Star's End

  I pulled out the holocube and activated it. My mother appeared, shimmering with static. When I was younger, I’d played the message so often that it had started to wear out. Now I only played it when I really had to.

  My mother’s hologram smiled and it made her beautiful, even more beautiful than Isabel. She was muscular and broad and she wore her hair clipped short.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said. Her voice distorted as she talked, stretching out into electronic feedback. “I guess you’re old enough by now to know I left you with your father. Sure am sorry about that. But he’s got money and he’ll take good care of you down at that mansion of his. Figure gardens and the ocean would be better for you than the Corps.” Another smile, although this one wavered, and I always wondered about that, why she wavered. If she almost changed her mind. “I ain’t going away forever. I promise I’ll write—Phillip says he’ll save my transmissions for you till you’re older. Funny how we still call it writing, eh?” She laughed, shook her head. “And promise you’ll write me. It might be tough for me to get your messages right away, but I’ll get them. Us Oxbow girls always keep our promises. I love you, sweetie. I’m sorry I couldn’t raise you.”

  And then she kissed two fingers and pressed them out, like she was pressing them against the holorecorder. “How we keep our promises in the Andromeda Corps.” Her image fizzed away.

  My cheeks were damp. I set the holocube back in the box and stretched out on my bed. I thought about watching some of my mom’s other transmissions, but I decided not to. I’d watched them all so many times, I had them memorized. I’d even started to notice that some of them had patterns thumping in the background, a weird static that I knew was probably nothing, although that hadn’t stopped me from trying to break the patterns like a code when I was kid. I never found anything, though.

  I wondered why Dad hadn’t contracted with her military, why he hadn’t brought her back to Star’s End to work. I’d come to terms a long time ago with the fact that he wasn’t going to marry her, that the affair that created me had been a fling and nothing more, but CG still did work with Andromeda Corps. It would have been such an easy gift for him to give me, and he hadn’t bothered.

  It shouldn’t have surprised me, not by that point in my life. But it did anyway.

  • • •

  I walked down the Undirra highway. The rain had slowed to a hazy drizzle, but I’d always liked walking in the rain. I didn’t even bother putting on a raincoat.

  No one was out. I walked beneath the row of mango trees lining the road, and the air smelled like mangos, sweet and overly ripe. Every now and then, a car zipped by on the road, a gleaming, illuminated blur. Heading out of the village and into Undirra City.

  It took me twenty minutes to reach the food stand where Laila worked. She was saving her money to buy the stand from its current owner, although there was nothing in the Coromina System that wasn’t ultimately owned by the Coromina Group. The stand was built in the shape of a conch shell and had once been painted in vibrant pinks and yellows, although the colors were faded now. No one sat at the pair of picnic tables surrounding the stand, and Laila had the order window shut against the rain.

  I rapped on it, to the tune of that Flying Trace song we’d been hearing all season. A moment’s pause and then the window slid open.

  “Good lord, Esme, you’re soaked.” Laila looked unfamiliar in her waitress outfit, the frilly little apron and the seashell pins holding back her hair. “Did you walk here?”

  “Yeah.” I pretended to read the menu—I came here often enough I had it memorized. “You think you can fry me up a shrimp plate?”

  “Sure. You wanna come in? It’s probably going to start raining again.”

  I nodded. I felt numb after the conversation with my father, and even seeing Laila didn’t brighten my mood. She disappeared from the window and opened up the door hidden against the side of the shell. I stepped in. There was more room than you’d think from the facade, since the back extended out farther than the shell shape would allow. The fryers bubbled up against the wall, the lightbox’s blue light gleamed across the tile floor, and the Coromina Group camera in the corner watched us with its unblinking eye.

  “Here.” Laila handed me a towel and I halfheartedly dried my face and hair before sitting down in the plastic fold-out chair next to a rickety table, empty except for a portable holocube. Laila pulled the ingredients for the shrimp batter off the shelf.

