Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
- The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
- The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
The Scent of Hyacinths
Luka Tapahonso reached for the last book of the new shipment he was shelving — a set of lush leather-bound illustrated volumes that he had discovered near-rotting in a storage unit on a dusty human colony at the edge of the Cygnus arm. These had cost him dearly, but he paused a moment — the volume heavy and solid, cherry-red bright against the bronze of his own skin — and felt the singing resonance of satisfaction in his chest.
He couldn’t afford for these books to remain here, in his inventory, forever. But he would be sad nevertheless to see them go. There was a joy and a grief with each sale, a letting go of a piece of beauty he had cultivated in a galaxy full of suffering. But with that letting go, a blossoming of hope, the beauty now spread a little wider.
They might go sooner than he expected, he realized. His little antiques shop on Argos station was generally a quiet place, with a few regular customers checking in from time to time to see what his travels across the galaxy had brought in. But the capitol of the United Human Nations was beginning to buzz with excitement at the upcoming elections — the Chancellor had just announced she would not be seeking re-election when her term expired in two years. The press were already speculating that she would soon be endorsing the self-made military tech billionaire Richard Emory, who had been rumored for a long time as the possible next Chancellor. Elections and the emotional stump speeches that came with them infused the station with a nostalgia for Old Earth, a nostalgia the wealthier denizens of Argos satisfied by visiting antiques shops like Luka’s. A similar bump in enthusiasm for historical objects during the last election five years ago had pushed the numbers of his infant store into the black for the first time. Chancellor Lavelle’s election might be the reason he was still here, in this little corner of Argos station, surrounded by artifacts cast in a warm amber light.
His implanted earpiece chimed, notifying Luka that a customer was at the door. “I’ll be right with you,” he called.
He slid the book into the row and stepped down from his ladder, tucking a wisp of hair behind his ear and turning to greet his customer with a smile on his face.
She stood in the doorway, austere and elegant in her tailored suit and silky jewel-toned blouse. Her hands were folded neatly at her waist, still and dark as a mahogany statue, and her eyes were fixed on him with the same intensity he remembered from years ago.
The gray in her hair was new, however. Silver threaded through the tight dark curls, gleaming like starlight.
“Luka,” she said, her smile appearing on her face as he felt his own falter. “It’s good to see you again.”
He opened his mouth, his brain prepared with the appropriate pleasantries, but his breath failed him. He took the last step down from his ladder, crossing the room to his console.
Although he had looked away, he knew her eyes were still on him, her presence crackling in the room. An old fear gripped his stomach, risen from the memories she had brought in the door with her. He pressed his hands against the smooth wood of the desk, the singular piece in this store which truly belonged to him — it had been too damaged to restore properly, and now it was a blend of old and new, modern materials threading through the wood to hold it together. Worthless, in his line of business.
“What are you doing here?” he finally forced his tongue to speak.
He looked up. She had not moved. She tilted her head slightly at his words, her dark eyes tracking rapidly like she was reading text on a page.
She arched an eyebrow. Drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “I need your help.”
“Special order?” he didn’t intend the scorn in his voice, but he heard it as it came out, wondered if it was right of him to question her.
Questioning her was not something he’d permitted himself all those years ago, when he served under her. It was not something he had even considered. And even now, with years behind him and perspective to spare, his instinct was still to trust her. If only that instinct didn’t come coupled with regret that pierced so deeply into his gut that he tasted bile.
She sighed then, and unfolded her hands, approaching his desk with her unhurried walk.
“I promised myself I would never ask any of you for anything again,” she said. “I thought that was a promise I could keep. The galaxy, it seems, has other ideas.”
She reached the desk and grasped the edge of it lightly.
“Commander Onyema,” he began, unsure of the words that would follow.
She shook her head. “Indigo. I’m not your commanding officer anymore. And you can say no. I just ask you to hear me out.”
Luka met her eyes, as dark as his own. She was a gravity well, pulling everyone into her orbit, dragging them to heel at her side without so much as a snap of her fingers. That pull had been thrilling when Luka was a teenaged recruit. It meant he never had to ask the difficult questions — something about the glint in her eyes and the sharp line of her shoulders suggested she had done that part for him. All that was left was to follow.
He had almost forgotten the strength of her will, how it bent the fabric of the universe towards her. But with her standing here, in front of him, the memories bubbled to the surface from the place inside him where he had left them to fester.
It was a painful impossibility to resist the draw of a black hole.
“I’ll hear you out.”
She didn’t smile. Somehow he knew that the Indigo Onyema who stood before him now was less inclined to smiling than she had been more than a decade ago. He looked down at his hands, pressed flat against the desk, bracing.
“I made a mistake,” she began, the confession jerking his head up again. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. Now the smile came, not broad enough to activate the deep dimples in her cheeks, but a quiet, rueful thing. “I let myself get lazy.”
“Vigilance isn’t your job anymore.” He explained away her guilt, compelled by something in that smile.
“I thought that, too,” she said. “I was wrong. We all have a responsibility. I spent every last piece of earned credit I had with the Union Navy to make sure we could all have a quiet retirement. But what the Union needed was people like us in the midst of it. None of us should have left.”
It was surging up in him, the memory, in painful fragments. The muscles in his arms and shoulders ached with the force of standing still, remaining calm. Flashes of the lab they had been told to destroy and what they had found inside it. The sick, unthinkable realization that all those people whose bodies were now cooling in the falling dusk hadn’t been the traitorous schemers the Navy had promised. The haggard face of the child who had shot at them, raw tear tracks on his pale cheeks as Onyema pried the gun from his small hands.
Luka fought against the sudden pressure in his chest. He had done it a million times before. After a moment, his breath came easily again.
“Leaving was the only thing we could do,” he said when he trusted his voice. “After what we did. What we were made to do.”
Onyema shook her head forcefully. “No. Leaving was the choice that hurt the least. And we all took it.”
That burned. The heat of it transmuted in his belly, turning to anger.
“Is that why it’s been fourteen years since I’ve heard anything from you? Because it was the choice that hurt the least? You took your comfy retirement and left the rest of us to scramble for crumbs when we were released with skills no civilian employer could ever want.”
She stood taller, releasing her grip on his desk. He knew his accusation wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t been entirely absent from his life. She had ordered from his store before. He knew the delivery address to be hers, understood the people who reached out to him to be her proxies. And even though he had never set foot in the fancy home she now occupied overlooking the central Forum of Argos, there was a soft and familiar understanding in the pieces she ordered, a link that he sensed between each item as he packed them for delivery. A recognition, like looking at her through frosted glass.
They were always expensive, those pieces. The orders always included a disproportionately large tip. And so mixed with the soft recognition was a thread of resentment.
“I’m giving you a chance to make amends,” she said. “For all of us to make amends. We were ignorant before. We didn’t see what we were being asked to do. But we’re not blind anymore.”
If he tried, sometimes he could remember what it felt like before. The clarity and calm of not knowing the horrors to come. It had been springtime there, on the colony where they had been sent to perform their mission. Luka had been swept up in the rush of first love at the time, with a young lieutenant who had just joined their squadron and whose smiles lit her face and set his heart to pounding. If he tried, he could remember the peaceful expanse of blue sky and the sound of birds in the trees. Someone had planted hyacinths all over the town and the air was infused with the smell of them. If he tried, he could sometimes remember how it felt to be young and full of energy and trust.
But then he remembered what happened next. So he stopped trying to remember before, and tried instead to imagine after. He made friends who had never served. Who didn’t pry. Who accepted his vague answers about why he had left. He fell in love. Once, twice. He might be falling in love again, with the quiet and thoughtful young man who had started sharing his bed a few weeks before. He had built himself a very nice after.
And here was Onyema, standing before him, churning up everything he had put away so carefully.
“It sounds like now you’re asking us to clean up your mess,” the anger was blistering his skin now. “Since we did so well with the Union’s mess before.”
She stood back, watching him with a guarded expression. He had lost the ability to read her the moment he had revealed his anger, and now a stark mask stared back at him. A black hole.
“I’ll say what I came here to say.” Even her tone was measured, a vocal mask like her blank expression. “And then the decision is with you, Luka. If you’re still willing to hear me out.”
The exhaustion of a decade and a half of creeping fears, of days spent avoiding, of trying to forget the unforgettable leached the resistance from his bones. He nodded.
“When I left the Navy,” Onyema began, “I had a modest retirement package and a nondisclosure agreement to my name. I also had guilt to spare. Around the same time, I met a man with a dream. He was a scientist, and he wanted to bring technology to the masses, to improve life on the colonies through science. And I saw in him my chance.”
Luka kept his eyes down, his focus on the grain of the wood table as he let her words wash over him. He sensed her not far away, telling her story with poise and calm. Luka breathed deeply. He knew this part of the story, how she had acquired her wealth.
