starcustard (act 2)

chapter eleven

Optional music track: 'Little Dragon - Stormy Weather'.

The table was too small, but the family made room for Gen by tucking an upended bucket between the table's edge and the fold-down stovetop. Dinner was soup, very hot and tasting slightly metallic. Gen wondered if she should have brought over any of the café pastries from Mel's delivery cart. But maybe these creatures didn't eat that kind of food.

Skert stared. Gen's face, her hair, her ears, her hands, her clothes--every bit of her seemed to beg for his attention. Reproving tsks from his mother failed to revive the boy's manners.

Bort and his wife made no attempt at small talk. Mealtime was quiet until Lar reached up and pulled down a rollaway screen.

'Not during dinner, son,' Edible said.

Lar turned to his father. 'But Dad--'

Bort coughed, glanced sideways at his wife, and shook his head. Skert looked over and laughed. Lar whacked him, glared, and reluctantly re-rolled the screen.

Brinzolio slurped out of a dish on the floor. Most of his soup ended up in thin puddles all over the yellow tile. Gen watched, trying to ignore the fact that Skert was staring at her.

Afterwards, Mrs. Frepsn pulled a pair of cloths from a dispenser notched into the wall and handed one to Gen. They knelt together in the doorway and cleaned the splattered soup from the floor. Edible said nothing until they were finished.

'Now where will we put you?' she wondered, all three of her eyes on the four-legged animal.

* * *

The conversation didn't last. It wouldn't, for as long as they had to skirt the same futile debate and old subjects, and Izzie drifted back to the group she had sat with. They stood in a tight circle of camaraderie, chattering loudly. The Doctor watched her get absorbed into the ring as a man greetingly placed a hand in the middle of her back.

Gregarium sighed. 'Ready to go?' he asked the spacefish.

Tenua turned to face him as he scanned the room one last time for people he might want to talk to. Such people were a little thin on the ground.

Grillar Quench was still standing at the door. Gregarium caught his eye and pointedly discarded it, letting his gaze roam up the wall as he pretended to rearrange items in his pockets.

At this point he had lost Tenua's attention again. The fish watched as the door opened and a man slipped through, half walking, half skipping up one of the aisles to join one of the assembled groups.

Gregarium edged back along the row and began to walk to the exit, readying himself for the unavoidable confrontation with Quench on the way out. Tenua saw and followed, but glanced back while floating down after him.

In the group the man had joined, faces were slackening and eyebrows were raised. They looked funny, Tenua decided. Then a woman peeled from that group and scuttled over to another as the messenger did the same.

The creak of the door as Quench held it open for them stole her attention back to their exit route.

Quench leered, but Gregarium did not exchange further false pleasantries with him. He was even less in the mood than before. 'I hope you're ready to eat, Tenua. I'm starving.'

'I am always ready to eat.'

'Greg!'

Gregarium stopped, halfway out into the corridor. He turned and stepped back inside. Izzie had called after him. She was several rows away, one hand gripping the back of a seat. Her pale face was distorted with worry. Gregarium noted the interested looks he was getting from people who had until now paid him no attention. Izzie glanced distractedly back at her cohorts and hurried down to meet the Doctor for some privacy.

Gregarium opened his mouth to speak.

'Greg--' Her fists were clenched, as if she were resisting the urge to reach out and touch him. She leaned in to tell him what the rest of the room by now already knew.

'There's been an attack,' she said, 'on Hepthazard.'

* * *

Taura heard a voice, and then a growling sort of crunch. She couldn't tell what the words were, but someone was shouting. 'Hey! Alright?' a small, bright blue craft half hovered, half leaned over the crusted snowbank. A round face leaned out, peering at the three slavekids and their prone Captain. 'Need help, eh? Sayin's there's been a crash, they have.' The small man leaned further, hopped out, and eyed the Captain with concern. His eyes made another quick survey of Styrene, Ry, and Taura. Throwing open the hatch of his vehicle, he motioned to them to climb aboard.

