Tin Star (23 page)

“Finally dead,” he said.

“Yes,” Tournour said. I could tell that he was close by. I could smell that scent coming at me in a steady stream. I marveled at the fact that I was not dead, although I felt as though I had been somewhat drugged. “What a bloody mess. I’ll have to file a report.”

“It was an alien. You know how they hate the Humans,” Brother Blue said.

“Yes, of course,” Tournour said. “That’s what I saw.”

“But perhaps you want something,” Brother Blue said. “For your troubles.”

“Well,” Tournor said. “It’s been nice being ignored for the most part by the Imperium. I’d like my station to stay that way.”

“Easily done,” Brother Blue said. “I think that I can report back that things here are up to Imperium standards. No need to do another inspection for a long time.”

“I’d be in your debt if you made sure that the replacement upgrades for the communication arrays were somehow lost or delayed,” Tournour said.

“So we’re done here,” Brother Blue said.

“We’re done.”

“Well, then I’ll be on my way. I’d like to get back to Bessen.”

“Of course,” Tournour said.

“I’ll have to find a new liaison. What a shame Ven Dar got involved with this trash Human girl. She was his downfall. You Loors and your attraction to Humans.”

“We’re terrible that way,” Tournour said. “It is a weakness.”

Brother Blue grunted an acknowledgment and left.

A few moments later I felt Tournour hovering over me. He was pouring his emergency field med-gel into my wound and once the bleeding stopped, he brushed the hair away from my face.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m not dead,” I said. “I should be dead.”

Now that Brother Blue had gone all of my courage came slamming back into me at once.

“Tournour, you let him go,” I moaned. “You had him. You had him. Why did you turn the gun on me? You could have killed him!”

I tried to get up, but my legs were rubbery.

“I can still get him. I can still go. Give me your knife, Tournour.”

“Tula, this is not the place to fight a man like that. And if I killed him there would be more questions, more problems. What we need now is someone to blame.”

“Brother Blue!” I screamed. The pain was coming back. “Brother Blue was to blame.”

“Brother Blue now thinks he’s got a man here.”

“He does! You helped him!”

The pain of the knife wound and of nearly having been electrified was making me hysterical. Despite the emergency field med-gel staunching the bleeding, I was woozy from the loss of blood.

“I told you, you and I, we’ve always been on the same side,” he said.

My legs could no longer support me. I sank onto one of the barrels. Tournour released that smell again. It made my trembling and fear stopped. I felt calm.

“What is that?” I asked. “That scent.”

“It’s a thing that my species does when our partner is in danger, it calms when two Loor are bonded.”

“I’m not your partner,” I said.

“No,” Tournour said. “You’re not my partner. But I’m yours.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of him killing you, Tula.”

I pushed myself away from him, away from the anteroom and into the main docking bay and put my hands on both of the cryocrates. I had made a promise to get Reza and Caleb off of here. But with this mess of death around us, the passes would never work. Tournour followed me.

I went over to Els’s body and crouched over her crumpled form. I could see her gold bracelet, the one with Earth on it. I removed it from her wrist.

Tournour was standing a few feet away, looking at me like he was the one that was wounded.

As I looked at him, it struck me full on like a fire-hot point and then spread through me like a warmth that I had never known. He loved me. Tournour loved me. I thought back to every action he’d ever done, always kind, always consistent, always caring.

I had never been alone.

“Help me,” I said going to him. I presented him my wrist and the chain, and he clasped it on for me.

“I couldn’t let him kill you, Tula,” he said. “And I know that your mate is Reza…”

“Shhh,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

I looked at the cryocrates. They had been verified as dead, so for all intents and purposes, they were dead. I remembered what Heckleck always said, that the dead can speak.

“Those travel passes are tricky things for people who are alive,” I said. “But for the dead, well, no one cares about the dead who travel. They’ll be angry at the way they traveled. But they’ll be alive.”

Tournour talked into his communiquer. “I’ve got a murder-suicide on Docking Bay 12.”

He signed off and looked at me.

“I hope those boys wake up from their cryosleep to do some good where they are going. We who are against the Imperium need all the help we can get.”

The rebellion was here. It was with Tournour.

Tournour then quickly gave instructions for the cryocrates and Trevor to be loaded onto two ships, one to the Outer Rim and one toward Earth. He zipped off an image of the passes to the correct authorities. Within seconds came the confirmation that the cargo had the authority to be loaded.