“It was just the two of us,” she continued. “Richard Emory and me. We founded TA Tech together. Our money, his intelligence, his drive. I was hitching a ride and I knew it, but I no longer had faith in my skills. Only in his. I was happy to be the silent partner.
“I grew to knew him very well in those early years, before TA Tech took off. He told me he had worked as a scientist for the Union Navy years before, but it was obvious he hated to talk about it. He told me the Union had killed his wife. That he would never forgive them for how they had torn his family apart. One night, as we worked late, he confessed that he regretted his work for the Union. That they had asked him to push boundaries no reputable scientist should be comfortable with, and that he’d obeyed. I understood his anger and his shame.”
Luka understood, too, but she didn’t need him to tell her that. He felt her eyes on him still, as the heat of his anger and regret spread up his neck. They had all obeyed without question, even Onyema, when the Navy gave them a kill order. They only understood too late what they had done.
“I didn’t tell him about what I had seen,” Onyema said, “what I had done in the name of the Union — but he seemed to know on some level that the Navy had done wrong by me, too. You know when you’ve met someone whose eyes are opened. You just know.”
Onyema told him the rest. That after a few years, the Navy had come calling with a contract for TA Tech. She had fought with Emory over it — after all they knew of the Union, how could they accept it? But he had insisted it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. He forced her out of the company. He signed the contract.
She still had enough shares in the company that she continued to receive their quarterly reports. In those reports, she began to see strange patterns. Convoluted money trails, a surge of new suppliers, subsidiaries popping in and out of existence like bubbles in the Fermi sea. TA Tech was growing rapidly, as was Emory’s fame, and she worried that raising concerns would only flag her as a troublemaker: overreacting to the natural bumps in the growth of a young company.
“But I kept an eye on him,” she said. “Maybe out of resentment. Maybe because I no longer trusted my own instincts. Something had changed in him, to take that contract. Or something had been buried so deeply in him that I’d missed it.”
She met Luka’s eyes. “I looked into his Naval records, though. Through Gemma.” Onyema paused, cocking her head, reading his reaction. “She stayed with the Navy.”
“I know,” he said, his throat dry.
Onyema nodded. “She was able to look him up. She has access to nearly the highest level of classification. She found no sign of Richard Emory.”
“So he lied about his service,” Luka said, knowing as he said it that it was the better of the two options. Onyema raised an eyebrow, as though reminding him that she knew he wasn’t so naive.
“Something is going on with Richard Emory,” Onyema said. “Lavelle’s endorsement came out of nowhere. It feels odd. I’ve met Rachel Lavelle. We’ve interacted on numerous occasions, and when she learned I’d worked with Richard, she seemed to find the mention of his name distasteful. Why would she endorse him?”
Luka made a face, “Why do politicians do anything?”
Onyema watched him, that mask slipping a little to reveal concern on her face. “Emory told me of the loss of his wife only once. I still believe that story, only because it clearly caused him great pain. He placed all that pain at the Union’s feet and swore revenge for her death. I understood that wish for revenge. I didn’t think anything of it at the time — we were just two middling entrepreneurs. We didn’t have it in us to follow through on a revenge fantasy. Over time, I grew to understand that revenge was misplaced. But Richard? He has power, and he’s seeking more. He will have everything he needs to enact whatever punishment he thinks is fitting. And I have a feeling he will do it.”
“Who are we to stop him?” Luka asked. “We know the horrors of the Union. Maybe it needs to be brought down.”
“If he could bring this cesspool down gently, I’d line up behind him. But innocent people stand between him and his goal. And I doubt anyone has the self-control to do the right thing when faced with the kind of power that comes with the Chancellorship of the Union. If Richard is still driven by his anger, as he was all those years ago, I worry what he’ll do when he has the full might of the Union behind him.”
She stood in the silence that trailed her words like a fog rolling in behind a storm front, her eyes calm, her hands clasped again in front of her. Luka dropped into the seat behind his desk, his head in his hands. He had spent so much energy over the years fighting the memories, the shame, the fear. For years, he had wandered the galaxy aimlessly, a poor itinerant laborer. He couldn’t stomach using the skills the Navy had given him, and he had no others to offer besides a strong body and the will to work until exhaustion drove him to the ground and made his sleep empty.
He had come back to himself slowly, had gradually picked up the little pieces of the Luka that had existed before the Navy. He had carved out a space for himself in the galaxy. Selling art. Selling books. Selling a narrative of humanity that was full of beauty instead of war.
Luka snapped his head up. “No,” he said. “I made my choice to leave. I’m not taking it back.”
Onyema frowned. “It’s not the choice you think it is.”
“Get out,” Luka stood. “I don’t want to see you again.”
He couldn’t afford for these books to remain here, in his inventory, forever. But he would be sad nevertheless to see them go. There was a joy and a grief with each sale, a letting go of a piece of beauty he had cultivated in a galaxy full of suffering. But with that letting go, a blossoming of hope, the beauty now spread a little wider.
They might go sooner than he expected, he realized. His little antiques shop on Argos station was generally a quiet place, with a few regular customers checking in from time to time to see what his travels across the galaxy had brought in. But the capitol of the United Human Nations was beginning to buzz with excitement at the upcoming elections — the Chancellor had just announced she would not be seeking re-election when her term expired in two years. The press were already speculating that she would soon be endorsing the self-made military tech billionaire Richard Emory, who had been rumored for a long time as the possible next Chancellor. Elections and the emotional stump speeches that came with them infused the station with a nostalgia for Old Earth, a nostalgia the wealthier denizens of Argos satisfied by visiting antiques shops like Luka’s. A similar bump in enthusiasm for historical objects during the last election five years ago had pushed the numbers of his infant store into the black for the first time. Chancellor Lavelle’s election might be the reason he was still here, in this little corner of Argos station, surrounded by artifacts cast in a warm amber light.
His implanted earpiece chimed, notifying Luka that a customer was at the door. “I’ll be right with you,” he called.
He slid the book into the row and stepped down from his ladder, tucking a wisp of hair behind his ear and turning to greet his customer with a smile on his face.
She stood in the doorway, austere and elegant in her tailored suit and silky jewel-toned blouse. Her hands were folded neatly at her waist, still and dark as a mahogany statue, and her eyes were fixed on him with the same intensity he remembered from years ago.
The gray in her hair was new, however. Silver threaded through the tight dark curls, gleaming like starlight.
“Luka,” she said, her smile appearing on her face as he felt his own falter. “It’s good to see you again.”
He opened his mouth, his brain prepared with the appropriate pleasantries, but his breath failed him. He took the last step down from his ladder, crossing the room to his console.
Although he had looked away, he knew her eyes were still on him, her presence crackling in the room. An old fear gripped his stomach, risen from the memories she had brought in the door with her. He pressed his hands against the smooth wood of the desk, the singular piece in this store which truly belonged to him — it had been too damaged to restore properly, and now it was a blend of old and new, modern materials threading through the wood to hold it together. Worthless, in his line of business.
“What are you doing here?” he finally forced his tongue to speak.
He looked up. She had not moved. She tilted her head slightly at his words, her dark eyes tracking rapidly like she was reading text on a page.
She arched an eyebrow. Drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. “I need your help.”
“Special order?” he didn’t intend the scorn in his voice, but he heard it as it came out, wondered if it was right of him to question her.
Questioning her was not something he’d permitted himself all those years ago, when he served under her. It was not something he had even considered. And even now, with years behind him and perspective to spare, his instinct was still to trust her. If only that instinct didn’t come coupled with regret that pierced so deeply into his gut that he tasted bile.
She sighed then, and unfolded her hands, approaching his desk with her unhurried walk.
“I promised myself I would never ask any of you for anything again,” she said. “I thought that was a promise I could keep. The galaxy, it seems, has other ideas.”
She reached the desk and grasped the edge of it lightly.
“Commander Onyema,” he began, unsure of the words that would follow.
She shook her head. “Indigo. I’m not your commanding officer anymore. And you can say no. I just ask you to hear me out.”
Luka met her eyes, as dark as his own. She was a gravity well, pulling everyone into her orbit, dragging them to heel at her side without so much as a snap of her fingers. That pull had been thrilling when Luka was a teenaged recruit. It meant he never had to ask the difficult questions — something about the glint in her eyes and the sharp line of her shoulders suggested she had done that part for him. All that was left was to follow.
He had almost forgotten the strength of her will, how it bent the fabric of the universe towards her. But with her standing here, in front of him, the memories bubbled to the surface from the place inside him where he had left them to fester.
It was a painful impossibility to resist the draw of a black hole.
“I’ll hear you out.”
She didn’t smile. Somehow he knew that the Indigo Onyema who stood before him now was less inclined to smiling than she had been more than a decade ago. He looked down at his hands, pressed flat against the desk, bracing.