Styrene squinted suspiciously, but she was the first to climb in. Taura and then Ry followed, after the driver helped them lift the Captain's body in. Once they were somewhat comfortable, he returned to the front and clicked the radio on the dash. 'Four survivors. X4491 and L point six degrees. One unconscious with severe burns. Human slaves, looks like. Request for nearest medic. Over.'

* * *

There was a bit of static in the message, but Bloy and Andromed heard the tail end of a coordinate, along with the words 'human,' 'slave,' and 'medic.' The panic in Andromed's face startled Bloy. Shouldn't the boy be happy? Relieved that more of his friends had been found?

'That's Sutterfly Rog from over at the mid-valley station,' Bloy realized. 'His radio's always stuck on fuzzy.'

'Get them to bring 'em here,' he blurted. 'They can't... They just...'

Bloy stared.

'Here? We're running out of room and clothes. And it's out of his way too. We've got protocols, you know. And the medics will--'

'No.' Andromed swung himself upright and paced slowly, turning his gaze to the floor.

Bloy hesitated. His comm unit spit static.

'We should stay together.' The boy's voice, unlike his wavering footsteps, was solid. 'You've got to help.'

With an eye-rolling look of resignation, the researcher opened the right frequency and lied to his colleague, telling him the medics had already been dispatched and were on their way to his small hut.

Sutterfly understood and, the space around his voice crackling angrily, agreed to bring his rescued humans. It probably helped that Bloy mentioned a few extra rations of spaceale for his troubles.

* * *

Optional music track: 'DJ Shadow - Giving Up the Ghost'.

'Pirates?' Gregarium brought fingers up to rub his brow. 'You're sure?'

'Yes, pirates. But why? Why would pirates attack Dad's café?'

Gregarium hesitated, feeling the colour drain from his face. 'I don't know,' he said. His eyes flicked to Quench. 'But we can't talk about this here. Come on.' He turned and began to walk at speed down the corridor.

Izzie looked surprised, glancing at Quench herself. 'Where are you going?'

'Back to my ship,' Gregarium called back. 'Has anyone else tried to contact him?'

Izzie shook her head vigorously. 'I don't know. Greg, listen to me. They're saying they've got a whole armada surrounding the station. It's...it's an invasion.'

Gregarium swivelled interrogatively, his eyebrows arched, but kept moving. 'An invasion?'

'Yes!'

Gregarium's mind raced. He turned back the way he was walking. An armada. He felt all the questions Izzie was trying to hold back. His own throbbed at his head. So Mel's Custard Café was collateral damage? Did he believe that? But it had to be...

Tenua kept up with them but maintained an unusual silence. Izzie watched them both and forced herself to keep calm.

They reached the end of the corridor and stepped into an elevator, Tenua brushing the roof with her dorsal fins. Behind spacewood doors, the elevator was white and egg-shaped and dropped with a small wheeze.

The doors opened again onto a parking lot. Tenua looked back behind them at a building set into asteroid rock, white cut stone against a rough, carved-out brown surface that arced all-encompassingly over their heads, inset with high-intensity circular lights.

Gregarium's alternate skip-walk developed into a light run as he tried to get his bearings in the washed-out space. The parking bays were substantially sized, each easily big enough for a medium-scale ship--each a metal slab ready to plummet into the rock beneath and launch these ships into the asteroid's exit chute, else giant rectangular holes in the ground, framed with barriers, waiting to bring up a new arrival.

It was hard for Gregarium to concentrate and locate his own black potato-shaped vehicle in his memory while the nearest ships obstructed his view. The cool air of the parking lot helped, though it was a little stale.

Izzie huffed. 'What section was it?'

'Er...F,' Gregarium said. 'Section F.'

'We're going the wrong way.'

Tenua had floated upwards. 'I see it,' she said.

They followed her a little back the way they had come and down along the rows, the giant, disparate lumps of the ships looking like strangely discarded objects, all neatly arranged. None was lumpier than Gregarium's, which Izzie looked at with some disbelief despite having seen it several times before.

