their prime seats in Edillo’s by the time all this was over, but clamped her mouth shut when the main lift doors below opened. The quiet swarms of revelers pushed back from the doors as a quartet of Fleet officers emerged. They must have boarded the Hab several levels down, at the umbilicus band. The Hab lights glared on their helmets’ visors, lending an eerie sheen of sameness to the group; on each shoulder, they bore the insignia of their home whaleship. From here, Triz couldn’t make out which it was; she didn’t think it was Casne’s home ship, the Dailos. When she turned to ask Casne, the hard look on her face stopped her short.

More movement drew her eye back down. Another figure emerged from the lift, and behind him, four more guards. Only the man in the middle had his helmet off, and Triz gasped when she recognized him. “That’s him,” she said. “That’s Rocan Melviq.”

“The one and only Lord Commander,” said Lanniq, as Saabe muttered, “He’s just a figurehead.”

More theories came jumbling out of the two of them. “My cousin whose ex-partner works for Fleet Intelligence says the Ceebees still have another secret terraforming project underway,” Saabe said.

“No.” Lanniq’s hands tightened on the railing in front of him. “They’re done for after Hedgehome and Chimon. The tide of this war has turned. I believe that.” He said it like a man who needed to believe it. Triz wondered again about the nephew who’d disappeared. Would he come slinking home now that the Ceebees had been routed, or was he on his way home already in a Fleet prison cell?

Saabe clucked and shook eir head. “That’s what they want us to think. But I’ll bet you a month’s sugar rations that they still have reserves hidden out there. Maybe somewhere webward of Golros . . .”

Triz gave up on following the argument and returned to Casne’s side. When her hand brushing Casne’s arm didn’t dislodge her viselike grip on the railing, she prized Casne’s fingers up and clasped them herself instead. Casne squeezed once, then relaxed. “Look at him, Triz. He’s enjoying it.”

Casne was right. As the anonymous Fleet officers marched Rocan forward, hissed curses and whispered disgust followed them. The Ceebee Commander wore a small, calm smile. “They’re taking him to Justice?” Triz asked, as his escorts directed him into the minilift. A bottle smashed against the doors just as they closed; a Hab security guard with his uniform jacket hanging open half-heartedly pushed his way through the crowd while a trio of cleanerbots zipped between legs to take care of the broken glass. “Why march him through the Arcade in the middle of the party? They should have at least left his helmet on.”

“Civilians love a show,” said Casne grimly. Her