“I made a mistake,” she began, the confession jerking his head up again. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. Now the smile came, not broad enough to activate the deep dimples in her cheeks, but a quiet, rueful thing. “I let myself get lazy.”
“Vigilance isn’t your job anymore.” He explained away her guilt, compelled by something in that smile.
“I thought that, too,” she said. “I was wrong. We all have a responsibility. I spent every last piece of earned credit I had with the Union Navy to make sure we could all have a quiet retirement. But what the Union needed was people like us in the midst of it. None of us should have left.”
It was surging up in him, the memory, in painful fragments. The muscles in his arms and shoulders ached with the force of standing still, remaining calm. Flashes of the lab they had been told to destroy and what they had found inside it. The sick, unthinkable realization that all those people whose bodies were now cooling in the falling dusk hadn’t been the traitorous schemers the Navy had promised. The haggard face of the child who had shot at them, raw tear tracks on his pale cheeks as Onyema pried the gun from his small hands.
Luka fought against the sudden pressure in his chest. He had done it a million times before. After a moment, his breath came easily again.
“Leaving was the only thing we could do,” he said when he trusted his voice. “After what we did. What we were made to do.”
Onyema shook her head forcefully. “No. Leaving was the choice that hurt the least. And we all took it.”
That burned. The heat of it transmuted in his belly, turning to anger.
“Is that why it’s been fourteen years since I’ve heard anything from you? Because it was the choice that hurt the least? You took your comfy retirement and left the rest of us to scramble for crumbs when we were released with skills no civilian employer could ever want.”
She stood taller, releasing her grip on his desk. He knew his accusation wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t been entirely absent from his life. She had ordered from his store before. He knew the delivery address to be hers, understood the people who reached out to him to be her proxies. And even though he had never set foot in the fancy home she now occupied overlooking the central Forum of Argos, there was a soft and familiar understanding in the pieces she ordered, a link that he sensed between each item as he packed them for delivery. A recognition, like looking at her through frosted glass.
They were always expensive, those pieces. The orders always included a disproportionately large tip. And so mixed with the soft recognition was a thread of resentment.
“I’m giving you a chance to make amends,” she said. “For all of us to make amends. We were ignorant before. We didn’t see what we were being asked to do. But we’re not blind anymore.”
If he tried, sometimes he could remember what it felt like before. The clarity and calm of not knowing the horrors to come. It had been springtime there, on the colony where they had been sent to perform their mission. Luka had been swept up in the rush of first love at the time, with a young lieutenant who had just joined their squadron and whose smiles lit her face and set his heart to pounding. If he tried, he could remember the peaceful expanse of blue sky and the sound of birds in the trees. Someone had planted hyacinths all over the town and the air was infused with the smell of them. If he tried, he could sometimes remember how it felt to be young and full of energy and trust.
But then he remembered what happened next. So he stopped trying to remember before, and tried instead to imagine after. He made friends who had never served. Who didn’t pry. Who accepted his vague answers about why he had left. He fell in love. Once, twice. He might be falling in love again, with the quiet and thoughtful young man who had started sharing his bed a few weeks before. He had built himself a very nice after.
And here was Onyema, standing before him, churning up everything he had put away so carefully.
“It sounds like now you’re asking us to clean up your mess,” the anger was blistering his skin now. “Since we did so well with the Union’s mess before.”
She stood back, watching him with a guarded expression. He had lost the ability to read her the moment he had revealed his anger, and now a stark mask stared back at him. A black hole.
“I’ll say what I came here to say.” Even her tone was measured, a vocal mask like her blank expression. “And then the decision is with you, Luka. If you’re still willing to hear me out.”
The exhaustion of a decade and a half of creeping fears, of days spent avoiding, of trying to forget the unforgettable leached the resistance from his bones. He nodded.
“When I left the Navy,” Onyema began, “I had a modest retirement package and a nondisclosure agreement to my name. I also had guilt to spare. Around the same time, I met a man with a dream. He was a scientist, and he wanted to bring technology to the masses, to improve life on the colonies through science. And I saw in him my chance.”
Luka kept his eyes down, his focus on the grain of the wood table as he let her words wash over him. He sensed her not far away, telling her story with poise and calm. Luka breathed deeply. He knew this part of the story, how she had acquired her wealth.
“It was just the two of us,” she continued. “Richard Emory and me. We founded TA Tech together. Our money, his intelligence, his drive. I was hitching a ride and I knew it, but I no longer had faith in my skills. Only in his. I was happy to be the silent partner.
“I grew to knew him very well in those early years, before TA Tech took off. He told me he had worked as a scientist for the Union Navy years before, but it was obvious he hated to talk about it. He told me the Union had killed his wife. That he would never forgive them for how they had torn his family apart. One night, as we worked late, he confessed that he regretted his work for the Union. That they had asked him to push boundaries no reputable scientist should be comfortable with, and that he’d obeyed. I understood his anger and his shame.”
Luka understood, too, but she didn’t need him to tell her that. He felt her eyes on him still, as the heat of his anger and regret spread up his neck. They had all obeyed without question, even Onyema, when the Navy gave them a kill order. They only understood too late what they had done.
“I didn’t tell him about what I had seen,” Onyema said, “what I had done in the name of the Union — but he seemed to know on some level that the Navy had done wrong by me, too. You know when you’ve met someone whose eyes are opened. You just know.”
Onyema told him the rest. That after a few years, the Navy had come calling with a contract for TA Tech. She had fought with Emory over it — after all they knew of the Union, how could they accept it? But he had insisted it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. He forced her out of the company. He signed the contract.
She still had enough shares in the company that she continued to receive their quarterly reports. In those reports, she began to see strange patterns. Convoluted money trails, a surge of new suppliers, subsidiaries popping in and out of existence like bubbles in the Fermi sea. TA Tech was growing rapidly, as was Emory’s fame, and she worried that raising concerns would only flag her as a troublemaker: overreacting to the natural bumps in the growth of a young company.
“But I kept an eye on him,” she said. “Maybe out of resentment. Maybe because I no longer trusted my own instincts. Something had changed in him, to take that contract. Or something had been buried so deeply in him that I’d missed it.”
She met Luka’s eyes. “I looked into his Naval records, though. Through Gemma.” Onyema paused, cocking her head, reading his reaction. “She stayed with the Navy.”
“I know,” he said, his throat dry.
Onyema nodded. “She was able to look him up. She has access to nearly the highest level of classification. She found no sign of Richard Emory.”
“So he lied about his service,” Luka said, knowing as he said it that it was the better of the two options. Onyema raised an eyebrow, as though reminding him that she knew he wasn’t so naive.
“Something is going on with Richard Emory,” Onyema said. “Lavelle’s endorsement came out of nowhere. It feels odd. I’ve met Rachel Lavelle. We’ve interacted on numerous occasions, and when she learned I’d worked with Richard, she seemed to find the mention of his name distasteful. Why would she endorse him?”
Luka made a face, “Why do politicians do anything?”
Onyema watched him, that mask slipping a little to reveal concern on her face. “Emory told me of the loss of his wife only once. I still believe that story, only because it clearly caused him great pain. He placed all that pain at the Union’s feet and swore revenge for her death. I understood that wish for revenge. I didn’t think anything of it at the time — we were just two middling entrepreneurs. We didn’t have it in us to follow through on a revenge fantasy. Over time, I grew to understand that revenge was misplaced. But Richard? He has power, and he’s seeking more. He will have everything he needs to enact whatever punishment he thinks is fitting. And I have a feeling he will do it.”
“Who are we to stop him?” Luka asked. “We know the horrors of the Union. Maybe it needs to be brought down.”
“If he could bring this cesspool down gently, I’d line up behind him. But innocent people stand between him and his goal. And I doubt anyone has the self-control to do the right thing when faced with the kind of power that comes with the Chancellorship of the Union. If Richard is still driven by his anger, as he was all those years ago, I worry what he’ll do when he has the full might of the Union behind him.”
She stood in the silence that trailed her words like a fog rolling in behind a storm front, her eyes calm, her hands clasped again in front of her. Luka dropped into the seat behind his desk, his head in his hands. He had spent so much energy over the years fighting the memories, the shame, the fear. For years, he had wandered the galaxy aimlessly, a poor itinerant laborer. He couldn’t stomach using the skills the Navy had given him, and he had no others to offer besides a strong body and the will to work until exhaustion drove him to the ground and made his sleep empty.
He had come back to himself slowly, had gradually picked up the little pieces of the Luka that had existed before the Navy. He had carved out a space for himself in the galaxy. Selling art. Selling books. Selling a narrative of humanity that was full of beauty instead of war.
Luka snapped his head up. “No,” he said. “I made my choice to leave. I’m not taking it back.”
Onyema frowned. “It’s not the choice you think it is.”
“Get out,” Luka stood. “I don’t want to see you again.”