They climbed a ladder and got aboard, clambering along a route seemingly without logic to the cockpit. Moving with a needling urgency, Izzie quashed her irritation with the impracticality of it, and with Gregarium himself, and made no comment so that they might get there faster.

* * *

'Has she been able to contact her-- her people yet?' Edible peered over the ends of her fingers hopefully.

'No,' Bort said. 'I told Skert to show her a few of his card tricks, for now. Have her try again before bed.'

'Oh, she's so large, dear. Is there room for her to sleep? I suppose we needn't do anything... special for her. She might be most comfortable with her spacegoat, in the cellar, don't you think?'

While Edible picked at her fingernails, Bort looked doubtfully over the top of her head at the wall. 'I don't know,' he sighed.

After she had finished her dinner, Gen stood just inside the doorway in the room with the videoscreen. She could hear Brinzolio bleating from the narrow cellar space next to the airlock where Mrs. Frepsn had insisted he be kept. His hair was getting everywhere, she had complained. And she did not want him to chew on her curtains.

The Frepsn's had said Gen could try the phone again, but not yet. So she waited, scuffing the heels of her soft shoes along the floor. The younger Frepsn boy paced in a semi-circle back and forth in front of her, his hands full of small square cards.

'Okay... was this yours?' Skert flicked one of the cards at her face.

Gen shook her head, not bothering to look at it.

'You're not even playing.'

Gen met the boy's gaze and inhaled slowly, tilting her head a little and narrowing her eyes.

'You haven't told me the rules. The cards are too small. And--'

Skert giggled. Gen's hands were more than double the size of his, with extra joints in the fingers and none of the thin webbing he and his family had. He reached out to poke them with the edge of a card. 'They are not too small. You have odd hands.'

Gen swatted him away.

'Hey!' He shook his little pink hand as if her touch had stung him. 'Mum! She hit me!'

And then, when no response from his mother seemed forthcoming, Skert kicked at Gen's ankle.

She responded by jerking her other leg around to knock the boy over. His playing cards fountained out of his hands and settled in scattered piles along the hallway. He grunted and rolled over to grab her feet--a sloppy attempt to pull her down with him. When that failed, he squirmed upright and with one bright orange playing card tight in his fist jabbed at Gen wherever he could. As he went for her face, she slapped him. He reeled backward and slumped down to the floor, holding one hand up to the sting.

Gen did not move as he started wailing.

'Excuse me!' Edible Frepsn announced her presence with a clap of her hands, which startled Skert and made Gen cringe just a little. 'What is going on here?'

Gen kept her eyes on the videoscreen and its controls. Skert whimpered.

'Are you hurt?' She leaned over him, peering. 'Bort, dear,' Edible called, 'We can't have this. We cannot have this.'

'What's happened?' Bort put his head around the edge of the sitting room entryway.

'Indeed. What has happened, young lady?' Edible looked as if she would've pinched Gen's ear between her fingers, if she could reach that high.

Gen only shook her head, looking down at Skert and his cards on the floor. Her eyes went from him to Edible, back to the videoscreen, and then back to the three aliens. She shrugged.

'She hit me. Twice!' Skert reached for his mother's hand and pulled himself up.

Edible's face turned to glare at the human girl.

'Well,' Bort said. 'We have a few house rules we may need to be reminded of, don't we?'

'Oh, Bort. What difference would that make? Just let her stay in the cellar. We can bring her up again if her people call back.' Edible pressed her lips together and turned one of her eyes helplessly to her husband. He returned the look briefly and then looked back up at Gen. Nobody knew what to say.

* * *

As soon as Sutterfly's vehicle came in range of the radar, Jack was sent out to meet it. Andromed insisted on accompanying him. They set out, Jacks' knuckles raw and tight, towing two small, expandable hover pods.

Ry and the two girls gaped at Andromed, nearly breathless with chill and unsteady relief. Taura, with wide watering eyes, pointed at the Captain's motionless form. 'But he's not dead.'

Andromed nodded to her while Jack spoke to the driver.

