With the rings of Osquivel arching overhead, Fitzpatrick bent over and looked skeptically into the Roamer grappler pod. Zhett Kellum slid into the pilot’s chair, buckling her safety restraints in a smooth motion. Her fingertips ran across the controls, activating the warm-up systems. She glanced impatiently over her shoulder. “Well, are you going to get in, Fitzie? Or didn’t the EDF teach you boys how to fasten your own restraints?”
“Maybe I can’t believe you’re taking me out for a ride.”
“Consider it an educational experience. We’re tired of you Eddies being so clueless.” While he searched for an appropriate retort, Zhett sarcastically unbuckled her restraint strap, clicked it into place again, and spoke with exaggerated care. “Watch me if you’re having trouble. Slide this end in until it clicks. Pull on the strap if you need to tighten it.”
Fitzpatrick threw himself into the copilot seat. “EDF flyers are competent enough that we aren’t paranoid about safety restraints.”
“Ah, so you must have hit your head too many times during hard landings. Too many unpredictable things can go wrong. You may as well prepare for the ones you can.”
She activated the pod’s controls, and the hatch hissed shut beside him. It reminded Fitzpatrick of a coffin lid . . . or the lifetube in which he’d been sealed until Zhett retrieved him. “Aren’t you afraid I’m going to overpower you and steal this ship?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Fly away in a grappler pod? That’s awfully ambitious of you. How many centuries do you think it’ll take to reach the nearest Hansa planet?” He bit his lip, scowling. “Besides, if you think it would be so easy to overpower me . . . well, you’re welcome to try.”
She lifted the pod from its docking platform and backed out of the small vehicle station. She rotated them in place and flew into the rubble of Osquivel’s rings with a casual ease. He looked out the front windowport. “Where are we going?”
“I want to show you our facilities, give you an idea of how much work we’ve put into this complex—though I sense you’re not a man who’s easily impressed.”
“Certainly not by anything Roachers can do.”
Her dark eyes flashed with anger. “Nor are you a man given to exaggerated displays of respect or appreciation.” She spun the pod around in a stomach-lurching three-sixty, then followed it with two barrel rolls.
Fitzpatrick held on, but didn’t give her the satisfaction of squawking or complaining. He’d been through worse—slightly worse—during EDF training. As she cruised up out of the ring plane, Fitzpatrick stared at all the bright points, thermal plumes, jets of exhaust, and waste rubble spreading out from processing facilities.
The spacedock structures were exposed now, several of them holding partially completed Roamer vessels. These operations were a dozen times more extensive than anything Fitzpatrick had imagined. “But our whole battle group came here to fight the hydrogues. Why didn’t we see any of this?”
“Because Eddies aren’t terribly observant, and because we did a bit of camouflage ahead of time.”
“All these stations and habitation complexes and industries . . . I expected a couple of old decommissioned cargo containers and a shuttle or two.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Fitzie. The Big Goose always underestimates us.”
“Don’t call me Fitzie.”
“We’ve got five primary spacedocks and ship-assembly grids, four main habitation complexes, seventeen office outposts, twenty-three roving smelter factories, and eight stationary fabrication plants that take processed raw metals and form them into components. I can’t even tell you how many separate storehouses, equipment lockers, food caches, or spare-parts hangars there are, not to mention sunside greenhouse domes and hydroponics chambers.”
He pressed his face close to the grappler pod’s window, counting bright spots in Osquivel’s rings that were clearly not natural debris. How could we have missed all this before? “What’s your population here? I thought Roamers were just . . . you know, a family at a time, a handful of people.”
She took one hand off the controls. “There you go again, Fitzie. We’ve got prospectors and geologists who run through the rings searching for resource rocks, then teams of ore-crunchers move in to break it all down. Crews to run the smelters. Then there are extruders and fabricators, along with debris haulers—that’s ‘garbagemen’ in Eddie terms. Truckers to haul material from place to place. Maintenance workers, troubleshooters, shipbuilders, vessel designers, engine designers, life-support technicians, computer specialists, spacedock managers, structural engineers, electricians, and compy specialists to maintain our robotic workforce.”