The nightmares returned. They hadn’t been gone for long, or perhaps never really left, but in the seven years since Luka had made the first lease payment on his storefront and finally settled into something approaching a quiet life, they had become dimmer and more infrequent. He still woke from time to time with the unsettled feeling of churned up memories and some vague and unidentifiable terror, but he no longer recalled the details of the dreams.
But after Onyema returned, he woke every night in a feverish panic, his head ringing with screams and explosions. His hands were wet with blood and viscera, still hot, sticky. The smell of hyacinths lingered.
The first time it happened, Oliver had woken him, eyes wide in the dark. Luka mumbled an explanation until, satisfied, he settled himself back in the crook of Luka’s arm and began to breathe easy again. But Luka kept his eyes on the ceiling all night, willing sleep to leave him in peace, breathing the scent of Oliver’s hair until it was all he could smell.
The second time it happened, Oliver was less easily persuaded, the frown between his eyebrows stubborn. His questions pried deeper this time, until Luka turned away, eyes to the wall and mouth shut firmly.
The third time, there was no one beside him to worry. He woke to silence. He turned on the light.
But after Onyema returned, he woke every night in a feverish panic, his head ringing with screams and explosions. His hands were wet with blood and viscera, still hot, sticky. The smell of hyacinths lingered.
The first time it happened, Oliver had woken him, eyes wide in the dark. Luka mumbled an explanation until, satisfied, he settled himself back in the crook of Luka’s arm and began to breathe easy again. But Luka kept his eyes on the ceiling all night, willing sleep to leave him in peace, breathing the scent of Oliver’s hair until it was all he could smell.
The second time it happened, Oliver was less easily persuaded, the frown between his eyebrows stubborn. His questions pried deeper this time, until Luka turned away, eyes to the wall and mouth shut firmly.
The third time, there was no one beside him to worry. He woke to silence. He turned on the light.
Gemma Tanaka found him a few days later.
He had gone to the little plot he rented in one of Argos’s community gardens. A cubic meter tub that had been bare when he first leased it, which he had filled with rich soil shipped in from agricultural colonies. A little red-painted kiosk in the middle of the park sold the soil, along with seeds of all sorts, and for a monthly fee the space was his, complete with a little extra artificial sunshine and the canned sound of recorded birdsong.
He knelt in the dirt, his shoulders warmed by the light overhead. The smell of his tomato plants, sharp and green, cleared his mind as he harvested the savory red fruits.
When he finished with the second tomato plant, he shifted to examine his little raised box of herbs and saw her. She was standing at an empty plot a few meters away, dark brown hair secured in a tight, neat bun at the nape of her neck the way she had always kept it. Her cheeks were less full now, the shadows cast by the imitation sunshine highlighting the familiar shapes of her nose and lips and cheekbones in a way that was foreign to him.
The Gemma he had known so intimately was little more than a girl back then, and he still a child himself. They had both been fresh out of their teens and only four years in uniform, although Gemma’s four years had been spent in the Naval Academy, while Luka’s had been spent on grunt missions. He remembered first meeting her, the young lieutenant with the smile that stole his wits from him. The woman who looked at him now caught his gaze and smiled a little sadly. Luka wondered suddenly who he had become in her eyes.
He stood as she approached, her expression still sad, but something sparkled in her eyes as she reached out her arms to hug him.
“Your hair,” she said in a half-laugh when they pulled away from the embrace. She reached a hand up to touch the strands that fell from his ponytail. “I’m surprised I recognized you at all.”
“I thought I’d try something new when I got out,” he said, picking up the basket where he had put the tomatoes. He didn’t tell her how his trimmer had lain neglected in the small box of everything he had owned while in the service, the box itself shut away where it couldn’t provoke the fits of nausea and shaking that had slowly dwindled to a numb half-conscious hatred.
He had eventually thrown that box away without looking inside it. Five years ago, now.
“You look the same,” he said. It was true, he realized. As much as she had changed with the years, the serene eyes the color of cherry wood under thin and arched brows still watched him with an echo of the expressions he remembered so well. Her lips twitched, a ghost of an old smile.
She blinked, and suddenly her brow furrowed. “Indigo said you were reluctant,” she said. “That you didn’t want any part in this.”
Still blunt, then. Still not one for small talk. Luka had learned to appreciate small talk through the years, to treasure the little pieces of themselves people revealed when they thought they were just talking about the changing patterns of the Forum’s sky.
“I don’t,” he said, but she frowned at his words.
“I don’t believe you.”
He sighed. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
She waited as he brushed the dirt from the knees of his pants and washed his hands in the garden center sink. He took extra care with the slivers of dark soil that had worked their way into his nail beds, and when he turned back to her, his hands were flushed from the hot water and his mind was clearer.
They found an empty table at the cafe around the corner and took seats across from each other. When their drinks arrived, they sat a moment in tense silence.
“I think,” Gemma resumed as though no time had passed, “that you will change your mind if you understand what’s at stake.”
Words flooded his mind, bitter ones that would only leave a wound if he spoke them. There was no point in reacting in anger — everyone assumed they knew him, knew what could change his mind. Instead of speaking, he waited, watching the heat rise from his espresso in little wisps.
“I stayed to make a difference,” she said. “I know you want to do that, too. I know you, Luka, as much as you might want to hide from what’s happened. I know you can’t sit by and watch things change and know that you could have had a say in how they went.”
“How am I supposed to believe that Onyema’s hunch is right? I don’t want to end up caught up in a redemption arc she’s trying to write for herself.”
Gemma sipped her tea, the steam flushing her cheeks. She considered his words for a moment and then opened her palm drive. “You need to see this.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something that might make you understand how hard it was for her to show up again, after all these years.”
He hesitated a moment before accepting the connection request she sent. A data file popped up in a holographic screen, and he scrolled through it.
“Military records?” he asked, half-reading the names. Indigo Onyema was listed as the CO, and then a list of names he had never seen before. “Onyema had another team? Dion Mustafa, Nina Oakes — am I supposed to know these people?”
He confronted her with a look, and she pursed her lips. “Keep reading.”
He scrolled further down the list, until the fifth member of the team of eight stopped him cold. Anthony Brighton. Luka wanted his first memory of Anthony to be his warm laugh, a belly laugh that brought tears to the corners of his brown eyes. Instead, the image that rose first to his mind was the way those brown eyes had stared, empty in death. And the next name down — Tyrone Sloan — brought flashes of his blood mixing with the wet spring soil to form deep red rivulets.
Luka looked up at Gemma, recognized the tears pricking at his own eyes by the shimmer in hers. The memory of blood and entrails on his skin, the strong pulse in her abdomen as he held her together with his own hands until Santi had arrived with the medical kit. He pushed his espresso away.
“Are these other people supposed to be us?”
She nodded.
“How?”
“I helped her,” Gemma said. “Changed the records. She didn’t want us to carry this with us.”
Luka almost laughed at the idea that a change in his record could keep him from carrying it with him. He would carry that day with him forever — the people they had killed, the people they had lost, the pieces of himself that he had left on that colony with the blue skies overhead and the smell of hyacinths.
Anthony had survived that day. He hadn’t survived his own guilt. Luka had wondered often in that first year if his path would end in the same place. But the pain had dulled with time. Enough that he could ignore it if he tried hard enough.
“The Union made a deal with her. She took the blame, retired quietly. But my CO approached me about a year later, told me the Union were thinking about prosecuting. About pinning it on us. The lab, the civilian deaths. Saying we were a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs who lost control. It would have been neat, clean for them. So Onyema started changing records, one at a time. They’re all listed as killed in service, some time after…”
Luka frowned. Some time after.
“So she cleaned it up herself,” he said.
“Yes. She protected us. Made it so she was the only one left to punish, and they knew how that would look, after offering her a clean retirement.”
Easier to bury it. Easier to pretend it had never happened. Wasn’t that what they were all doing?
He knew that wasn’t true. He knew it as well as Gemma, if he was less willing to admit it. She had stayed in the Navy when he had left, believing she could make a difference there. He blamed that choice for tearing them apart, for ending his first love in shouting and tears, but he understood now the way their pain had bubbled over into their joy, suffocating it until there was nothing left.
They had seen the rot in the heart of the Union, and it had broken them all. And now Onyema had reappeared with a story about Richard Emory. He had seen that same rot and was planning to take advantage of it.
“I don’t see how this changes anything,” he said. “Am I supposed to blindly follow her now? Are we her private army, her vigilantes?”
“Would you rather wait and see where this goes?” Gemma’s voice was edged in frustration. “He’s wealthy, powerful. He has everything he needs to turn the Union to follow him. Onyema thinks he’s already begun. She’s not asking us to be vigilantes. She’s just asking us to be vigilant.”
Luka swiped up for the holographic pay screen and settled the bill. Then he stood. He couldn’t bear this any longer. He wasn’t sure which part of this pushed him to leave, but the pressure had been building and building until it straightened his legs and pushed him away.