'Medic's been here,' he told him, praying the lies wouldn't become obvious. 'Treated four or five of 'em already for serious frostbite. Burns too... though this fellow looks the worst.'

Andromed looked as if he wanted to speak, but didn't.

Jack thanked the driver, negotiated the small bribe required for this minor bending of normal research protocol, and finalized the few codes and figures that would render the exchange appropriate in the eyes of their superiors. Once the hover pods were up and running, Styrene claimed one for herself. Ry and the Captain fit snugly aboard the other.

Andromed carried Taura most of the way back.

'So if they find any more, they'll bring 'em to you? Here?'

Jack looked at the boy, carefully running his tongue across his dry lips. 'Can't say...' he began, even as he found himself nodding slowly. 'Not for sure.'

'Well, make sure,' Andromed grumbled.

They approached the hut and Andromed helped Taura down from his shoulders and took her hand in his. As Jack tugged at the door, he said, 'What if there aren't any others? That this many survived is-- it's boggling.'

Styrene stepped wobblingly from the pod that had carried her and frowned. 'How many?'

Andromed stared at the metal hinges along the hut's door. His voice stayed flat as he listed the names-- 'Clarx, Apria... I think the other's name is Tog, and you three. Four. And me. That's all, so far.'

'But if we made it-- there's gotta be others,' Taura tugged at his hand, swinging his arm back and forth. 'Just far, far away...'

Jack looked down at her, holding the door open against the hardened drifts of snow.

'What are we going to do next?' Styrene asked, following the others inside. 'This hut is tiny.'

Bloy stared at her.

Once everyone had been ushered inside, Jack pushed most of the furniture to one side of the hut. The three unconscious bodies took up most of the space around the small furnace, the girls and Ry huddled in blankets on the floor next to them, and Andromed stood, watching the windows. There had been nothing else over the radio since the choppy announcement from Sutterfly Rog that afternoon.

Bloy reached out and gripped the boy's shoulder. 'Andromed, we can't keep you all here. You know that.'

The slave slid his gaze along the floor.

'We don't have the space. You'd be noticed sooner or later, for sure. Someone's gonna ask questions. Sutterfly's got no reason to keep this information to himself if anyone gets curious, see?'

Andromed finally looked up, glanced from Bloy's weathered face to the window. 'So we'll go. You can't stop us... We'll take the captain and he'll...'

Bloy nodded. And then he shook his head. 'That man needs a medic.'

Andromed glared.

'Perfect decoy,' Jack said. 'We keep him here, call the medics while you kids run off. By the time anyone asks any questions, it's all out of our hands.'

'We won't leave him behind,' Andromed told them.

Styrene looked up at him. 'How will we carry him and Clarx and Tog? Let them take him.'

Andromed ignored her. 'We should stay together. All of us.' He looked into each slavekid's face, and then at Bloy and Jack.

'What if he dies? What if...' Styrene gripped the edges of her blanket, turning from Andromed's rigid expression to Ry, Taura, and little Apria. 'I'm just saying, it's too risky. He's not one of us and we don't need him.'

Taura shook her head silently. 'We should all stay together. But where will we go? If we can't stay here...where can we?'

* * *

Optional music track: 'Portishead - We Carry On'.

Once in the cockpit, Gregarium immediately moved to the communications terminal embedded in the large computer station on the wall through which they had entered. The window on the opposite wall was pure black--a holographic screen switched off.

Gregarium squinted at the terminal. A message flashed in the top right corner of the com screen: One missed call. Unknown caller. The Doctor frowned, dismissed the notification and typed in a command. Then he stood back and waited.

All eyes in the room were fixed upon the static wash of the screen--even Tenua's. Izzie drew her breath slowly, found herself holding it and exhaled. She held her left arm in her right hand and drummed her fingers.

'Come on...' Gregarium muttered.

He let the transmission reattempt automatically and brought up the local solar-system infochannels, cycling through the stations.

'...an unprecedented attack on megaspacestation Hepthazard, the cause of which is still unknown...'

Izzie caught her breath all over again when it appeared onscreen. Gregarium leaned forward to examine the image as the voiceover droned on, telling them very little that was new.