  “So, what’s up?” she asked, dumping corn flour and cheap beer into a metal bowl.

  “Nothing.”

  “Liar.” She looked at me over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t have walked all the way out here if something wasn’t going on.”

  I shrugged. Laila dropped the shrimp into the batter one at a time, swirling them with a fork. The rain picked up too, like she said it would, banging on the top of the conch shell.

  “It’s not Paco, is it?”

  Paco had been a pearl diver for the last few years, but recently he’d turned vaguely radical, always spouting off against corpocracy. It gave him more of an air of danger than the pearl diving ever did. He was the one who told me about the illegal newsfeeds and showed me how to access them on my lightbox.

  “No, it’s not Paco.”

  Laila dropped the shrimp into the oil, where it splattered and hissed. She turned to me and crossed her arms over her chest. And waited.

  “It has to do with—” I never liked talking about my family with Laila. She listened and nodded along, but I always got the sense that she didn’t think my complaints were as real as hers. “Dad’s hiring a military squad to stay at the estate.”

  Laila stared at me. Her hands dropped to her sides.

  “The flu hasn’t been contained,” she said quietly.

  “He says he didn’t hire them because of the flu.”

  Laila turned back to the shrimp, fished them out, and dropped them in the biodegradable canisters all the shacks used. “Do you believe that?” she asked, staring down at the shrimp.

  “I have no idea.”

  Laila sprinkled salt and pepper over the shrimp and then dropped in scoops of rice and macaroni salad. She handed the canister to me along with a fork and leaned up against the wall. She looked tired. And older than seventeen years.

  “People are worried,” she said, gazing over at the closed service window. Rain pummeled against the glass. I picked at the macaroni salad, waiting for my shrimp to cool. “I heard an entire fishing village up north got wiped out.” She swished her hand through the air. “Like that. Everyone dead within a week.”

  “Dad’s hired contractors to help find a vaccine.” I didn’t know how else to respond. My skin was itchy and hot, like I’d been caught doing something wrong.

  “Yeah, the Coromina Newsfeed has been saying that for weeks. The GMS says that’s a lie, though.” She turned back to me, her eyes big and imploring. “God, Esme, you don’t think it’s going to make its way down here, do you?”

  “If it did, I don’t think a bunch of soldiers is going to keep it at bay.”

  Laila looked at me for a second longer, and then laughed. “I guess not.”

  We fell into silence, rain pattering around us. I bit into a shrimp, and it was perfectly cooked, the way Laila’s always were. I ate, and Laila watched me eat, and neither of us uttered that unspoken truth: Soldiers might not keep a virus out, but they could stop a village from rising up against the man who didn’t stop the virus in the first place.

  • • •

  My tutoring sessions were canceled the day the soldiers arrived. Rena showed up in my suite that morning with a breakfast tray and told me I needed to be downstairs by nine thirty. That was another change that I’d had to get used to when Isabel moved in—Rena had been my nanny, my surrogate mother, for so long. But when the twins were born, she transferred her attention to them. Not that I minded too much. I was too old for a nanny anyway.

  I ate and showered and dressed and made my way to the sit
ting room by nine twenty-five. Isabel was already down there, wearing a floaty white dress and too much makeup. That didn’t seem like her—she was nervous too. The twins sat together in the corner, playing with a children’s lightbox, the pale impressions of fairies and dragons shimmering on the air.

  Isabel glanced at me and smiled. “So, has he told you anything more about why he hired the squad?” she asked.

  I managed to choke back a laugh, bitter and sarcastic. “He hasn’t told me anything.”

  Another smile, although this one seemed more forced. Polite. “He gets so busy.”

  Music trilled from the lightbox and one of the twins laughed.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He does.”

  The door to the sitting room opened, and in walked Mr. Whittaker, and then Rena, and then Dad. “They’re here,” he said. “I wanted you both to meet them. Isabel, dear, leave the twins; I think they’re too young for this.”