“Tell her you tried your best,” he said.
He didn’t hear what she said as he walked away. Maybe she didn’t say anything.
He had gone to the little plot he rented in one of Argos’s community gardens. A cubic meter tub that had been bare when he first leased it, which he had filled with rich soil shipped in from agricultural colonies. A little red-painted kiosk in the middle of the park sold the soil, along with seeds of all sorts, and for a monthly fee the space was his, complete with a little extra artificial sunshine and the canned sound of recorded birdsong.
He knelt in the dirt, his shoulders warmed by the light overhead. The smell of his tomato plants, sharp and green, cleared his mind as he harvested the savory red fruits.
When he finished with the second tomato plant, he shifted to examine his little raised box of herbs and saw her. She was standing at an empty plot a few meters away, dark brown hair secured in a tight, neat bun at the nape of her neck the way she had always kept it. Her cheeks were less full now, the shadows cast by the imitation sunshine highlighting the familiar shapes of her nose and lips and cheekbones in a way that was foreign to him.
The Gemma he had known so intimately was little more than a girl back then, and he still a child himself. They had both been fresh out of their teens and only four years in uniform, although Gemma’s four years had been spent in the Naval Academy, while Luka’s had been spent on grunt missions. He remembered first meeting her, the young lieutenant with the smile that stole his wits from him. The woman who looked at him now caught his gaze and smiled a little sadly. Luka wondered suddenly who he had become in her eyes.
He stood as she approached, her expression still sad, but something sparkled in her eyes as she reached out her arms to hug him.
“Your hair,” she said in a half-laugh when they pulled away from the embrace. She reached a hand up to touch the strands that fell from his ponytail. “I’m surprised I recognized you at all.”
“I thought I’d try something new when I got out,” he said, picking up the basket where he had put the tomatoes. He didn’t tell her how his trimmer had lain neglected in the small box of everything he had owned while in the service, the box itself shut away where it couldn’t provoke the fits of nausea and shaking that had slowly dwindled to a numb half-conscious hatred.
He had eventually thrown that box away without looking inside it. Five years ago, now.
“You look the same,” he said. It was true, he realized. As much as she had changed with the years, the serene eyes the color of cherry wood under thin and arched brows still watched him with an echo of the expressions he remembered so well. Her lips twitched, a ghost of an old smile.
She blinked, and suddenly her brow furrowed. “Indigo said you were reluctant,” she said. “That you didn’t want any part in this.”
Still blunt, then. Still not one for small talk. Luka had learned to appreciate small talk through the years, to treasure the little pieces of themselves people revealed when they thought they were just talking about the changing patterns of the Forum’s sky.
“I don’t,” he said, but she frowned at his words.
“I don’t believe you.”
He sighed. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
She waited as he brushed the dirt from the knees of his pants and washed his hands in the garden center sink. He took extra care with the slivers of dark soil that had worked their way into his nail beds, and when he turned back to her, his hands were flushed from the hot water and his mind was clearer.
They found an empty table at the cafe around the corner and took seats across from each other. When their drinks arrived, they sat a moment in tense silence.
“I think,” Gemma resumed as though no time had passed, “that you will change your mind if you understand what’s at stake.”
Words flooded his mind, bitter ones that would only leave a wound if he spoke them. There was no point in reacting in anger — everyone assumed they knew him, knew what could change his mind. Instead of speaking, he waited, watching the heat rise from his espresso in little wisps.
“I stayed to make a difference,” she said. “I know you want to do that, too. I know you, Luka, as much as you might want to hide from what’s happened. I know you can’t sit by and watch things change and know that you could have had a say in how they went.”
“How am I supposed to believe that Onyema’s hunch is right? I don’t want to end up caught up in a redemption arc she’s trying to write for herself.”
Gemma sipped her tea, the steam flushing her cheeks. She considered his words for a moment and then opened her palm drive. “You need to see this.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something that might make you understand how hard it was for her to show up again, after all these years.”
He hesitated a moment before accepting the connection request she sent. A data file popped up in a holographic screen, and he scrolled through it.
“Military records?” he asked, half-reading the names. Indigo Onyema was listed as the CO, and then a list of names he had never seen before. “Onyema had another team? Dion Mustafa, Nina Oakes — am I supposed to know these people?”
He confronted her with a look, and she pursed her lips. “Keep reading.”
He scrolled further down the list, until the fifth member of the team of eight stopped him cold. Anthony Brighton. Luka wanted his first memory of Anthony to be his warm laugh, a belly laugh that brought tears to the corners of his brown eyes. Instead, the image that rose first to his mind was the way those brown eyes had stared, empty in death. And the next name down — Tyrone Sloan — brought flashes of his blood mixing with the wet spring soil to form deep red rivulets.
Luka looked up at Gemma, recognized the tears pricking at his own eyes by the shimmer in hers. The memory of blood and entrails on his skin, the strong pulse in her abdomen as he held her together with his own hands until Santi had arrived with the medical kit. He pushed his espresso away.
“Are these other people supposed to be us?”
She nodded.
“How?”
“I helped her,” Gemma said. “Changed the records. She didn’t want us to carry this with us.”
Luka almost laughed at the idea that a change in his record could keep him from carrying it with him. He would carry that day with him forever — the people they had killed, the people they had lost, the pieces of himself that he had left on that colony with the blue skies overhead and the smell of hyacinths.
Anthony had survived that day. He hadn’t survived his own guilt. Luka had wondered often in that first year if his path would end in the same place. But the pain had dulled with time. Enough that he could ignore it if he tried hard enough.
“The Union made a deal with her. She took the blame, retired quietly. But my CO approached me about a year later, told me the Union were thinking about prosecuting. About pinning it on us. The lab, the civilian deaths. Saying we were a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs who lost control. It would have been neat, clean for them. So Onyema started changing records, one at a time. They’re all listed as killed in service, some time after…”
Luka frowned. Some time after.
“So she cleaned it up herself,” he said.
“Yes. She protected us. Made it so she was the only one left to punish, and they knew how that would look, after offering her a clean retirement.”
Easier to bury it. Easier to pretend it had never happened. Wasn’t that what they were all doing?
He knew that wasn’t true. He knew it as well as Gemma, if he was less willing to admit it. She had stayed in the Navy when he had left, believing she could make a difference there. He blamed that choice for tearing them apart, for ending his first love in shouting and tears, but he understood now the way their pain had bubbled over into their joy, suffocating it until there was nothing left.
They had seen the rot in the heart of the Union, and it had broken them all. And now Onyema had reappeared with a story about Richard Emory. He had seen that same rot and was planning to take advantage of it.
“I don’t see how this changes anything,” he said. “Am I supposed to blindly follow her now? Are we her private army, her vigilantes?”
“Would you rather wait and see where this goes?” Gemma’s voice was edged in frustration. “He’s wealthy, powerful. He has everything he needs to turn the Union to follow him. Onyema thinks he’s already begun. She’s not asking us to be vigilantes. She’s just asking us to be vigilant.”
Luka swiped up for the holographic pay screen and settled the bill. Then he stood. He couldn’t bear this any longer. He wasn’t sure which part of this pushed him to leave, but the pressure had been building and building until it straightened his legs and pushed him away.
“Tell her you tried your best,” he said.
He didn’t hear what she said as he walked away. Maybe she didn’t say anything.
In the morning, Luka found himself outside a door he hadn’t seen in a decade, his thoughts hazy with exhaustion and residual fear.
The Fox’s warehouse was buried in a back alley of a neighborhood on the third level of Argos. Luka waited until the metal door slid open and the Fox waved him in with blunt-fingered hands. The door closed behind them with a whine.
“It’s off its track,” the Fox grumbled as he worked his way through mountains of shipping crates to a console and display stand. He took a seat on a stool. “Should fix that, one of these days. But it still locks, which is all that matters.”
He gestured for Luka to sit across from him, but Luka remained standing. The Fox’s face cracked into a lopsided smile. “Look at you, Tap. All cultured. Don’t usually see you around these parts of Argos.”
Luka drew in a breath to keep himself from responding. The claustrophobic stack of shipping crates and storage cabinets pressed in on him, reminded him of the armory, of the close quarters of a military frigate.
“Did she come see you too?” His voice reached his own ears clipped and harsh. The Fox twisted his craggy face into an expression of annoyance. He had made that face often as the senior enlisted in their squadron, always finding reasons to complain about something or another.
“You’re real worked up about it, huh?” He sat back, folding burly arms over his chest.
“So she did?”
“She did.”
Luka sat now, crossing his leg ankle-to-knee. The foot that remained on the floor tapped anxiously, but he barely noticed the motion. The Fox eyed him.
“I agree with her,” the Fox answered his next question before he asked.
Luka dropped his head into his hands. “I’m not sure I do.”