Fitzpatrick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “It’s like a beehive.”
“And that’s only those of us actively working on new vessels. I haven’t even mentioned the second-tier support workers, food-prep personnel, inventory accountants, tradesmen and merchants, payroll staff.”
“Payroll?”
“Yes, Fitzie, we do get paid. We also have a cleaning staff, though we generally expect each person to do most of that work for themselves. You might want to mention that to your fellow Eddies. This isn’t a hotel, and they shouldn’t expect us to pick up after them. They’ve been piss-poor guests so far.”
“Then let us go.”
“After all you’ve seen? Fat chance.” She flew him through the ring, descending closer to the giant gas planet. “And none of what I’ve told you includes our cometary-extraction crews high up in the Kuiper Belt.”
“Nor does it count the thirty-two unlawful EDF prisoners you’ve kept.”
“Good point. They’re certainly a strain on our resources—or at least on our patience. We would appreciate it if you’d at least acknowledge what we rescued you from.” As if she had choreographed the conversation, Zhett cruised through a dense layer of rubble and reached another set of glittering objects reflecting the glow of the planet. “Look down there. That’s what was left of your big lumbering Eddie ships after the drogues finished with you.”
Fitzpatrick felt a lurch in his chest, panic washing over him again as he was reminded of the massacre. He remembered the screaming, the shouts . . . the utter helplessness.
He had been in the midst of the fray, watching squadron after squadron of Remora fighters obliterated like moths in a blowtorch. He had seen Manta cruisers, even gigantic Juggernauts, torn to pieces. The hydrogues had severely damaged his own cruiser. Fitzpatrick had issued evacuation orders, watching the alien warglobes converge on his Manta, their blue lightning weapons lancing out—
He’d barely gotten to a lifetube in time, ejecting just as his ship exploded behind him, spraying debris in all directions, damaging his signal beacon and ruining the life-support units. He had drifted, wounded, as unconsciousness slowly took him . . . until this demonic angel rescued him.
“Thank you,” he said in a very small voice.
Zhett looked startled but did not goad or tease him—not now.
Shudders ran down Fitzpatrick’s spine as he stared at these ghost ships that had been abandoned by the EDF battle group. The space graveyard both awed him and made him want to hide.
As he looked at the wreckage, it finally became clear to Fitzpatrick that he and the EDF refugees would have died out here. All of them. The battle group had raced away from the ringed planet in full retreat. Even now, months later, no scout had returned to look for any remaining lifetubes. Zhett Kellum and her Roamers had indeed saved Fitzpatrick’s life.
Damn, he hated to be beholden to her!
Perhaps sensing his mood, Zhett let compassion instead of sarcasm color her voice. He much preferred this tone to mocking insults. “I know what it’s like . . . in a way. My mother and little brother were both killed in a dome breach when I was only eight years old. We lived on an asteroid observation station, and Roamers had plotted the orbits of the main components in the belt, but it’s awfully hard to predict the paths of maverick meteoroids. The armorglass dome was smashed, broken wide open to space. All thirty people inside died of sudden explosive decompression. Almost half of the bodies were lost.”
“I’m . . . sorry, Zhett.”
“I was only eight, but I still remember the funeral. We wrapped each of the victims in a long embroidered shroud marked with our clan symbols. Then my father launched them up out of the ecliptic with enough velocity to escape the system’s pull. That way they’d drift forever, true Roamers carried along by the vagaries of gravity, following their own Guiding Stars.”
“Does that . . . sort of accident happen often to you people?”
She concentrated on flying again, not looking at him, though he could see a sparkle of tears in her large eyes. “Roamers live and work in high-risk environments. Everybody knows that. Accidents come with the territory. We just try not to let the same disaster happen more than once.” He saw her swallow convulsively. “In fact, the dome breach accident that killed my mother and brother led to a remarkable innovation. We would have sold the idea to the Big Goose, if we hadn’t thought you’d cheat us.”
