starcustard (act 2)

chapter ten

'The only way,' Ontonei said in his low, careful voice, 'to break their grip on all these lives is to disable them entirely. We will do it carefully, planning every detail, orchestrating every besiegement of their power. Organised forces will override all enslaving protocols, take control of all resources. We will strike at the heart of their organization, creating a diversion during which each and every segment of their infrastructure will be entirely dismantled....'

Optional music track: 'ISAN - Dilly'

Gregarium found himself following Tenua's gaze from the animated face of the speaker to the ornate ceiling, to the extravagant shoes of a woman several seats away. Tenua peripherally noted every piece of jewelry, every shined buckle and every polished fingernail. The doctor knew she was also taking in every greasy syllable from the front of the room; somewhere behind her large blinking eyes, Ontonei's message was being churned and processed with everything else. Gregarium imagined it didn't rank particularly high-priority in Tenua's mind.

The extremity of Ontonei's address didn't surprise him. What did surprise him was how smooth the rhetoric, how flawless the structure. Perhaps he had somehow made friends with a very talented speechwriter. Every individual in attendance was made out to be a passionate defender of freedom, specially selected to join this noble effort in behalf of millions of oppressed human beings, photographs of whom were being projected one after another across the curtain behind the speaker.

'With the proper applications of force,' he went on, 'we can and will ensure the entire slave industry learns exactly how wrong they have been. When we have successfully damaged enough of their infrastructure to halt the entire industry long enough to extract every single child from their insidious system, there will be nothing left for them. Nothing at all. They will never forget this.'

A strike. Ontonei's proposal involved a lot of brute force. He was calling--almost impossibly--for a large-scale barricade against all known SCA facilities. Not many were known, Gregarium was aware. For all their traceability, slavekids seemed to be delivered from nowhere into the hands of their wealthy owners. The SCA had their own shipping agencies, maintained their own communication lines, and held rigid control of their customer databases. Mel Marsh had been the first to crack the system. Posing as a customer, he had traced his own orders obsessively, using every tactic he felt would escape suspicion. Even after years of analysis he had identified only one small warehouse and a small set of discrete, false-fronted offices. The SCA business was digital in almost every way. Aside from the flesh and bones they trafficked in, the SCA seemed not to exist at all.

On stage, Ontonei had lowered his hands and his eyes. His voice softened, his words pleading. 'The longer we wait, the faster suspicion will turn in our direction,' he said slowly. 'The sooner we join together in this cause, the sooner these children will be free.'

* * *

Bloy and Jack had pulled every spare scrap of warm clothing out of storage, and once the stranger regained the color in his skin they bundled him up.

Jack watched the boy while Bloy, a com unit gripped in one hand, paced. He'd sent a desperate but vague distress call to anyone on the research circuit who might be awake. At least someone other than the two of them must have noticed the spacewreck. 'There are people out here,' he added, not sure what anyone would be able to do for them. He did not mention that the one they had found was human.

The frozen boy didn't speak. His eyes, once the ice and chill melted away from them, blinked open and shut. They stayed shut much longer than open. Jack tried to imagine what must have happened, what the boy must have been through.

'Feelin' better?' Jack asked softly. Whatever they were doing, they were fools, Bloy had said. How had even one of them survived? 'We'll find...' Jack began, 'We'll find whoever... We'll find everyone we can. It'll be all right.' Jack was far from sure of this.

That night, none of them slept. Sparse reports filtered through the com lines, mainly full of questions and astonishment. Bodies had been found in sectors far from Bloy and Jack's research territory. So far from the crash site they'd seen that Bloy shuddered to think of how they had ended up there. Not many of them were conscious. Not many were in one piece.

'How many of them could there have been?' Bloy asked out loud, mostly to himself.

'He'll prob'ly be worried about the others.' Jack rubbed his eyes and looked over his shoulder.

Bloy's face creased, almost in anger, but more in sadness. 'He's human. A human kid. He's got piles of worries.'