“You got soft. I liked you better when you were rough around the edges.”
Luka didn’t take a breath this time. He let the anger respond, a shield of fire around the last shred of hope that he had been clinging to over the past week. He stood, his voice raised. “I wasn’t rough around the edges. I was a kid. A kid sent out to kill other kids. I didn’t know how to deal with that.” He closed his mouth around the next words: a confession he was not ready to make. I still don’t.
“It’s an opening,” the Fox said. “A chance to do something to help. It’s the least we can do, after everything.”
“The least we can do? I wanted no part in any of this. I left it all behind.”
“And I didn’t?”
Luka scoffed, gesturing with his hand to the shipping crates that cluttered the room. The Fox shrugged as though it had nothing to do with anything, so Luka wrested the lid from one of the containers and let it fall to the floor with a clatter.
“You’re still in the thick of it,” he said. “Smuggling weapons, contributing directly to more death, more pain. I sell art.”
“Bullshit!” the Fox’s voice punctured the background sounds of the room as violently as the clanging lid had. “Yeah, I sell weapons, but at least I don’t sell to them.”
“What do you mean, them?”
The shorter man stood, squaring his shoulders and coming out from behind the display. “You know exactly who I mean, Tap. You think you’re better than us because you sell pretty things to rich folks? I sell practical things to people in need.”
“Criminals and gangs, you mean.”
“People who have no other way of surviving. People like us. Or at least like you used to be.”
The Fox punctuated his speech with a wave of his own hands, turning away from Luka to replace the lid on the crate. Luka remained motionless where he stood, his heart beating slow, hard.
A stifled quiet hung for a long while, broken only by the dim clunk of the Fox replacing the guns in their crate. Luka’s hands itched to help, but he watched the guns warily, as though they might burn him. Finally, he knelt down and picked one up. It was a recent model, nothing like anything he had been trained on, but it still felt familiar in his hands. He hated how familiar.
He handed the gun to the Fox, who put it on the top of the pile in the crate and replaced the lid.
“So what if I’m soft?” Luka asked in the hush of the room. “Couldn’t the galaxy use a little softness?”
The Fox sighed and looked down at his hands. Luka knew that sigh — it was the one he used when their orders were tough, when he knew the long trips in the black would be filled with restless energy and no outlet.
“The people who can afford the things you sell are the same people who were happy to have us clean up their mess for them then sweep us out to the edge of the galaxy.” The uneven lines in his face deepened. The light glinted on a few white strands in his mud-colored hair. “Better to’ve just put us out the airlock,” he said. “But that’d be too much paperwork.”
“What about her?” Luka’s throat was tight, the muscles of his neck constricting his vocal cords.
The Fox met his gaze, then, the creases at the corners of his gray eyes shadowed in the harsh light of the room.
“She’s ready to use her power to help,” he said. “Her showing up at all our doorsteps after all these years proves that.”
Luka thought back to the disguised orders — the tip that she had known would enrich his own pockets, would help him live more easily. He thought back to the rueful smile, the small apologetic gestures that she couldn’t entirely mask.
The Fox watched Luka, his hands resting on the lid of the shipping crate, a frown creasing his forehead. His face revealed too much, where Onyema’s had revealed too little. Luka didn’t like the pity in the Fox’s eyes. It was too gentle an expression for such a battle-worn face. Luka wanted to see the two things as separate, as oil and water. He wanted to hold them apart from each other, but as the Fox watched him with uncharacteristic patience, Luka felt instead the barriers shredding.
He left on shaking legs without another word.
The Fox’s warehouse was buried in a back alley of a neighborhood on the third level of Argos. Luka waited until the metal door slid open and the Fox waved him in with blunt-fingered hands. The door closed behind them with a whine.
“It’s off its track,” the Fox grumbled as he worked his way through mountains of shipping crates to a console and display stand. He took a seat on a stool. “Should fix that, one of these days. But it still locks, which is all that matters.”
He gestured for Luka to sit across from him, but Luka remained standing. The Fox’s face cracked into a lopsided smile. “Look at you, Tap. All cultured. Don’t usually see you around these parts of Argos.”
Luka drew in a breath to keep himself from responding. The claustrophobic stack of shipping crates and storage cabinets pressed in on him, reminded him of the armory, of the close quarters of a military frigate.
“Did she come see you too?” His voice reached his own ears clipped and harsh. The Fox twisted his craggy face into an expression of annoyance. He had made that face often as the senior enlisted in their squadron, always finding reasons to complain about something or another.
“You’re real worked up about it, huh?” He sat back, folding burly arms over his chest.
“So she did?”
“She did.”
Luka sat now, crossing his leg ankle-to-knee. The foot that remained on the floor tapped anxiously, but he barely noticed the motion. The Fox eyed him.
“I agree with her,” the Fox answered his next question before he asked.
Luka dropped his head into his hands. “I’m not sure I do.”
“You got soft. I liked you better when you were rough around the edges.”
Luka didn’t take a breath this time. He let the anger respond, a shield of fire around the last shred of hope that he had been clinging to over the past week. He stood, his voice raised. “I wasn’t rough around the edges. I was a kid. A kid sent out to kill other kids. I didn’t know how to deal with that.” He closed his mouth around the next words: a confession he was not ready to make. I still don’t.
“It’s an opening,” the Fox said. “A chance to do something to help. It’s the least we can do, after everything.”
“The least we can do? I wanted no part in any of this. I left it all behind.”
“And I didn’t?”
Luka scoffed, gesturing with his hand to the shipping crates that cluttered the room. The Fox shrugged as though it had nothing to do with anything, so Luka wrested the lid from one of the containers and let it fall to the floor with a clatter.
“You’re still in the thick of it,” he said. “Smuggling weapons, contributing directly to more death, more pain. I sell art.”
“Bullshit!” the Fox’s voice punctured the background sounds of the room as violently as the clanging lid had. “Yeah, I sell weapons, but at least I don’t sell to them.”
“What do you mean, them?”
The shorter man stood, squaring his shoulders and coming out from behind the display. “You know exactly who I mean, Tap. You think you’re better than us because you sell pretty things to rich folks? I sell practical things to people in need.”
“Criminals and gangs, you mean.”
“People who have no other way of surviving. People like us. Or at least like you used to be.”
The Fox punctuated his speech with a wave of his own hands, turning away from Luka to replace the lid on the crate. Luka remained motionless where he stood, his heart beating slow, hard.
A stifled quiet hung for a long while, broken only by the dim clunk of the Fox replacing the guns in their crate. Luka’s hands itched to help, but he watched the guns warily, as though they might burn him. Finally, he knelt down and picked one up. It was a recent model, nothing like anything he had been trained on, but it still felt familiar in his hands. He hated how familiar.
He handed the gun to the Fox, who put it on the top of the pile in the crate and replaced the lid.
“So what if I’m soft?” Luka asked in the hush of the room. “Couldn’t the galaxy use a little softness?”
The Fox sighed and looked down at his hands. Luka knew that sigh — it was the one he used when their orders were tough, when he knew the long trips in the black would be filled with restless energy and no outlet.
“The people who can afford the things you sell are the same people who were happy to have us clean up their mess for them then sweep us out to the edge of the galaxy.” The uneven lines in his face deepened. The light glinted on a few white strands in his mud-colored hair. “Better to’ve just put us out the airlock,” he said. “But that’d be too much paperwork.”
“What about her?” Luka’s throat was tight, the muscles of his neck constricting his vocal cords.
The Fox met his gaze, then, the creases at the corners of his gray eyes shadowed in the harsh light of the room.
“She’s ready to use her power to help,” he said. “Her showing up at all our doorsteps after all these years proves that.”
Luka thought back to the disguised orders — the tip that she had known would enrich his own pockets, would help him live more easily. He thought back to the rueful smile, the small apologetic gestures that she couldn’t entirely mask.
The Fox watched Luka, his hands resting on the lid of the shipping crate, a frown creasing his forehead. His face revealed too much, where Onyema’s had revealed too little. Luka didn’t like the pity in the Fox’s eyes. It was too gentle an expression for such a battle-worn face. Luka wanted to see the two things as separate, as oil and water. He wanted to hold them apart from each other, but as the Fox watched him with uncharacteristic patience, Luka felt instead the barriers shredding.
He left on shaking legs without another word.
That night found Luka sitting cross-legged on the floor of his shop, a cup of herbal tea cooling in his hands. Shadows consumed the low end tables and the corner displays, the only light coming from a single lamp. Outside, the corridors of Argos were quiet as the city-station slept. Luka’s mind was too agitated for sleep.