Fitzpatrick didn’t rise to the bait. “What was your solution?”
“We disperse thready aerogel clouds in the upper layers inside the colony hemisphere. That way if a breach happens, the squishy aerogel clutter is sucked to the gap first. They whoosh over, seal together, and clog the hole. Exposed to vacuum, the material sets and seals the breach like platelets in your blood forming a scab over a wound.”
Fitzpatrick recalled Tasia Tamblyn, another Roamer, and her unorthodox solution of creating artificial rafts out of tactical armor foam to hold refugees on Boone’s Crossing. “That’s quite an idea.”
“You learn to be resourceful when you don’t get everything on a silver platter,” Zhett said. “Like some people I know.”
Fitzpatrick felt he had to defend himself, at least a little. “Yeah, it was so easy growing up with a famous, snooty name. Once in a while I wished I could just have a normal, unremarkable life.”
“We know your parents were ambassadors,” Zhett said. “And your grandmother was Chairman Maureen Fitzpatrick, Dame Battleaxe herself.”
Fitzpatrick nearly choked with unexpected laughter. “That’s a good name for her.” He pictured his stern grandmother, remembered the times he had spent with her as a child. Maureen was distinguished-looking, with porcelain features and an icy beauty—few people’s conception of an old battleaxe—but he realized the appellation was completely accurate. “And I knew her only after she’d retired and supposedly mellowed. I would not have wanted to cross her when she was the Hansa Chairman.”
As Zhett flew the grappler pod around the battlefield wreckage, Fitzpatrick noticed other pods and small tugbikes carrying Roamer salvage experts who dismantled the ships, stripping away valuable materials. Electronic systems, sleeper modules, food and air supplies, even scrap metal. He assumed everything was hauled over to the spacedocks and ship-assembly grids, where they would be reinstalled in Roamer constructions.
“So who was your grandfather? How did he put up with her?” Zhett asked.
Fitzpatrick shrugged, watching a work crew remove a large Juggernaut hull segment that had been blackened by hydrogue lightning. He turned away, not wanting to look at the damage.
“Oh, I never even met him. When their marriage ended in a bitter divorce, good old Dame Battleaxe used her political clout to crush the poor man. She made him bankrupt, destitute, and he never set foot in the halls of power again. I always wondered what was so bad about the guy.” Self-consciously, he ran a hand through his loose, dark hair. Already, it was growing longer than he’d ever been allowed to keep it in the EDF. “I knew my grandmother well enough not to believe her ‘Maureen-centric’ view of history.”
Zhett flew past a mangled Remora, its cockpit torn open as if some rabid dog had ripped it to shreds. Parts of an engine drifted about, and Fitzpatrick was sure he caught a glimpse of a deflated spacesuit, all that remained of the dead pilot. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Could we, um . . . look someplace else?”
Without teasing him, she flew away from the salvage operations, following the long, sweeping ring. Below, Osquivel’s clouds seemed smooth and peaceful, giving no hint that monsters hid deep within.
“By virtue of being Fitzpatricks, my parents were made ambassadors to a succession of Hansa colony worlds. They transferred from place to place as they got bored with each location. But I lived with private tutors or in fancy boarding schools. My fellow blueblood students and I had regular assignments to go slumming—you know, work preordained charity missions and keep in touch with all the little people we were supposed to remember.”
“Like Roamers, you mean?” Zhett asked with a defensive undertone.
“Oh, no! My grandmother would have been horrified if she had ever caught me with a Roamer. I participated in environmental cleanups, visited down-and-out families. I handed out clothes or soup, assisted in restoring polluted marshlands or decaying seaside communities. I could see the worth of the work, but I hated it each time, and my family’s reasons for making me do it were no more altruistic than mine.”