'What can we do?'

Pushing past Jack, Bloy crossed the small space and leaned down to look the slaveboy in the eyes. Andromed barely, briefly returned the man's gaze. His shivering had all but stopped.

'Your ship...where were you headed?'

The boy's eyes narrowed and he shook his head. 'Nowhere.'

'You got an owner? Anyone looking for you?'

His head shook faster. One hand gripped his shoulder. 'No. No... We... It's not like that.' Andromed grimaced, his eyes completely unfocused. 'Stat...'

Bloy sat himself down on a small, round stool and waited. Eventually, the boy stopped muttering and looked up.

'So what can you tell us, kid?'

'My name. Andromed. And that we're running. And that... you can't stop us.'

* * *

Optional music track: 'Dwight Ashley and Tim Story - Rooster'

Bort Frepsn slipped out through the trapdoor of the compartmentalised basement chamber and into floaty space, the tether plugged into his back winding like a spacesnake behind him.

His two sons followed in identical suits. They pulled against their tethers gently, the long white tubes drawn from fixed reels on the base of their tub, and eased themselves out. Lar performed slow rotations, gazing with passing interest at the spinning pattern of stars. Skert tried to imitate, but his tether somehow got in the way.

Lar stopped rotating and rested his eyes on the faded black, oddly shaped pebble that was the delivery cart. Even now that they were closer, it did not look very dangerous. But it could all be a trick.

In their pink hands they held their disapproachifriers: clunky, multi-pronged things of dubious functionality, or so Skert felt of his specifically. He opened his mouth to complain, but his father spoke over him through the little radio in their helmets.

'Now, sons, be on your guard. They'll probably be able to see us coming.'

Skert wriggled. His stubby, flat little tail felt squashed in his suit. He felt nervous, while his brother floated on ahead with nonchalant confidence.

In space, despite being fixed to spacerope and packaged in suits, the Frepsns' movements were smooth and slick, almost aqueous, their lithe pink bodies taking naturally to weightless gliding.

Bort squinted, trying in vain to pierce the starlit glare of the portholes along the delivery cart's prow and sealed side-doors. It was a curious feeling, to consider that they were seen by someone or something unseen; but the older creature steadied himself, to set a fatherly example for the young ones, and steered on ahead.

Lar was on the verge of overtaking him. Bort grumbled, half with mild vexation at his son's showy antics, half with grudging pride. Then he realised that Lar had started to go faster because the vehicle had begun to move. It turned clumsily, nudging and juddering against invisible walls as the pilot kept stalling. Even Lar slowed as it worked itself into a gentle, uncontrolled spin.

Could still be a trick, Bort reminded himself, his pink brow folded doubtfully at the ineffectual display. 'Stay back!' he said aloud.

Eventually, with some effort from the unseen pilot, the delivery cart managed to bring itself to stillness again. Then it seemed to wait.

The Frepsns proceeded cautiously but also at speed, before the cart could make any more confused manoeuvres. Bort angled himself for the portholes, the easiest way he could think of to make himself known to the two creatures inside. He was finding it increasingly difficult to consider them dangerous.

He wrapped his fingers around the smooth rivets and pulled his body the last few inches. Just as he was about to peer in, his radio whistled and whined. He shook his head free of the noise.

'That you, Lar? Skert?'

'MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!'

It was a noise chopped up like laughter. The shock of it straightened out Bort's spine and made him flush purple under the suit. On the other side of the cart, where Lar was, a head with a large, slit-shaped pupil butted against the porthole. Lar cried out and let go, flailing his limbs in fright.

'No!' came a voice in an amplified hiss. There were sounds of movement and scuffling, and then, 'Stupid thing!'

'Hello?' Bort said, uncertainly. 'Can you hear me?'

There was silence again. Then the voice said, 'I'm...I'm lost.'

'Oh,' Bort replied. 'That's why you were following us, is it? Where are you from?'