In the image, a few spiny ships could be made out in close proximity to the spacestation, as if in a protective circle. A small number of other ships could be seen escaping every once in a while, but the pirate ships--for that was what they must have been--did not attack them.

As the camera rotated around the station, the distant infoship accelerating in wide orbit around it, a small blossom of flame could be seen erupting from one of the gigantic cylindrical sections.

'Is this live? Happening right now?' Izzie asked.

'It doesn't say,' Gregarium replied quietly.

Apparently what had reached the conference hall had been the extent of knowledge about the situation. All the infoship could track was the number of pirate ships spotted. It was not quite an armada, but for all they knew half of them had already docked.

'Why would they attack the café?' Izzie repeated insistently. 'I mean, he's got all those kids there...'

'Yes,' Gregarium said under his breath. 'Yes he has. Damn it, Mel, pick up...'

After several more pained moments of static, Izzie broke the silence by sighing explosively. 'We've got to go there. We've got to go and get him out!'

'We can't do that. Look at it,' Gregarium gestured at the screen, his eyes still on it. 'They're not going to let anyone else inside.'

'But we can't just stand here and wait for nothing!'

'It can't last. Help will be on its way and the pirates will have to get out of there.'

'And by then it might be too late!'

'Yes.'

'Damn it, Greg!' Izzie glared at him. Then she shook her head and turned to leave.

Gregarium tore his eyes off the screen. 'Don't do anything stupid. Please.' He sighed, running a hand through the base of his spikes. 'It can't be--they can't have--'

Izzie pierced him with a scrutinous look. 'What?'

'It's nothing. It can't be related. Don't...don't worry about it.'

'What are you talking about?' Izzie clenched her fists again. 'Greg, I swear, if you don't tell me what you're talking about I'm going to stuff that spacefish right down your throat!'

'No, I don't think that would work,' Tenua said. 'My volume would be too great. Even if I decompressed.' She paused. 'Probably I would also defend myself.'

'Izzie, look--it doesn't matter,' said Gregarium. 'I will explain myself, but not now. Not here.'

'Greg--'

'Izzie, please, just--we need to see if we can find anything else out. Can you ask your friends from the conference? Find out where they got the news. The infochannels don't know everything and we might be able to find out something else.'

Izzie looked as if she might strike him, but she calmed. 'If you two have got yourself involved with pirates, Greg--well, I didn't think you were that stupid,' she said caustically, 'but maybe I shouldn't be surprised.'

Gregarium looked at her levelly. 'We've never had anything to do with pirates,' he told her. 'In all honesty, I really have no more of an idea of what's going on than you do.'

Izzie's look turned dubious. Then she said, 'If you hear from him, I want to know the second…' And more quietly, 'I'll keep in touch.'

'Should I show her the way?' Tenua asked softly, as she left.

Gregarium's eyes gravitated back to the screen. 'She'll figure it out,' he said. He sighed again, pulled out a seat and slumped down onto it, leaning on the console and rubbing his eyes. He looked at the screen through his fingers.

Then, sniffing, he brought up the missed call notification. He stared at it for a moment and input another command.

* * *

The researchers had brought up a complicated, color-coded map on the screen above the desk. Bloy, dull pencil in hand, worked to transfer the important bits onto paper for the slavekids to take with them.

'It's downhill, mostly. Once you get around the wreckage here it'll be a straight shot to the station. You'll need money for passage. And money in case anyone... Well, just in case. Jack, how much you got?'

Jack rummaged under the desk and pulled out a small glass jar full of what looked like strips of torn fabric. 'Plenty,' he sighed.

'Don't worry, we won't give 'em all of it.' He pulled out his own bundle of currency and started counting.

Andromed's mind raced among the limited plans he had so far committed to. There was so much he couldn't know. But he had taken incredible risks already. Not knowing what would happen didn't matter anymore.

'You'll want to start out before sunrise,' Bloy told them. 'You can sleep on the train the whole way to the city.'