“Done. Your boys are safe.”

I borrowed his communiquer and bartered favors that I had not yet called in to get the doctor to come down to fix my wound and dose the boys up on cryosleep for their trips, Reza to Earth and Caleb to the Outer Rim.

They would be angry with me, yes. But they would be on their way. I felt as though they were seeds of a sort and I was scattering them in the hopes for a revolution; each taking a chance to bloom in their remote part of the galaxy, in an effort to root out what strangled all life.

“I’m still stuck here,” I said. “And Brother Blue is still alive.”

“Don’t be upset with me, Tula,” Tournour said.

“He hasn’t left yet. I can still go kill him.”

“I won’t stop you if that is what you want to do. But Brother Blue is a powerful enemy to have. You can’t go after him alone. He would have killed you as soon as you moved.”

I knew that he was right.

He looked at me and something had shifted. We were truly on the same side.

Instead of my life becoming harder and more unbearable, it was going to be easier. I took Tournour’s hand, his fingers curled around mine. His hand felt warm, and I could feel the blood pumping.

I leaned into him, and he put his arms around me.

For the moment, we were the only two beings in the galaxy. Then the dockworkers came in to move the boys out, and his officers swept in to deal with Els’s and Ven Dar’s bodies.

“If I’m going to stay here, I want to go legit.”

“You’re going to stay? You’re not saying goodbye?”

I nodded. Tournour was right, just as Heckleck had been before. There was a bigger game to be played here and that would take time and patience. To get Brother Blue to fall the hardest, to really make him suffer for all he’d done, I would have to wait. If I could make him fall a certain way, then perhaps the Imperium would follow.

“Legit.”

“Legit?” he asked.

“Well, I can’t be running around the underguts worried that I’ll get thrown in the brig. Not if we’re going to become friends.”

He laughed and pulled me in tighter.

“What kind of hope does a Human girl like you have for a legit life on a space station with a shamed Loor who’s in love with her?”

“I was hoping for a spot on the merchant deck.”

“Really? What kind of establishment would you run?” he asked.

“I was thinking of dealing in sweets, waters, and salts.”

“I’d have to have a chair always open to me. And I might like to have my items be on the house.”

“Deal,” I said.

“Yes,” Tournour said. “Kitsch Rutsok could use a little competition.”

“I’ll call it the Tin Star Cafe.”

We stopped to look out the window as the ships carrying Brother Blue and the boys went in their separate directions.

“One thing,” Tournour said. “Eventually word will get to Brother Blue that you’re alive and that the boys escaped. He will come after you.”

“Yes, I know. But next time when he comes, I’ll be ready for him. And he’ll be the one left for dead.”

There was no point in raging at the stars anymore. He was out there, and I was here, but now I knew it was up to me to change the map.

And I would.

Acknowledgments

With kind thanks and much love to the following people:

My readers, Kara LaReau, Deborah Ross, Janni Lee Simner, Mary Williams, Kristen Kittscher, Sherri L. Smith, Shelly Li, Angie Chen, and Sangeeta Mehta.

My lovely brother, Laurent Castellucci, who spent hours talking Galactic Politics with me.

My narrative rock, Ben Loory, for listening to me ramble on about it.

My titler, Steven Salardino, always, always and of course Skylight Books.

My space science classes at Launchpad (apologies for all I got wrong here!).

My wonderful agent, Kirby Kim, who always thinks I can.

My amazing editor, Nancy Mercado, who helped me get to outer space.

Copyright © 2014 by Cecil Castellucci

Published by Roaring Brook Press

Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

macteenbooks.com

All rights reserved

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Castellucci, Cecil, 1969–

    Tin star / Cecil Castellucci.

        pages cm

    Summary: “Beaten and left for dead, fourteen-year-old Tula Bane finds herself abandoned on a space station called Yertina Feray after traveling with the colonist group, Children of the Earth”—Provided by publisher.

    ISBN 978-1-59643-775-3 (hardback)—ISBN 978-1-59643-914-6 (ebook)

  [1.  Human-alien encounters—Fiction.   2.  Space stations—Fiction.   3.  Science fiction.]   I.  Title.

    PZ7.C26865Tin 2013

    [Fic]—dc23

2013002600

eISBN 9781596439146

First hardcover edition, 2014

eBook edition, February 2014