'I--' A pause. 'Hepthazard. I was supposed to wait, but everybody was leaving and then all these ships appeared and... I think they were pirates!'

'Maaaaaah!'

'Shut up!'

Bort listened after it went quiet again. Then he said, 'Someone in there with you?'

Inside the delivery cart, Gen looked under her arm at the goat. He was trying to turn around in the narrow space of the cockpit with Gen still on top of him, half buried in his fur, reaching over for the radio. There was not much point in trying to hide his existence now.

'It's just an animal,' she said. 'A...a spacegoat.'

Bort considered it. You got all kinds in space, he knew.

'Well, if you want our help,' he said, 'we can tether you in. I presume you have spacesuits in there?'

'Erm...'

'Or if you can hold your breath for ten seconds, that should do it.'

Gen hesitated. 'Alright then,' she said.

She tried to lift herself off the goat. Brin responded by kicking back and shivering, his luxurious hair fixing itself. Gen fell onto the control panel again. The cart shuddered.

'Steady there!' Bort said. He stuck his disapproachifrier in a holster and sunk his pink fingers into a glowing button on his spacesuit. With a silent hiss, the tube attached to his back unlatched itself. He took hold of it and stuck it onto the side of the delivery cart, where it held fast with suction, and signalled to his sons to do the same.

They then pulled themselves along the tether back to the ship. Gen waited, feeling nervous, though Brin was restless enough for both of them. Then, with a juddering rumble, the delivery cart was slowly reeled in. Gen held on as the cart dipped with a jerk and tucked under the Frepsns' ship.

Inside their airless basement compartment, the Frepsns waited until the delivery cart was close enough and then switched off the reel. They then slipped back out into the narrow gap of space between the two spacecraft. The cart floated at an awkward angle below them.

Lar rapped on the top of it. 'Open up!' he said, cheerfully.

'In your own time,' Bort added.

Gen looked around again for emergency spacesuits, but the cart remained minimal in every useless way. She picked up the radio again. 'Take the goat first,' she said, glancing at the creature's oblivious backside. 'He might kick a bit.'

'Right,' Bort confirmed.

Gen paused over the controls. She pressed several in a row, which caused a few unidentifiable beeps and whirs and a blast of hot air to blow in her face, before she located the one that announced depressurisation of the cabin. She held onto her breath and looked worriedly at the goat as he tried to about-turn again.

The Frepsns waited, watching the cart rock gently as it vented. Skert was the only one who still held his weapon.

'Now open the doors,' Bort said encouragingly.

Gen had hoped that the button she had pressed would do that too. Panicking, she let her breath go explosively and only managed to draw half a breath in her second attempt. Hammering down on a few more buttons, she then found a small lever that did the job.

The sidedoors swung open. The remaining oxygen tore away into the vacuum beyond, taking the alarmed, gasping spacegoat with it, but the Frepsns were there ready to receive him.

Brinzolio's mane seemed to expand in space, his cord wrapping itself around him. Gen expected more of a struggle, but the goat seemed to go limp in their arms. The two sons carefully pulled themselves and the weight of the goat back along the tether, and Bort appeared. He seemed to pause for a moment before reaching his hand out to Gen.

She took it, feeling faint and dizzy, her head hurting from the effort of holding her breath. She did none of the work as she was pulled through the trapdoor and up into the Frepsns' ship.

The trapdoor closed behind them and sealed. Gen finally let her breath go and gasped, receiving nothing for one horrifying moment before the basement chamber filled with oxygen again. She coughed savagely; Bort held her and said, 'Slow, deep breaths.'

'She's a human?' said Skert, gaping at her as he pulled off his his helmet.

Gen rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling until the dizziness faded and she got her vision back. She looked over at the goat, who lay in a silver heap, Lar holding an oxygen mask to his face.

'He fainted,' Bort said. 'But he'll be alright.'