  Isabel didn’t protest, although the skin around her mouth tightened.

  “Come on,” Dad said. “They’re waiting out in the garden.” He was sterner than usual. The thought of Dad’s anxiety gave me a quiver of fear.

  Rena knelt with the twins, and Isabel and I followed Dad and Mr. Whittaker into the hallway. The sun was out and the staff had opened the windows so that the sea breeze blew in, and as it ruffled my hair, I thought of invisible creatures riding on it as if it were a wave, bringing death into the house.

  Beside me, Isabel wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, even though the breeze wasn’t cold.

  We stepped out on the patio. Mr. Whittaker closed the door behind us, disappearing back inside. The soldiers were on the lawn, five of them, all standing in a line. They wore fatigues and helmets and light rifles strapped across their chests. From the patio I couldn’t tell how many were women and how many were men.

  “Mr. Coromina! Is this your lovely wife?” A tall man in a blue Alvatech officer’s uniform strode up on the patio, grinning. I’d studied Alvatech in tutoring, the way I’d studied all of the three primary militaries the Coromina Group contracted out to. They originated in the Alvaverra system, three or four jumps from here. My mother didn’t serve with them. I should have known more, but I’d forgotten the rest of what I’d supposedly learned.

  “It is indeed, Colonel Nahas.” Dad beamed over at her. “Allow me to introduce Isabel May Coromina.”

  Colonel Nahas held out one hand in Isabel’s direction, and she responded immediately, like a doll, smiling and saying her pleased-to-meet-yous.

  “And this is my daughter Esme,” Dad said, startling me into standing up straight. Colonel Nahas shook my hand like he cared. “She’ll be taking over the company when I retire. Starting her first full internship next year.”

  “Noted,” Colonel Nahas said, as if my father had just given him instructions. Then he grinned at me. “You’re safe with us, Ms. Coromina.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond, as I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be safe from. Colonel Nahas gestured at the soldiers. They snapped to attention, rifles clicking into place.

  “Best of the best, as you requested,” Colonel Nahas said. “Sergeant Rowe and I served together out on Tinin during the Sinn Initiative, and the rest of them have proved themselves on missions to Ulysses, Orane III, and Ychee. Private DuBois there earned a Medal of Valor.” He nodded at one of the soldiers, whose mouth twitched like he was suppressing a smile. “I’ve seen all of them fight, sir, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

  Dad squinted at the soldiers like he was sizing up a new car. “I specifically requested men who’d fought guerrilla-style.”

  “And Orane III trained them well for it.”

  “All of them fought at Orane III?”

  “Of course!” Colonel Nahas gave a satisfied nod. “Would you like a demonstration?”

  “A demonstration?” Isabel muttered, quietly enough that Dad couldn’t hear her. She was frowning, one hand held up to her eyes to block the sun.

  Dad stepped off the patio and walked through the grass to the soldiers. They didn’t move. Nothing about them seemed human. He wandered up and down the line, peering at them each in turn. The second-to-last soldier he studied longer than the others. Then he laughed.

  “This is one of ours!” he said.

  Colonel Nahas beamed. “Wanted to see if you’d notice.”

  “Of course I’d notice.” Dad stepped back, his hands on his hips. “What’s your name, soldier?”

  “Private Steven Snow.”

  “Snow! Grown out on Quilla, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Isabel shifted her weight and gave a soft murmur of disapproval.

  “Well, I’m glad to have you on board.” Dad turned from the soldiers and joined Colonel Nahas on the patio. “They look good. We’ll give them a week as a test run, and if I have any problems, I’ll let you know.”

  “You won’t have any problems.”

  From there, Dad and Colonel Nahas launched into a drawn-out negotiation for payment, and I turned my attention to the soldiers standing motionless in the grass. They were out of place there on the lawn, hemmed in by flowering vines and the blue sky. I wondered how Dad was able to tell Private Snow from the others. He might have led the Coromina Group into the production and engineering of superhuman soldiers, but he certainly didn’t have a hand in their actual development. Dad wasn’t a scientist, not even close. And the engineered soldiers were supposed to be superficially identical to an ordinary human. There must be some tell, some particular feature molded into Private Snow’s face, that I couldn’t see.

