Among Treacherous Stars

1 Scout Shannon had never been off the surface of her home world before. She had never even been to the spaceport by the capital city, although she had been near enough to see the starry brightness of the rockets charging up into the sky. Once there had been many—or so she had been told—but since the war that had broken out before she was born, very few ships were launched up into orbit anymore, the domain of the Planet Dwellers’ enemies the Space Farers. On the infrequent times when she had heard the low rumble of rocket engines, she’d always stopped wherever she was—usually on her bike making a delivery or carrying a message—and turned to watch the shimmering pinpoint of light rising up from the prairie. She remembered the rumble being so low it almost couldn’t be heard, but she could feel it vibrating in her chest. Even kilometers away, she had felt the awesome power of a human-made machine battling gravity. But until a few days ago, she’d never seriously thought about leaving her home world. Few Space Farers lived on the surface, and even fewer Planet Dwellers lived in space. Plus, she was just an orphan, alone in the world with her two dogs and her bike. And yet here she was inside a ship as shiny as chrome, a ship from the galactic center, where they had technology far advanced of anything on Amatheon. She still had her dogs with her. Big, black Gert was leaning against her right side, her head on Scout’s thigh but her warm eyes rolling up to look at Scout time and again to make sure everything was still okay. The smaller rat terrier Shadow was buckled against her left side, preferring to stand with his body rigid as he looked around. His name was a misnomer, his fur being mostly white with just a few black spots. But then her father had named him Shadow not for his looks but for his behavior, as he always trailed after Scout wherever she went. Yes, the dogs were still with her, but her bike was long gone. Not that she would need it now that she was heading into space. She had left it in the back of the rover—the rover she had crashed into a canyon wall while fleeing from the rebels. She was never going to see it again. She wasn’t sad about that, exactly; it had been a good bike, but it hadn’t been the bike her father had left her with. That bike she had loved, but she had outgrown it years ago. She was a little sad about her father’s hat. She wished she still had it as a remembrance of him. She wasn’t sure where she had lost it. Probably also when she had crashed the rover. The bump on the head she had gotten in the crash made everything that had happened right after it a bit of a blur, and her second escape had happened so quickly it really had been a blur. “Ready?” Liam, the off-duty galactic marshal who’d come to get her to fulfill the wishes of his recently deceased partner, had been tapping away at a computer console set in the center of the panel in easy reach of both seats. Whatever he had been doing, he had finished now and was looking over at her, his question echoed in the arch of his ginger eyebrow. Scout tucked the dogs closer to her sides and made sure the restraints holding them to the chair were tight. Then she gave Liam a nod and watched as he flipped a switch. The ship around them started to softly vibrate and Scout fought the urge to shut her eyes. She was somewhere between very nervous and outright scared, but there was no way she was going to miss seeing any part of this journey. She waited for the firing of the rockets, waited to be crushed back into the soft chair beneath her, waited for the rumbling roar of engines defeating gravity. Then the heavy stalks of grain that had been partially blocking the view out the window shook and fell away and Scout realized the ship was already lifting up into the air. There was barely any sound, just that soft vibration. There was nothing crushing her into her seat, just a feeling like some giant’s hand was gently lifting them up into the sky. “Have we taken off?” Scout asked. Even leaning forward, she could see nothing but sky out of the window. “Yes, would you like to see?” Without waiting for an answer, Liam touched something else on the control panel in front of him and the floor beneath her disappeared. Scout yelped at the sight of her feet dangling hundreds of meters over the prairie. Then she realized the floor hadn’t been breached; she was looking at a display screen that a moment before had been just another of the many chrome panels that made up Liam’s ship. They all looked the same, only the size of their rectangular shapes varying, but each seemed to hide a secret function. One had folded out into a sink, another had become a computer capable of reading the encrypted data disks Scout had brought to him. Scout pushed the thought of the disks and all she had been through on their account to the back of her mind. She was going into space, an amazing experience in itself, but she was also leaving her home world behind. She intended never to see it again. She wanted to give that beautiful landscape a proper farewell. Governments and rebellions and their web of secrets and lies would still be there to stew over helplessly later. She could see the swirling, flattened pattern in the grass that marked where the ship had been. But they were rising higher now, high enough that she could see the edge of the prairie and the beginning of the hill country. The delicate bands of color that made the canyons so breathtaking when seen from the ground were just a uniform reddish brown from this distance. But the crags and breaks of the canyon walls that had