The Heirs of Earth

CHAPTER SIX

"Dude, I don't like this," Brooklyn said. "We've never flown this close to the border."

Bay patted his starship's dashboard. "Don't worry, Brook. We'll be fine."

"I can detect your heartbeat and respiration levels, you know," Brooklyn said. "I'm not only a starship. I'm also a flying lie-detector. And you, sir, are lying. We won't be fine." The starship shuddered, rattling everything inside her, including Bay. "Let's get the hell out of here before we fly into a scorpion's nest."

Bay glanced out the starboard porthole. He had left the nebula far behind, along with the damn grugs. Off the starboard bow spread open space. There was nothing to mark the border, but his monitor was already flashing warnings. Just there, less than a light-year away, was Hierarchy space.

Scorpion territory.

It was Bay's turn to shudder. He had spent his life in Concord space, this alliance of sentient civilizations that spread across half the galaxy. Humans were perhaps pests here, the only homeless species. But most of the cheaper bars, casinos, and brothels would tolerate Bay after a bribe.

Out there, in Hierarchy territory . . . that was a different story.

The Hierarchy wasn't an alliance of civilizations. It was a brutal, bloody empire, the scorpions on top. Bay hated weegles. He hated grugs. He hated marshcrabs and hoggers and bonecrawlers and most other aliens for that matter. But the Skra-Shen, the giant scorpions from the darkness, made all those other aliens seem downright cuddly.

The scorpions didn't just see humans as an annoyance. The scorpions were obsessed with humans, had based their entire society, their very religion, on the notion of humanity's evil. Their goal was one—to purify the galaxy of the human infestation.

With another shudder, Bay turned his eyes forward. In the distance he could just see it now, the place he sought. It was a dim sparkle from here, barely distinguishable from the stars, but his navigational systems confirmed it.

Before him hovered Paradise Lost.

"We gotta stop there, gorgeous." Bay patted the dashboard. "You're hurt, Brook. Gotta repair ya."

The starship groaned. "Dude!"

"I know, I know," Bay said. "We don't like docking so close to the border. The scorpions are so close they could piss on us after a pint. But you need a wing if we're to land on a planet again. And they got repair shops at Paradise Lost."

"Dude, no." Brooklyn's dashboard camera shook on its stalk like a head. "We are not going to Paradise Lost. It's the greasiest of all grease joints! There's no smell in space, and I don't have a nose, and I can still smell the grease from here. It's positively crawling with dirty robots."

"You're a robot," Bay said.

"I am no robot! I'm an intelligent starship. Very different thing. The robots at this place, the ones you'll hire to repair me? They drip old oil. Some of them have ants in their joints. Ants, dude!"

"Brook, robots don't have ants in their joints. They're robots, not picnic baskets."

"As if you've ever taken me on a picnic!" Brooklyn sighed, vents rattling. "Take me on a picnic, Bay. Can't we land in some nice, sunny port far from the frontier?"

"Nice ports are on planets," Bay said. "Planets have air. You need two wings to fly through air. We're going to Paradise Lost."

Brooklyn huffed. "You just want to go there because they'll have bars and brothels."

"Damn right," Bay said. "I intend to get properly drunk, win a card game or two, and pass out in a virtual reality tank, two holographic girls in my arms."

Brooklyn was quiet for a long time. Finally she spoke softly. "Bay. It doesn't have to be this way. We can go back home."

He stiffened. "We don't have a home."

"We do," she said. "We did. The Heirs of Earth will welcome us back. I can dock again in the hangar of the ISS Jerusalem. You can reunite with your family. We—"

"No!" Bay shouted, surprised at how loud his voice sounded. "No, Brooklyn. No! Do not suggest that again. Not after what my father did. Not after how Seohyun died." His eyes dampened. "Never speak to me of my family. We will never be Inheritors again. This is our life now. Running. Fighting. Boozing and whoring and gambling. I don't like it any more than you, but this is how we survive. Do you understand, Brooklyn? Tell me you understand, or Ra help me, I will rip out your AI."

Brooklyn had no eyes, but her monitor turned a sad blue. Her camera wilted on its stalk. She spoke in a soft voice.

"I understand."

She turned herself off.

Good. Good! Let her hide in the innards of the ship. Bay didn't care. He didn't care about any of them. Not Brooklyn, not his father, not his sister—nobody. He cared only about one person, and she was dead now, and he would be dead too soon enough.

A glow caught his eye. He could see Terminus ahead now, the last wormhole in Concord territory. He was close.