  I squinted at him in the sunlight. He didn’t look at me; he didn’t seem to be looking at anything. None of the soldiers did. It was hard to see what he looked like beneath this helmet. Ordinary. He just looked ordinary, like all the rest of them.

  • • •

  The soldiers must have met with Dad’s approval, because a week later, they were still on the estate, prowling around the perimeter with their light rifles. According to Galactic Media Standard, there’d been another outbreak of the flu on Amana. But no one from the village had come beating down our door over it.

  The soldiers became part of the landscape, like the pineapple garden and the plumeria maze and the bougainvillea cascading in waterfalls from the third-story balconies. But I couldn’t get used to them. Their presence reminded me that being Dad’s heir put me at risk, possibly from the village, from the people I called my friends. It was a risk Dad didn’t see fit to explain to me, and the soldiers’ presence was a reminder of that omission.

  It was a reminder of my mother as well.

  I had to change some aspects of my routine because of the soldiers. For nearly a month, I didn’t sneak off to the public beach to see Paco and Laila, afraid one of the soldiers would mistake me for the phantom threat and shoot me. Instead, I started taking walks around the estate, following paths where I could see them patrolling in the distance. I figured out early on that they weren’t living in the house with the rest of the staff but out in the guest houses on the edge of the property—but that was all my long walks told me.

  Still, I kept watching. I was curious about them, about Private Snow in particular. He was—I wasn’t sure how to put it. A part of Dad’s company? My company, at some point in the future? He wasn’t a part of the company the way the citizen-employees were, the people I’d be helping out if I got an internship in PM. He was—the only word for it was product, the thought of which made my stomach feel weird.

  When I’d been ten years old, Dad had taken me to one of the labs where they grew the soldiers. The creatures in the vats had looked partially formed, and I hadn’t totally understood at the time what I’d been looking at. My memories of that day didn’t line up with the reality of Private Snow.

  Laila thought I was being absurd, following the soldiers around during my free time.

  “They’re trained professionals,” she said, her face flickering and transparent on
the holo’s projection. “You think they haven’t seen you?”

  “Probably,” I said. “But they’ll think I’m just, you know, milling around.”

  Laila rolled her eyes. “So, they know what you look like, is what I’m getting at.”

  I lifted my chin a little. “Maybe. Why do you care?”

  She laughed. “Oh my God, Esme, I miss you. I’m off tonight and Vanda’s throwing a beach bonfire, and if you don’t come, I will literally die.” She shook her head, long dark hair flying around her shoulders. “I mean that. I will literally die.”

  There it was. She wanted me to sneak off the property.

  “Me, too, if one of the soldiers shoots me.”

  “They won’t shoot you!” Laila folded her hands like she was praying and said, “Pleeeease, Esme? You’re my best friend and this flu thing has me freaked out and I just want to get drunk on the beach with you. Please.”

  She pulled an exaggerated sad face, like a melancholy clown. She’d said I was her best friend, which she’d never said before, even though I’d always thought of her as mine.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She squealed and threw out her arms as if to embrace me. I did the same and encircled the empty air of her holo. Her laughter trickled out of the speakers. It sounded far away.

  “Nine o’clock,” she said. “My place.”

  She signed off—I could hear her mother shouting at her in the distance to come help hang the laundry—and I stretched out on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Sneaking past the soldiers in the dark really did worry me. It wasn’t exactly like half-following them from a distance during the day.

  I rolled off the bed, struck with a plan.

  It was raining again, and I pulled on my rain boots and grabbed an umbrella. I scurried out of the house and set off across the gardens toward the cluster of guesthouses. If I couldn’t find anyone there, then I’d walk down to Beachway Road and wait until one of them marched past.