His tea was lukewarm, now, the steam that had been rising languidly had faded away. He stared down at its pale gold color, the warmth of the room reflected in the liquid. This store had given him his dignity back. Over the last five years, as he had finally begun to turn a profit, he had sent as much money as he could spare home to his parents. As the antiques left his door and the credits came in, he paid into his mother and father’s accounts everything he could spare, keeping only his one-bedroom apartment and his tiny garden plot for himself. They had enough to retire now. In their sixties, they could leave the twelve hour factory shifts and the work that had already been starting to make his father’s hands ache and his mother’s shoulders stoop even when he had joined up eighteen years ago.
Luka had never dreamed that would be possible when he left the Navy penniless and exhausted. And now his parents were working the last year of their contract and shopping for homes on modest garden colonies. It was an inconceivable future after what happened that day. And now, it was a reality.
He rarely remembered what happened that day in a coherent order. The memories were fragmented, sharp edges poking in without order or reason, pieces missing. But he had lived with the memories long enough to understand their order, their gapped chronology.
The first fragment: the crackle of a particle beam weapon. Someone on his team was shooting — it wasn’t him, not yet. The colonists may have shot first, their hunting rifles and shotguns at the time indistinguishable from military grade weapons. His memories equated their sounds with the sizzle and power of his own weapon, even though after the fact he had seen the poor state of their armory. He knew what they were shooting now. It didn’t matter — he still always remembered the sound of particle beams crossing each other in the still of the spring air.
When his contract with the Navy ended, the Fox had reached out to him. He had been making his living as a bounty hunter in the months since his own contract was up, and he asked Luka to join him. Along with Santi Peña and Nadine Bakker, two other members of their squad. He had made a convincing argument: they were not much good at anything other than violence.
The second fragment — Tyrone’s body, ripped apart by a grenade, his blood soaking into the dry earth. The smell of iron mixing with the fragrant hyacinths, the floral scent amplified to sickening sweetness that never seemed to leave his nose.
But Luka’d had enough of violence. He joined the Fox’s team, but his heart wasn’t in it. He stayed behind on a Nareian colony when they had captured their bounty, parting ways yet again with his old team. He had wandered for a while, looking for a reason to have faith in the galaxy again. Struggling to find one.
The third fragment — the stale quiet of the lab, the stench of blood. The deep furrow in Onyema’s forehead as she surveyed the place and held up a hand. Santi and Nadine paused as they placed the charges, responding to Onyema’s raised hand. The lab was too sophisticated — they had been expecting some makeshift storage warehouse divided into workspaces with tarps and harsh homemade cleaning solvents. Onyema ordered Gemma to hack the system.
A look of shock sizzled across Gemma’s face when she recognized the lab’s security code. Union Naval code.
It took years to get back on his feet, but he did. He learned to look for the good, the beauty, and to amplify it. He collected reasons to go on, small kindnesses and the purity of the sunrise on every colony. He found stability selling that beauty to people who could pay. People like Onyema. People like Richard Emory.
They had the power and the money to shake the galaxy to its core. Luka wasn’t blind — he knew the darkness continued even while he tried to open himself up to the light. But how was he supposed to go on without the sun on his face? Without the knowledge that there was something worth saving about humanity.
The fourth fragment — the sound that alerted them to the child. A hiccuping sob, followed by the blast of a shotgun. Warm splatter on his face as Gemma jerked, clutching the console as her gut welled red. The heat of her under his hands and the cold in his stomach at the sudden possibility of the light going out of her eyes.
Luka knew that the galaxy was teetering. He didn’t know how long it had been that way. Perhaps since the century-long war with the Nareian Empire, perhaps longer. He had seen only one small piece of the galaxy as a child: the manufacturing town on a rocky colony that was mostly wild gray ocean. When he joined the Navy, he began to see more. A piece at a time. He still hadn’t understood the power of the Union, how it could push good people to do bad things. How it could push others to indifference.
The fifth fragment — Onyema’s hands. One gripping the shotgun, the other stroking the child’s hair as he wailed, shoulders shaking. The grim expression on her face as she watched the boy’s innocence leach from his body.
What they had now wasn’t enough. Power served those at the top, and the colonies were crying out for relief. Luka knew the Union was broken. That change needed to happen. But he could also see how someone like Emory at the helm, drawing on the immense power of the Union to satisfy his own drive for revenge, could make it so much worse.
The final fragment — days after. Gemma’s hand rested in his as he sat by her hospital bed. Her eyes were alive again, her smiles returning, her cheeks flushed. There was a sudden commotion at the door as Santi and the Fox rushed in, lugging Anthony’s body between them, shouting for the doctor, their feet slipping in the free flow of blood. Their guns were all locked in the armory — only Onyema or the Fox could authorize the opening of that door — but Anthony had taken a knife from the mess hall. Gemma’s hand slipped from Luka’s as he stood, moving to help. But he saw the vacant stare in Anthony’s brown eyes — the way their usual amber warmth had frozen — and he knew there was no helping.
He had wondered often, back then, if any of them could be helped.
His tea was lukewarm, now, the steam that had been rising languidly had faded away. He stared down at its pale gold color, the warmth of the room reflected in the liquid. This store had given him his dignity back. Over the last five years, as he had finally begun to turn a profit, he had sent as much money as he could spare home to his parents. As the antiques left his door and the credits came in, he paid into his mother and father’s accounts everything he could spare, keeping only his one-bedroom apartment and his tiny garden plot for himself. They had enough to retire now. In their sixties, they could leave the twelve hour factory shifts and the work that had already been starting to make his father’s hands ache and his mother’s shoulders stoop even when he had joined up eighteen years ago.
Luka had never dreamed that would be possible when he left the Navy penniless and exhausted. And now his parents were working the last year of their contract and shopping for homes on modest garden colonies. It was an inconceivable future after what happened that day. And now, it was a reality.
He rarely remembered what happened that day in a coherent order. The memories were fragmented, sharp edges poking in without order or reason, pieces missing. But he had lived with the memories long enough to understand their order, their gapped chronology.
The first fragment: the crackle of a particle beam weapon. Someone on his team was shooting — it wasn’t him, not yet. The colonists may have shot first, their hunting rifles and shotguns at the time indistinguishable from military grade weapons. His memories equated their sounds with the sizzle and power of his own weapon, even though after the fact he had seen the poor state of their armory. He knew what they were shooting now. It didn’t matter — he still always remembered the sound of particle beams crossing each other in the still of the spring air.
When his contract with the Navy ended, the Fox had reached out to him. He had been making his living as a bounty hunter in the months since his own contract was up, and he asked Luka to join him. Along with Santi Peña and Nadine Bakker, two other members of their squad. He had made a convincing argument: they were not much good at anything other than violence.
The second fragment — Tyrone’s body, ripped apart by a grenade, his blood soaking into the dry earth. The smell of iron mixing with the fragrant hyacinths, the floral scent amplified to sickening sweetness that never seemed to leave his nose.
But Luka’d had enough of violence. He joined the Fox’s team, but his heart wasn’t in it. He stayed behind on a Nareian colony when they had captured their bounty, parting ways yet again with his old team. He had wandered for a while, looking for a reason to have faith in the galaxy again. Struggling to find one.
The third fragment — the stale quiet of the lab, the stench of blood. The deep furrow in Onyema’s forehead as she surveyed the place and held up a hand. Santi and Nadine paused as they placed the charges, responding to Onyema’s raised hand. The lab was too sophisticated — they had been expecting some makeshift storage warehouse divided into workspaces with tarps and harsh homemade cleaning solvents. Onyema ordered Gemma to hack the system.
A look of shock sizzled across Gemma’s face when she recognized the lab’s security code. Union Naval code.
It took years to get back on his feet, but he did. He learned to look for the good, the beauty, and to amplify it. He collected reasons to go on, small kindnesses and the purity of the sunrise on every colony. He found stability selling that beauty to people who could pay. People like Onyema. People like Richard Emory.
They had the power and the money to shake the galaxy to its core. Luka wasn’t blind — he knew the darkness continued even while he tried to open himself up to the light. But how was he supposed to go on without the sun on his face? Without the knowledge that there was something worth saving about humanity.
The fourth fragment — the sound that alerted them to the child. A hiccuping sob, followed by the blast of a shotgun. Warm splatter on his face as Gemma jerked, clutching the console as her gut welled red. The heat of her under his hands and the cold in his stomach at the sudden possibility of the light going out of her eyes.
Luka knew that the galaxy was teetering. He didn’t know how long it had been that way. Perhaps since the century-long war with the Nareian Empire, perhaps longer. He had seen only one small piece of the galaxy as a child: the manufacturing town on a rocky colony that was mostly wild gray ocean. When he joined the Navy, he began to see more. A piece at a time. He still hadn’t understood the power of the Union, how it could push good people to do bad things. How it could push others to indifference.
The fifth fragment — Onyema’s hands. One gripping the shotgun, the other stroking the child’s hair as he wailed, shoulders shaking. The grim expression on her face as she watched the boy’s innocence leach from his body.