He allowed the kids to take three large pouches of water to share and one blanket each; to Andromed he entrusted one fire-kit, a compass, the carefully annotated map, and a fistfull of money. For the three they would have to carry, Jack helped them fashion a couple of make-shift sleds out of waterproof sheeting--one for the captain and one for the two boys. The three older slavekids would take turns pulling them.

Styrene grumbled as they made preparations, but Andromed's frozen expression made it clear there was nothing she could say to change his mind.

And so the five of them found themselves huddling in the doorway, struggling to position Clarx and Tog together on their sled so that they'd both fit through. Bloy followed them into the dark some way, reciting to Andromed instructions for buying tickets, suggesting excuses they could make. Finally, Jack and Bloy wished them luck and retreated into their warm hut.

Andromed held his hands up to his mouth and breathed on them. The night was cloudy but calm.

'Let's hurry,' he said.

* * *

Gen looked from one Frepsn to the next. She was used to unfriendly gazes from all the fat, ugly friends of her stepparents, but they were just slugs. These people were treating her like she was something dangerous. Why was she stuck here? Just hours ago, it seemed, she had been sat at a dinner table with Mel, Jormes, Flit and the others, feeling happier than she'd ever felt. And now she was here.

Frustration brought tears up from inside her. Tiredness made things worse. She blinked through stinging eyes and almost told the pink aliens that she'd already killed two people and maybe she really was dangerous and they shouldn't--

A noise, like an intermittent, high-pitched alarm, rang from the videoscreen. Gen's heart leapt. The Frepsns looked up, breaking the unbearable silence. Edible went to answer the call.

When Doctor Gregarium's face and spiky hair appeared upon the screen, Gen thought she would explode, her heart was beating so fast. Edible and Gregarium looked at each other quizzically, then Tenua pushed herself into view.

'It's Gen!' gasped the spacefish.

Gregarium's eyes slid to Gen as the girl ran up to the terminal. Edible took a step back, her non-lips pursed more tightly than ever.

'Gregarium!'

'Gen?'

'Gregarium,' she blurted, 'there were pirates! They were after the spacegoat!'

Even in the grainy picture, Gregarium seemed to go several shades paler. He gripped the panel in front of him.

'What happened? Where are you?'

'I'm on a-- I had to get away. Gregarium, I have the goat! The police wanted Mel because of the pirates, so I took it away--'

'Mel gave you the goat?'

'I told him I'd do it. He said it was important! Why is it...?' She watched Gregarium take off his glasses and squeeze the bridge of his nose. 'Gregarium?'

The Doctor looked up again. 'Are you safe?'

Gen glanced over her shoulder at the Frepsns, who were watching amazed. 'I...I think so.'

'Where are you now? I'll come pick you up.'

'Now just what is going on here?' Bort intervened, stepping forward.

'Sir, I will explain what I can,' Gregarium said. 'Are you still near Hepthazard? Can you tell me the next spacestation on your route?'

'Pitstop 1757,' Bort said. 'But--'

'I would be eternally, universally grateful if you could drop her off there. Until then, please look after her. And the goat.'

Edible's face looked on the verge of imploding with restraint. Bort drew himself up to his greatest height, which was not much. 'Look, we don't want to be involved in any human trouble! Or with pirates! If you're on the run from the Hepthazard police, I should report you!'

Gregarium held up his hands. 'There has been a misunderstanding,' he said calmly. 'Gen, did Mel hand himself over to security?'

'Yes,' said Gen.

'Our friend is co-operating fully with the police,' the Doctor said to Bort. 'Gen and the spacegoat have merely been evacuated for their own safety. They will be taken off your hands as soon as we reach the Pitstop. Your help is much appreciated. I apologise for the inconvenience.' He paused. 'See you there?'

Bort hesitated, his mouth opening and closing with bubbles of indecision.

'See you there,' Gen said.

Gregarium tried to smile, but he still looked worried. 'Look after yourself, Gen. We'll be as quick as we can.'

Then the screen went fuzzy.

Optional music track: 'Future of Forestry - Twilight'.