* * *

Optional music track: 'Juno Reactors - Angels and Men'

Most of the Captain's face was burned dark red and ridged with blisters. It was hard to tell, in the dark, how badly he'd been injured, but nobody had been able to wake him up. Styrene had found Taura, a young blonde slavegirl, standing next to his body in the dark, gasping and choking on uncontrollable screams. They'd found Ry, shellshocked and bloody-haired, half-buried beneath the snow not far away.

The three of them tugged the Captain by the collar up away from the hulking shadows and steam of the crumpled spaceship.

'Isn't working!' Styrene grumbled, letting her share of his weight slump to the ground. 'Leave him.'

The other slavegirl shook her head as if the idea were unthinkable. 'If it was you, you'd want to be left to freeze?' Her cold blue gaze settled into pointed eye-contact with Styrene.

'Come on.'

She laughed. 'What? You going somewhere?'

Styrene looked out, past the other two slaves. From the top of the snowbank they had seen, far off to the left, faint lights. Beacons of civilization.

'He's not one of us. That's trouble,' she said.

The blue-eyed girl gestured toward the distant city. 'But if we can--'

'Uh-uh,' Styrene grunted, kicking at the snow. 'Why risk it? Even--' She looked down at her shoulder as if to read the tattoo through her thin, stiff tunic. 'They'd still know what we were. Can't risk it. Won't.'

'But...' Ry kept his eyes on the cold, heavy figure of the only adult any of them had ever trusted. 'Without him...'

Taura nodded; nobody needed to finish that sentence. Styrene rolled her eyes.

'And if he wakes up, he can help us,' Taura brightened, one hand still firmly clenched around the Captain's arm.

'If,' Styrene emphasized. 'If he wakes up. And if he does, he can do what he likes. We don't need him.'

'Don't you care about anyone?' Taura shouted.

Styrene charged ahead as if she hadn't heard. Despite her protest of moments before, she was headed toward the clump of lights, clustered together on the edge of an impossibly vast horizon. Taura and Ry struggled to drag the Captain's body through the snow behind her, saying nothing.

Styrene never slowed her step, but she looked back more than once.

* * *

'Miss Marsh,' Gregarium winced. If Tenua had not flitted so obviously toward the girl, they might have gone without this confrontation.

'Call me Izzie, Greg. It's not as if I go around addressing you as Doctor.' She laughed a little.

Gregarium bit his tongue. She'd inherited that impeccably casual style from her father, but not much else. Tenua admired Izzie's spectacles, the way they reflected the heavy, worn tapestries on the walls. The doctor coughed, trying to smile. 'Heard from your father?' he asked.

'No--' she replied. 'But this... I wish he could have been here. Ontonei puts things so well. Exactly right. You must see it too, Greg. We're at the point now where all Dad's tricks no longer measure up.'

Gregarium raised an eyebrow, traces of a frown ruining his attempts at nonchalance. With another small cough, he began, 'So far--'

But Izzie squinted, reaching up to finger Tenua's frills. 'All this undercover “rescuing” will never change the system, Greg, and you know it. What's the use of...of any of this if we can't truly make a difference in the universe?'

'A difference? It does make a difference,' Gregarium insisted. 'To every child we take--it makes quite a spectacular difference to them. And, Izzie, that isn't all.'

She peered up at him, her fingertips still twiddling back and forth along the edges of Tenua's largest fins.

'I wish Mel had come today as well. He explains it much better than I. Someday soon, Miss Marsh, you'll see what he's really been up to.'

Izzie laughed gently. 'Well. All those kids must keep Dad busy.' Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling, as if sending some plea into space that despite her father's crazy ideas things would still work out.

* * *

'Bort?'

The hatch popped open to the floor above. Edible Frepsn was already waiting, a worried look on her face. 'You took a long time,' she said, offering her hand to pull up Skert, who appeared first.

'It's a human girl!' he said. 'And a spacegoat! They say they're lost.'