“It was helping other people, Fitzie. Couldn’t you appreciate that for its own sake? Didn’t it make you feel good?”
“I never managed to see it that way . . . at least not at the time. What I learned was how to smile whenever a camera was pointed toward me, because if I made a media blunder I would catch hell from my grandmother.”
Zhett shook her head, flying them onward. “Ah, Patrick Fitzpatrick the Third, your Guiding Star is no brighter than a strap-on fingerlight.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Some Roamer religious nonsense?”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t be accusing other people of nonsense. Didn’t you ever have any close friends, any pets?”
“Not really. It wasn’t part of the program. My life was completely mapped out for me, and that didn’t leave much room for spontaneity.”
Now Zhett gave him a warm smile. “Aha! And that must have hampered your understanding of how people interact. That’s why a cooperative life among the Roamers is such a shock to you. It’s an alien environment. Your life on Earth was always so sheltered and so set. You never had to strive for anything. That’s why you can’t take pride in anybody else’s accomplishments.”
He scowled and turned away. “There’s the familiar Zhett Kellum again. I was beginning to worry, since it must have been fifteen minutes since the last time you criticized me.”
“Touché,” she said, then, “I’m sorry.”
He sat in silence, thinking. “It never occurred to me that other people—like you Roamers—might live differently because you want to. That you might actually be happy with what you have. I assumed your lower-class living was the result of your own failures rather than . . . conscious choice. Always I divided everyone into two camps: the rich and the needy. I was glad to be among the rich, and convinced that the needy wanted everything I had.”
“Excuse me, Fitzie, but I wouldn’t trade lives with you for all the credits in the Hansa corporate bank accounts.” Refusing to meet his gaze, Zhett reached over to touch his arm with a glimmer of compassion. When she realized what she was doing, she snatched her hand away as if the contact with him might burn her fingers. “Maybe you just need a fresh start to do something useful instead of being a spoiled rich kid.”
She piloted the grappler pod back into the docking bay of the converted asteroid’s vehicle pool. As they climbed out and stretched their legs, Fitzpatrick turned to see barrel-chested Del Kellum emerging from the hatch that led to the administrative offices. “There you are, my sweet!” He looked askance at Fitzpatrick. “I hope you had a good time—and that he didn’t try anything.”
“You worry too much, Dad. I had him wrapped around my little finger.” Fitzpatrick gave her an affronted look.
“I’ve brought news from Rendezvous. The Roamers decided unanimously to cut off ekti shipments to the Big Goose. We’ve shut down all trade whatsoever.”
“No more ekti shipments?” Fitzpatrick cried. “We need that fuel! While you Roamers hide, the EDF is fighting this war against the drogues, protecting your little jackrabbit asses.”
“Protecting us?” Kellum let out a bitter laugh. “By damn, you Eddies have a strange way of showing it, by raiding and destroying Roamer cargo ships. We recently recovered the wreckage of one flown by a good friend of mine, Raven Kamarov. Emptied of its ekti cargo and then blasted to pieces by EDF jazers. Don’t go giving me any bullshit about you boys ‘protecting’ us.”
Zhett turned to him. “The Big Goose can’t make any excuses for what they’ve done, Fitzie. If they want their ekti back, they have to confess to their crimes, bring the perpetrators to justice, and renounce any such activities in the future. Simple enough.”
Fitzpatrick felt a hot lump in the pit of his stomach, his knees grew weak, and he was sure all the color had drained from his face. He himself was responsible for that particular mess. He had ordered the blast that destroyed Kamarov’s unarmed ship. He didn’t dare speak up and admit his guilt, though it must have been sickeningly obvious on his face.
Zhett noticed his oddly reticent behavior as she led him back to the chambers where the other EDF prisoners were held. Despite his resentment for their situation, Fitzpatrick couldn’t reveal what he had done, not simply for fear of the Roamer reprisals, but because a small, nagging part of him didn’t want Zhett Kellum to think any less of him. . . .