What they had now wasn’t enough. Power served those at the top, and the colonies were crying out for relief. Luka knew the Union was broken. That change needed to happen. But he could also see how someone like Emory at the helm, drawing on the immense power of the Union to satisfy his own drive for revenge, could make it so much worse.
The final fragment — days after. Gemma’s hand rested in his as he sat by her hospital bed. Her eyes were alive again, her smiles returning, her cheeks flushed. There was a sudden commotion at the door as Santi and the Fox rushed in, lugging Anthony’s body between them, shouting for the doctor, their feet slipping in the free flow of blood. Their guns were all locked in the armory — only Onyema or the Fox could authorize the opening of that door — but Anthony had taken a knife from the mess hall. Gemma’s hand slipped from Luka’s as he stood, moving to help. But he saw the vacant stare in Anthony’s brown eyes — the way their usual amber warmth had frozen — and he knew there was no helping.
He had wondered often, back then, if any of them could be helped.
He got up from his seat on the floor and downed the cold tea. He opened the records on his console and found the address — the one from Onyema’s orders, the one he had arranged many deliveries to, but had never visited himself.
It was still dark in the corridors of Argos. On the dim, lantern-lined street, he paused. His proximity to this kind of wealth began and ended with the items he sold in his store and the patrons who purchased them. He stood outside, looking up at the facade of her home — one of many meticulously-groomed and beautiful homes on the street — and rang the bell.
By now, the dawn was coming, the streets washed in pale blue. In the light, he began to lose his nerve. He turned away.
Her door opened. She called his name, a question, and then invited him in.
Inside Onyema’s house, the morning light that was beginning to brighten the streets streamed in through the windows of her living room. Outside and far below, the Forum was beginning to come to life. Coffee shops were inviting the first commuters in for breakfast sandwiches and pastries to go, coffee dispensed into personal mugs or compostable containers.
Luka watched it all as Onyema prepared coffee in her kitchen. She brought him a cup, steaming, dark liquid in a white ceramic mug. He took it, and it warmed his hands.
Onyema sat on her couch, a soft blue sectional. She sipped her own coffee and watched Luka. Somehow in her bathrobe, face bare with her hair wrapped in a satin sleep cap, she still had the upper hand. An elegance, a sculpted poise that Luka could only find in himself on the best of days.
He put the coffee down on an end table and reached instead for the table’s other occupant. A small jade sculpture: an elephant. It was one of the first pieces he had acquired after opening the shop on Argos. He remembered the order for it, remembered packaging it up for its anonymous purchaser. He remembered when, months later, he had realized who his mysterious patron was.
It sat cool and heavy in his palm.
“I have too much blood on my hands.” He offered it like an explanation, an apology. Onyema sipped her coffee, hands wrapped gracefully around the cup. Her expression was placid, unreadable.
“We all do,” she said.
He replaced the elephant on the table. It clattered on contact, evidence of his shaking hands. He dropped his head into those hands, drew in a heavy breath. Even after all these years, he wanted to trust her. He wanted to believe that she was in control, that she was pointing them in the right direction.
But it had been too many years. He was too old now to follow without questioning. If he was going to be complicit in violence, he needed to walk into it with his eyes open.
“What do you want us to do?” he asked.
Her sigh was soft, thoughtful. “I don’t know yet what will be needed,” she said. “We start by gathering information, creating a network on Argos. Gemma can get us limited intelligence from inside the Navy, but we need to learn about his business dealings.”
Luka nodded. “Find out who his associates are. The ones he’s not public about.”
He blew out a breath. This wasn’t the kind of work he had done before. It was more like the work he did now. Build relationships. Learn how people work. Find their passions and their weaknesses. Only instead of cultivating their love for Old Earth artifacts, he would be seeking their pressure points. Manipulating them.
He turned his head away from Onyema. On an antique cabinet, a bouquet of fresh flowers brought a symmetric spray of color to the room. Luka braced for the scent of hyacinths, but it didn’t come. Yellow roses opened their soft, fragrant petals between sprays of delicate lavender. The Forum’s sunrise gilded the edges of the lush greenery in gold. The voices of the early commuters packing the forum barely reached this high, but Luka could still hear them going about their lives in a gentle hum.
“You haven’t changed, Luka.” Onyema contradicted his thoughts. He looked back at her and saw that placid expression had warmed. “You still see the world with the eyes of a boy in love with everything he discovers.”
Tears burned in his eyes, and he blinked them away. Somehow, this was worse than the black hole that sucked him into its orbit without revealing any of its depth. In her face, he saw compassion and deep sadness. Regret.
“There is as much darkness in the galaxy as there is light and beauty,” she continued. “It’s why we can’t lose people like you. It’s why we have to fight the darkness wherever we find it. To make space for the good.”
“Will it end?” The words sounded stupid the moment they left his mouth. Like something a child would say.
Onyema smiled then, and the light from the Forum emphasized the dimples in her cheeks and brightened her eyes. That look of sadness and regret vanished, and he saw hope in the set of her jaw.
“Someday,” she said, “it might.”
It was still dark in the corridors of Argos. On the dim, lantern-lined street, he paused. His proximity to this kind of wealth began and ended with the items he sold in his store and the patrons who purchased them. He stood outside, looking up at the facade of her home — one of many meticulously-groomed and beautiful homes on the street — and rang the bell.
By now, the dawn was coming, the streets washed in pale blue. In the light, he began to lose his nerve. He turned away.
Her door opened. She called his name, a question, and then invited him in.
Inside Onyema’s house, the morning light that was beginning to brighten the streets streamed in through the windows of her living room. Outside and far below, the Forum was beginning to come to life. Coffee shops were inviting the first commuters in for breakfast sandwiches and pastries to go, coffee dispensed into personal mugs or compostable containers.
Luka watched it all as Onyema prepared coffee in her kitchen. She brought him a cup, steaming, dark liquid in a white ceramic mug. He took it, and it warmed his hands.
Onyema sat on her couch, a soft blue sectional. She sipped her own coffee and watched Luka. Somehow in her bathrobe, face bare with her hair wrapped in a satin sleep cap, she still had the upper hand. An elegance, a sculpted poise that Luka could only find in himself on the best of days.
He put the coffee down on an end table and reached instead for the table’s other occupant. A small jade sculpture: an elephant. It was one of the first pieces he had acquired after opening the shop on Argos. He remembered the order for it, remembered packaging it up for its anonymous purchaser. He remembered when, months later, he had realized who his mysterious patron was.
It sat cool and heavy in his palm.
“I have too much blood on my hands.” He offered it like an explanation, an apology. Onyema sipped her coffee, hands wrapped gracefully around the cup. Her expression was placid, unreadable.
“We all do,” she said.
He replaced the elephant on the table. It clattered on contact, evidence of his shaking hands. He dropped his head into those hands, drew in a heavy breath. Even after all these years, he wanted to trust her. He wanted to believe that she was in control, that she was pointing them in the right direction.
But it had been too many years. He was too old now to follow without questioning. If he was going to be complicit in violence, he needed to walk into it with his eyes open.
“What do you want us to do?” he asked.
Her sigh was soft, thoughtful. “I don’t know yet what will be needed,” she said. “We start by gathering information, creating a network on Argos. Gemma can get us limited intelligence from inside the Navy, but we need to learn about his business dealings.”
Luka nodded. “Find out who his associates are. The ones he’s not public about.”
He blew out a breath. This wasn’t the kind of work he had done before. It was more like the work he did now. Build relationships. Learn how people work. Find their passions and their weaknesses. Only instead of cultivating their love for Old Earth artifacts, he would be seeking their pressure points. Manipulating them.
He turned his head away from Onyema. On an antique cabinet, a bouquet of fresh flowers brought a symmetric spray of color to the room. Luka braced for the scent of hyacinths, but it didn’t come. Yellow roses opened their soft, fragrant petals between sprays of delicate lavender. The Forum’s sunrise gilded the edges of the lush greenery in gold. The voices of the early commuters packing the forum barely reached this high, but Luka could still hear them going about their lives in a gentle hum.
“You haven’t changed, Luka.” Onyema contradicted his thoughts. He looked back at her and saw that placid expression had warmed. “You still see the world with the eyes of a boy in love with everything he discovers.”
Tears burned in his eyes, and he blinked them away. Somehow, this was worse than the black hole that sucked him into its orbit without revealing any of its depth. In her face, he saw compassion and deep sadness. Regret.
“There is as much darkness in the galaxy as there is light and beauty,” she continued. “It’s why we can’t lose people like you. It’s why we have to fight the darkness wherever we find it. To make space for the good.”
“Will it end?” The words sounded stupid the moment they left his mouth. Like something a child would say.
Onyema smiled then, and the light from the Forum emphasized the dimples in her cheeks and brightened her eyes. That look of sadness and regret vanished, and he saw hope in the set of her jaw.
“Someday,” she said, “it might.”