She looked past him and down the hatch, pursing her lips as the furry lump of the goat was pushed through. Brinzolio, awake once more, wobbled uncertainly and fell onto his side.

'Why have you brought them on board?' Edible demanded. Her eyes slipped away from the goat and back to the hatch, where her gaze met that of Gen. Gen's thin blonde hair fell over one eye, but she found Edible's stare so severe that for a moment she did not move.

'Keep going,' Bort said gently from below her.

Edible's expression softened when she realised what she was doing. She cleared her throat with a watery sound and ran her fingers through the soft, fuzzy pelt of peach fur on her head.

'Are you an escaped slave?' Skert asked Gen as she climbed the rest of the way up. 'You don't have the markings.'

'Skert,' his mother warned, as he approached her. 'Go and put the kettle on. She looks cold.'

Gen watched Edible as the woman's gaze slipped away from her again, to drift back when Gen herself looked at something else.

'Take her to the kitchen,' Edible said to Lar, when the other two came through at last.

'Please,' Gen spoke up, turning to Bort. 'Can I use your phone?'

Bort looked uneasily at her. The earlier friendliness in his tone did not match the expression he wore now. 'Really we should report you,' he said, 'to the Authorities.'

The knot of apprehension in Gen's stomach tightened. 'I'm not a slave,' she said.

'Then who are you running away from?' he asked.

'I told you. The pirates.' She sensed their disbelief rising. 'I just need to make a phonecall. I can have somebody pick me up.'

'From where?'

Gen hesitated. 'Anywhere,' she said.

'Why would pirates be after you?' Lar asked, still turned to lead her away at his mother's instruction.

Gen could not answer that either. She did not know herself. She avoided looking at Brinzolio's twitching body and said, 'I was just told to keep away. From the spacestation. And now I just need to get back. My...my owner's name is Mel. Mel Marsh.' She immediately wondered if telling them that had been a mistake--it might still be unsafe to make that link. Mel had scared her with how scared he had been. But if these people decided to look it up, they would have to find something, or she was in trouble.

'Your owner?' said Edible. 'I thought you said--'

'I mean my...he just looks after us. Please, I'm telling you the truth! You can check it.'

Bort grunted. 'Check it? What kind of access do you think we have, exactly?'

Gen didn't answer. Evidently they did not have as much as the Nousus.

She waited while they scrutinised her. She still had custard encrusted all over her black uniform, and they were all shorter than her, which made her feel especially gangly and conspicuous.

Bort was frowning. 'Alright,' he said.

'Bort--'

'One call. And then...I don't know. Then we'll have dinner.'

Edible pursed her lips again. Gen's stomach grumbled involuntarily and she had to curb the irrational thought of Nousu-sized banquets--this ship was not nearly big enough. She made to mumble her gratitude, but she did not really feel it and stayed quiet under their frosty looks, following the boy away with her head down.

* * *

Optional music track: 'Plastikman - Dre'

As soon as the sun rose, Jack set out again, this time accompanied by three radar-probes. The boy Andromed had finally curled up, swallowed his shivers, and slept. Bloy stayed behind with him, the radio tuned to Jack and the probes.

The bleak dawn pulled at Jack's shadow. Ash and dust lingered in the air and probably would for days; the next snowfall was still nearly a week in the future. Maybe that was a good thing, Jack thought. It'd give the humans a chance to survive, before the elements buried them and their demolished spaceship.

Each probe had been programed with a few of the nearer coordinates the two researchers had heard over the radio during the night. Jack loosely followed one of the machines and kept the others' radar scans synced to his small hand-held display. When for the first three hours of the day every scan came back empty--devoid of even the slightest blip of heat or movement--Jack wished they had the funding for more probes.

He'd stopped to pull a food bar out of his pack when the probe ahead of him paused, turned, and sent back a faint signal. No--it was a pair of signals, not far apart, but several yards uphill. Jack nearly tripped over his own feet, rushing over the ice to where he hoped he could see who it was.