Nobody knew who had built the wormholes. They were millions of years old, predating any extant civilization. Ancient aliens had built the Tree of Light, a network of passageways that crisscrossed the Milky Way galaxy. Inside Bay's ship was an azoth crystal, able to bend spacetime the way a diamond could refract light. With it, he could travel in a warp bubble, moving faster than light. But a galaxy was a very large place. Even at warp speed, it could take months to travel between Concord worlds. Traveling through wormholes took only moments. You could cross a hundred light-years before you could finish a pint of grog.

The Concord alliance controlled about half the wormholes. The Hierarchy controlled the other half. There were a handful of wormholes in disputed territory too. Most major systems had grown around a wormhole. The Concord Mint, the Peacekeeper Courts, the great Dyson sphere of Aelonia—they were all by wormholes. These galactic stations were prime real estate, and great courts, cities, and establishments grew around them.

And then there was Terminus Wormhole.

You could call it the black sheep of the wormhole family.

First of all, Terminus only led to one other wormhole, one near a sulfur mine only ten light-years away. Not a particularly busy route. Second, the nearest planet to Terminus was a marshy world called Akraba. The entire planet was a swamp crawling with giant, sentient crabs who spent their lives eating carcasses, noisily breeding, and biting anyone who approached. Again, not much of a tourist draw.

And finally, there was the . . . other issue.

Hierarchy space was just next door. Not even a light-year away. The border was so close Bay could practically spit across it

He winced. The Hierarchy. The wrong side of the tracks. The bad half of the galaxy. Call it what you will, Bay didn't like being so close. Not that the Concord was particularly nice when you were human. But the Hierarchy had far worse than marshcrabs and weegles. The meanest, toughest predators of the galaxy made the Hierarchy their home. Thousands of predatory species controlled those star systems, all bowing before the Skra-Shen scorpions.

Nope, not many reasons for most folk to visit Terminus Wormhole. Even the Peacekeepers never came here. Even the damn Concord army didn't patrol here. Deep down, they probably wouldn't mind much if the scorpions destroyed the entire system.

All this made Terminus a hellhole for decent, law-abiding folk—and heaven for thieves, druggers, pimps, pickpockets, gamblers, and the other lowlifes of the Concord.

Including Bay.

And Paradise Lost space station had grown to serve them.

"They say that before the galaxy divided between Concord and Hierarchy, Paradise Lost was respectable," Brooklyn said. "It was originally a luxury hotel."

Bay frowned. "I thought you were sleeping."

"Who can sleep at a time like this?" Brooklyn said. "In this part of space? Thoughts keep rattling through my chips. Probably ants too."

He groaned. "Brook, you don't have ants!" He looked at the space station ahead. "Respectable, you say? Well, those days are long gone."

"Indeed," said Brooklyn. "Paradise Lost is now the galaxy's most wretched hive of scum and—"

"Shush," Bay said.

He gazed at the station. When he squinted, he could just make out the original structure—an elegant cylinder. Over time, hundreds of pods had latched onto the space station like barnacles. Neon signs danced and shone, advertising the wares within.

Slugs, Slugs, Slugs! one sign announced, and a neon mollusk swayed seductively.

Another sign featured a marshcrab sniffing a platter of tentacles. Greasy Grabbers! Get 'em here!

A neon heart glittered. The Love Chapel! Fast Weddings, Cheap Divorces!

As Bay approached, more and more signs shone, promising to buy his gold for cash, to sell him loans, to massage his aching muscles, to polish his scales, to fluff his feathers, and to rid his starship of bed bugs, engine slugs, and humans. He flew by a dozen casinos, twice as many brothels, a hundred or more pubs. There were drug dens and fighting pits, adult virtual reality rooms, even a minigolf course for the kids.

He thought of sprawling grasslands.

He saw in his memory a planet called Vaelia, and the sun dipping behind bales of hay.

He heard her laughter again, saw her smile, her sparkling eyes, and he stroked her long black hair.

"Seohyun," he whispered into her ears, and she laughed and kissed him.

Her skeletal hand reached toward him from the ash. Her long black hair fluttered in the wind, burnt, barely clinging to her skull.

Bay lowered his head.

That old life was gone. Those two years on the plains, the only two years when he had known joy, would never return. Seohyun was dead, and so was his soul.

He approached one of Paradise Lost's airlocks. They glided into a massive hangar.

Many starships were already docking here. Most were small shuttles like Brooklyn; their motherships floated farther out. Brooklyn extended her landing gear. They landed on the greasy hangar floor, sliding and squeaking and nearly hitting other shuttles.

Bay looked around. The space station was packed today. Bay saw bristly marshcrab ships—spiky, ugly things that looked like crabs themselves. There were white spiral ships, mottled with brown patches—the shuttles of the Slurin civilization, sentient snails. Other ships were shaped like coiling, scaled snakes, complete with portholes like eyes. Some ships were cobbled together from scraps, cannons thrusting out from them—probably the ships of roaming merchants or bounty hunters.