been all around her the day before were no more than a fine tracery of lines from above, beautiful in their meticulous detail. Scout thought she saw a plume of dust from a moving vehicle, perhaps one of the rebels still searching for her. But that was in her past now. Her future was light-years away from all that. Scout felt the wide smile that spread across her face at that thought. Light-years away. It was real. It was really happening. Liam was glancing over at her now and again when not too occupied with piloting his craft. They had met only moments before, but he had the grin of an uncle showing something amazing to his favorite niece, eager to see her delighted response. “Cool?” he asked. “Very cool,” Scout said. She could see three different domed cities dotted across the landscape spread out beneath her. They looked so small. “Will we be able to see the Space Farer stations when we go by?” Scout asked. “From a distance,” Liam said. “The point where we slip through the blockade is as far from the space stations as possible.” Scout nodded, but she didn’t really understand. Liam had mentioned something about a blockade and friends who had helped him get past it to get to her. Scout guessed it was all political, and she barely understood the politics of the world she had spent her whole life on. Galactic politics would be a lot to take on now, after Scout’s last few days. Once they got somewhere warm and safe, after she’d had a shower and changed into some clean clothes, after a couple meals’ worth of proper food and perhaps even a bottle of jolo or two, maybe then she could focus on learning the nuances of galactic politics. For now, it was enough that Liam understood it and was taking her to the life his former partner Gertrude Bauer had promised Scout. The blue of the sky through the windscreen was fading away, like watching a puddle drain and evaporate. Beyond it was black—inky, bottomless black. Scout’s fingers curled around the edges of her seat cushion. She felt like she was falling into that black just looking at it, but still she fought the urge to shut her eyes. Then the first stars winked to life and she was glad she had won that battle. She knew she wasn’t any closer to them here than on the surface, not really, but they looked like she could reach out and touch them The vibration of the ship around them, barely noticeable before, settled down to almost nothing, and the feeling of being buoyed up by a giant’s hand went away. “We’re floating!” Scout said, looking down at her feet still dangling over the floor display. The planet beneath her was all patches of blue water, golden prairie, and reddish-brown hills in long rows. But as beautiful as it was, she scarcely noticed it. Her shoelaces were definitely floating. “We’re safely out of atmosphere now, so you can unbuckle from your seat if you like,” Liam said. “We’ll see how the dogs like it.” Scout grinned, then unclasped the restraints. Shadow’s tense body sprang away from her almost at once, and he gave a startled yip as he sailed through the air into Liam’s waiting arms. Gert trembled against Scout’s side and then whimpered as she too started to float away. Scout caught her, holding her tight as the two of them tumbled slowly down the length of the ship until they bumped up against the back wall. “Is it always like this?” Scout asked, laughing as Gert tried to stand against the wall and only pushed herself out into the middle of the room. Scout caught her paw and pulled her back into a hug. “The stations are under spin; that simulates gravity,” Liam said. “The larger ships like the one that brought your ancestors here use the force of their acceleration and deceleration to mimic it. But little ships like this one don’t have anything like that.” “How long will we be traveling in this ship?” Scout asked. Shadow had pushed away from Liam and was paddling his feet madly but ineffectually as he tried to reach her and Gert. Scout reached out an arm, waiting for him to float close enough for her to grasp. “We have to get out of the planetary system before we can—” Liam began, but he was interrupted by a chiming notification sound. Liam turned back to his controls and spoke in a voice too low for her to hear. Scout caught Shadow, his little body trembling from perhaps too much adventure, and hugged both of her dogs while she waited for Liam to tell her what was going on. He was silent for a moment, then spoke again, still too low for her to make out any words. Then he tapped something into the computer between the two seats. “We have to make a quick stop,” he said as he touched more buttons. Scout bit her lip. His tone was casual, almost jaunty, but clearly fake. He was trying to keep her calm. “Nothing to worry about?” she asked. “No, nothing to worry about,” he said. “Just a little bureaucracy that has to be cleared up before we can go.” “I thought your friends took care of all that,” Scout said. “You had a way to sneak past this, I thought.” “It sounds like we just got caught up in a routine sweep. Something about weeding out black marketers. And since we aren’t black marketers, this should just take a moment.” “Are you sure?” Scout asked. Liam turned in his seat to look directly at her and gave her a reassuring smile. “Absolutely. I have the appropriate papers, and they have no reason to detain us. They’re just being thorough. I promise, we’ll dock for a few moments to deal with this and then we’ll be on our way.” Scout released her lip from between her teeth and attempted to return his smile, but she was certain her attempt to seem unbothered was even less convincing than his.