The probe had already approached the first body, reaching out with various sensors. It was another poorly dressed human boy, lying face-down at the crest of a massive snowdrift. He was lying perfectly still, hands and feet turning blue, heartrate barely registering on the probe's electrocardiograph. Jack stood over him for a full minute, afraid that touching the freezing kid would kill him. 'Another one,' he coughed into his transmitter. 'Wait..' He remembered the second blip on the radar. He got his bearings quickly and spent another moment squinting into the brightest half of the sky. It almost looked...yes, a shadow--just a patch of grey over the blank snow--moved out in the distance. The small speck on the screen in his hand was haltingly making progress towards the dune where he stood. 'Make that two,' he told Bloy, hoping the other was in better shape than this one.

After laying out a tarp and carefully wrapping each of the boy's limbs in spare blankets, Jack hoisted the cold, almost lifeless body into his arms and began his trek down to meet the second survivor. The probe drifted behind him, buzzing with calculations, ever-scouting the surrounding landscape for any hints of life.

A stumbling, incoherent child met them. Jack almost dropped the unconscious boy in his efforts to reach out to the young slavegirl. The wind out on the flat icefields was picking up as the sun rose higher. The slavekid stared, trembling. There were tears frozen in squiggly rows along both sides of her face.

'Just a few hours back, kid,' Jack coaxed, nudging the probe to a halt beside him. 'We'll get you warm. Come on. Climb up.' It was an unsteady seat, atop the rounded metal frame of the probe, but he couldn't carry both humans. And they didn't have anything like shoes that would fit their flat little feet. Once the child was somewhat settled, Jack transfered his own hat and scarf to the girl's snow-glazed head and shoulders. It wasn't much, but combined with the hum and glow of heat from the probe's battery it would keep her from giving into the cold.

As soon as he could see the smoke from the hut, Jack paused to signal Bloy. Maybe he and Andromed could come out to help. They were so close... but the frozen boy in his arms seemed to grow heavier, his breath shallower. If he died... Jack blinked and forced himself to walk without speculation. So many had died already. What could they do about it?

Bloy strode from the hut with more blankets, Andromed tentative and tired-looking in the doorway behind him. Jack and the rescued were ushered inside, the probe left outside to continue its search with the others. The floor had been cleared next to the furnace.

'Clarx,' Andromed sighed, as the boy Jack had carried was laid down and examined gently. 'And Apric...' The older slaveboy peeled off the layers of fur and felt he had been given and pressed them into the girl's hands. Kneeling, he helped her pull her stiff arms through the baggy, ill-fitting sleeves of the coats. Once she was covered, he pulled her into a firm hug.

Hours later, another probe sent back one more trace of life. This time Bloy went out, hiking almost until dark to find another surviving human child. Clarx was still immobile, barely breathing, when the researcher returned with a second unconscious body. This one's heartbeat seemed stronger, his skin less swollen. They made room for him next to the furnace.

Jack stared down at the twitching, frozen bodies. Their skin was burned with frost, their hair slick with melting ice crystals. 'Welcome to Scape,' he muttered.

* * *

Optional music track: 'Owl City - On the Wing'

Gen stood by the glowing terminal. The small screen washed with static and green lights blinked. She slid her hand into the pocket of her Mel's-uniform pants; her fingers found the paper with the number Mel had given her scrunched up.

She examined it and punched the number in, glancing behind her. The family were all in the kitchen next door, she and the terminal stood in a little adjacent living-room space, but they were no doubt listening in.

She listened to a series of repeated clicks and buzzes as the machine tried to make contact. The screen flickered. And then...and then nothing.

She tried again.

Lar appeared in the doorway. 'No luck?' he asked, craning his neck to see.

Gen just stared blankly at the screen.

'Food's ready,' Lar said. 'Come and get it while it's hot. Mum and Dad will probably let you try again later.'

[>>>]