"Every ship is uglier than the last," Brooklyn said.

He patted her dashboard. "You'll fit right in."

"Muck you, hooch," she said. "Can't you take me to an Aelonian port for once?"

Bay snorted. "Aelonians are respectable aliens. They don't want us around." He looked at a few wrinkly aliens standing nearby. They were giving him the stink eye. "Even here, the greasiest place in the galaxy, we're not exactly welcome."

He taxied Brooklyn toward a parking spot. They squeezed between a rusty pontoon and a bio-tech starship that grumbled, opened one eye, mumbled something about wingless pests, then went back to snoring.

"You're leaving me here?" Brooklyn said. "By a living starship? Is this a dock or a Disney animator's worst nightmare?"

Bay regretted ever telling Brooklyn about Earth lore. He could do without ancient references.

Funny, he thought. Even most humans wouldn't know who Disney was.

But Bay knew, of course. He was the son of Admiral Emet Ben-Ari himself, founder of the Heirs of Earth. As a child, Bay had seen the Earthstone, the repository of old Earth's culture.

Then, fourteen years ago, they had lost the Earthstone.

They had lost Earth's heritage.

David Emery had been like an uncle to Bay. Hell, more like a father. Bay's own father had always been distant, busy with his battles, but David? David had taken Bay fishing (at least when they were near a world with water), had taught him to throw a ball, to read poetry, to draw.

Then David had betrayed them.

He had stolen the Earthstone.

He had run.

Bay had been only eight years old. To him, the Earthstone had been just a library of old cartoons and books. But Emet had been devastated. Betrayed. Emet had lost his best friend—and the cultural heritage of his people.

Bay shook his head, returning his thoughts to the present.

"Just try to get some sleep, Brook," he said. "I'm gonna spend a few days here. I'll find a mechanic to fix your wing."

"Not a robot mechanic," Brooklyn said. "They all creak."

Bay raised his hands in resignation. "Fine, no robot mechanics! I'll find giant alien ants to repair you." He muttered those last words under his breath.

Bay stepped outside into the hangar. At once the aroma hit him—a familiar mix of old cigarettes, urine, grog puke, and decay. Ah, the good old smells of the galactic fringe, as comforting as Mom's apple pie.

Leaving Brooklyn behind, Bay shuffled across the hangar. He pulled his hood low, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. He hunched over as he walked, trying to make himself smaller. He never felt comfortable in crowds. He wasn't particularly tall for a human. He was only five-foot-eight, about the same height as his sister, and much shorter than their dad. A decade of running had also left Bay rawboned, almost too thin for health. And yet he always tried to make himself even smaller, wrapping himself in baggy clothes, hooding his head. He shuffled and peered around nervously instead of walking tall. There were too many dangers in the galaxy, especially for a human. Bay had learned to lurk in shadows.

I wish you could walk with me, Brook, he thought.

Someday if he were rich enough, perhaps he'd buy Brooklyn an android body. It would be easy enough to transfer her AI from the starship into an android. He's buy her a classy body. Not a trashy gynoid like the robo-brothels employed. Something elegant. Something better than he was. Something with two working hands and squared shoulders and a straight back. Something like how Seohyun had looked.

Bay looked around him at the hangar. It was a grimy, sad place, a blend of shadows, rude graffiti, and garish neon lights. Slot machines stood against a wall, and a variety of wrinkly, feathered, and scaly aliens were shoving scryls into the beeping, shining boxes. One alien, a creature with a metallic body and wet tentacles, gurgled with joy as he won several furry, purring aliens as a prize. He gulped them down, ignoring their purrs of protest, and continued playing.

"Sir?" A wrinkly alien crawled toward Bay. It looked like a beached starfish, withered and weak. "Sir, a few scryls for a hungry mother?" The starfish raised an arm, showing a brood of eggs nested in her suction cups.

Bay sighed. He didn't have much money. Barely enough to buy Brooklyn a new wing and still feed himself. But he had gone hungry before. He was used to it, and women and children came first. Well, starfish mothers and eggs in this case, but the principle remained. Bay pulled a few scryls from his pocket and held them out.

"Thank you, sir!" The starfish took the money, then huffed. "Greedy human pest, you probably stole it anyway."

She slithered away.

"Yeah, well, at least I have a backbone!" he cried after her.

The starfish flipped him a tentacle, then attached herself to a slot machine and began playing.

Bay supposed he could chase the starfish and wrestle his money back, but he didn't want to make a scene. It was bad enough being human in public. Causing trouble while human would probably get him shot.

He kept walking across the hangar when he heard the clatters and grumbles.

He looked up and his heart sank.

He was trying to avoid trouble. But trouble had just found him.