It was strange now, to have the war brought to her own door like this. Usually, the wrenchworks here at her home habitation ring of Vivik didn’t see more than the odd freighter every week or two. Vivik’s local star had no habitable planets and nothing particular to recommend it beyond a gas giant resort for platform jumpers. Even its economic role as a shipping-lane nexus for the past hundred years only allowed freight to pass through on its way to the bigger systems farther out.
Triz liked Vivik Hab’s usual quiet. Her home for the past ten years had always offered her safety. But Moxu and Vogett, the two closest big Habs on this ragged edge of settled space, had been destroyed in the fighting, leaving Vivik the only nearby survivor able to pick up the pieces of the Fleet and send it on to the center of the Galactic Web. Ships weren’t the only wreckage clotting the Hab. None other than Commander Rocan shitting Dustald-3 Melviq himself was a prisoner of Justice here. Many of Vivik’s citizens had already gone to war; now war had come to the Hab itself.
When she could breathe again, she emerged from under the Swarmer’s belly and hurried into the wrenchworks office. The earmuffs clanged when she tossed them into her locker, and she scanned her wristfob for a tiny water ration to splash her face in the sink. She didn’t want to open the fighter up until she was sure it was coolant-free, so no reason not to celebrate with the rest of the Hab. She could buy a round for some friendly-looking whaleship crews and still give Casne time and space to enjoy her quadparents for a while yet.
No time to bother with changing into something fancier; Triz ducked out of the office and fussed briefly with her hair. She wondered if she’d be able to find any of Casne’s Fleet friends to follow around for the night. If nothing else, she might be able to find them on the outskirts of the crowd of admirers the favored Captain Casne Vivik Veling had surely collected by now. They could hit Ganit’s Pantry, and hopefully Ganit hadn’t jacked up the price of boot gin by three hundred percent for the night—
The lift flashed an alert: visitors incoming. Damn Kalo. What, did he decide to give it one more go for old time’s sake? Her heart lurched. But then a comfortably familiar scowl settled into her face, and she folded her arms.
The lift doors parted, and Triz choked on the deep breath she’d held. Casne exploded out of the lift and picked her up in a hug. Triz’s arms locked around Casne’s back, and she gasped down a deep breath to keep from bursting into sudden, silly tears. Casne’s tight curls carried the faint electric smell of the interior of a whaleship, but she still smelled like home to Triz.
After several long moments that would never be quite long enough, Casne pulled back. “All right, greasemark,” she shouted over the vacuum’s roaring and laid a warm kiss on Triz’s lower lip. “Are you going to buy me a drink, or what?”
Chapter Two
The lift moved too fast: up through Metal Reclamation and the Terraria level that served as the Hab’s living lungs, through the umbilicus ring where Fleet ships trailed on the ends of their leads, then layers and layers of living quarters. After a too-short minute’s frantic reacquaintance behind the closed lift doors, Casne and Triz were deposited at the top end of the Hab in the middle of an utterly unrecognizable Arcade. Gray and gold streamers spanned the space between the central lift column and the businesses that wrapped around the station perimeter. Some of them were proper custom-printed decorations, while others had been hastily assembled from paper scraps or mealcase wrappers. The decor closed in the wide-open Arcade, made it feel smaller, more enclosed, despite the windows all around that peered out into the open void of space.
Triz recoiled from the sight of all that empty black, chopped up into tiny pieces as it was by the myriad of windows lining the Arcade. In one corner of the window, over the main recycling chute, a small arc of the local star could be seen—a glimmer of gold against the darkness. All the orange dwarf’s planets were tidally locked and uninhabitable, so the Hab’s solar arrays had been built to take advantage of the otherwise-unused light and heat.
Triz appreciated the change in the Arcade’s atmosphere, but she paused a moment in the frame of the lift doors. That was a lot of people. A lot of noise, a lot of everything. Not many folks here had ever recoiled from her as if she still reeked of recycling engine—and she suspected Casne had sorted those out long ago. People here didn’t remember her as the guttergirl she’d grown up as back on Rydoine. Still. She couldn’t shake the sense she didn’t totally belong here, in this world of smiles and songs and light.
Casne smoothed Triz’s hair back from her forehead. “Come on, guttergirl,” Casne said, “you’re with me now,” and Triz took a deep breath as they careened out into the crowd.
They leaned into one another to stay together in the press of bodies, tripping over other people’s feet as well as the occasional empty moonshine bottle.
“Your dad must have given PubWel a break,” Triz shouted over the crowd. PubWel, the monitors of public welfare, must be politely looking the other way tonight. Or possibly they were at the bottom of another bottle themselves, instead of spending the celebratory night politely realigning the Hab to the norms of perfect eusocial behavior.
Casne’s laugh rolled warmly down Triz’s
