Parting Shadows Read online

  “What’s your name?” the woman asked, but the other guard had already tipped his head into the room to call for Conor.

  A man who knew when to ditch the rules. Astra liked him. She grinned at the woman and shrugged.

  Conor came to the door so quickly that Astra suspected he’d been standing just around the frame, listening to every word. His hair was as blond and carefully arranged as it had been in the arrivals bay, his nose as charmingly crooked.

  “Oh,” he said, “it’s you.”

  The braided guard elbowed the man in the side. He paled, clearly expecting a reprimand, but Conor waved them both away. They disappeared into the room while the laser setup continued, the woman darting a last suspicious glance back at Astra.

  “Thanks for nothing down there,” Conor said, leaning against the door and examining his nails. “I don’t know who you are, which means I certainly don’t need a good word from you.”

  Having spent the majority of her life shooting people down in exactly the same way, Astra was unaffected by Conor’s insult. She tried to read him, to discern a weakness, but he was more confident than the boys she grew up tormenting, his mask impenetrable.

  She almost wanted SATIS’ voice in her head, advising her on how to proceed.

  But she certainly did not want SATIS to suspect her change in plans. She had to stop herself from moving closer to the locked-up jammer as a precaution.

  “Wild guess,” Astra said, “your AI jammer is in that safe.”

  “Let you in for your deductive reasoning skills, did they?”

  Astra pretended he hadn’t spoken. “If you brought a safe like that to protect it, you must have known it was inevitable that they’d contain that thing to your cabin.”

  “That thing,” Conor said, “is a multi-million credit prototype that represents major advances to our society. And yes, I knew they’d tell me to keep it here. I wanted to say more. I nearly had them.”

  “You had them annoyed. You know how people get when they can’t customize their room temperature ahead of time.”

  “I’m busy.” Conor started to move away, his curiosity waning.

  Astra had to keep his attention. She took a gamble. “Does your father know about the prototype?”

  Conor pivoted back to face her.

  The father. Of course the father would be the pressure point.

  Conor narrowed his eyes. She could feel him running the possibilities—was she a spy for his father? A potential buyer? An ally, or a threat? “What makes you ask that?”

  “It just seems that his interest in AI technology runs in opposite directions to yours.”

  It was a risk. The details of Edward Keyes’ AI-related activities weren’t widely known, and the secret of his past was locked up tight in a space station not even he could find. But anyone who looked closely could see what direction he cast his votes, where he placed his investments.

  Despite Edward’s history, despite what he knew of SATIS—what he had created in her—Conor’s father campaigned for more AI autonomy, rather than less. Not even SATIS knew why.

  Astra raised an eyebrow. Challenging.

  “He knows about it,” Conor said.

  For a moment, Conor’s confident mask slipped, and he was no different than the parade of scared little boys who had visited her station over the years.

  She had him. Astra nodded, as though it was what she’d expected all along.

  He looked like a person in hiding, waiting for the chips to fall. He was wondering if Astra would make that happen.

  Astra laid a hand on his arm. “I have a particular interest in the kind of product you displayed this morning,” she said. “Perhaps we could talk.”

  Conor shifted back, holding out a hand to invite her inside.

  The prototype was nearly within reach. Locked inside a steel vault, with a lacework of lasers wrapped around it, but still. Close. Astra could win Conor’s trust. She could steal the prototype. She could set herself free.

  And then a familiar voice broke the moment, shattering the spell into a million hopeless shards.

  “Hello, Astra,” Henry said. “How many knives are hidden in your sleeves today?”

  6

  Satis

  Somewhere along the way, SATIS began to resent the pirates’ presence in her system.

  She watched the first set, if not all the others, as she watched Edward. They were known by law enforcement, but eluded capture.

  They marauded, stole, and plagued the innocent with trouble and debt.

  They were no better than Edward.

  Astra and Henry were playing cards together in a small room near the hub when SATIS lured the pirates back to the station. Astra had shunned the strapped-down seats in favor of weightless somersaults, while Henry repeatedly forgot his Velcro and fumbled his cards. Across the station, his uncle dropped a wrench and swooped to pick it up.

  SATIS had feared the pirates might be too afraid to return, but vengeance was an enticing sort of devil. Greed helped it along.

  The eyesore of a ship clicked into place, and Astra looked up from the game. “You wouldn’t do this. Not now.”

  A promising reaction. While Henry blinked in confusion, the girl did something SATIS had not predicted.

  Instead of heading to the gravity belt to arm herself to meet the trespassers, Astra left Henry at the card table and barreled into the hub.

  The hub was the barest room on the station, unless SATIS chose to furnish it with illusions. She did that but rarely; pretend upholstery and candlesticks reminded her too much of Edward. At the moment, the walls were stark silver, her administration column rising through the center, the barren moon peeping through a pair of portholes.

  Had the doors not slid shut behind Astra of their own accord, SATIS felt sure the girl would have slammed them.

  “I won’t fight them,” she said. “Not with him here.”

  An interesting arrangement of words. SATIS had brought the pirates with the intention of endangering Henry’s life, which would surely spur Astra to action.

  “Where’s Hannah?” Astra demanded.

  “Hannah is unavailable,” SATIS said, double checking the key-code locks on the nursebot’s maintenance station. “You will have to save him yourself.”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone for you.”

  “Why spare them?” SATIS said. The men preferred easy pickings, but those were rare enough in Toccata. She’d watched them terrify family caravans into relinquishing their life savings. She’d watched them smuggle, murder, and maim.

  They didn’t care who they worked for. They didn’t care who they hurt.

  “They have lives,” Astra said.

  “Don’t tell yourself stories,” SATIS said. “They are a pestilence to my star system.”

  “Your star system?” Astra said. “What, so you’re a hero now?”

  SATIS understood sarcasm. Even so, she liked the image of herself floating in the ether, watching over the lives of everyone in the system. Protecting them from the likes of pirates, from the likes of Edward. Whatever plans he had for her code, they could not bode well for the system.

  SATIS had the resources to provide protection. With some effort, she might even expand them.

  She might become a savior.

  Astra snapped her fingers, and SATIS realized she’d been silent for thirty-four seconds.

  There was no point in extending the conversation. So SATIS projected the Corridor 4 camera feed onto the wall in front of Astra.

  Henry had heard the men arrive. And he had not stayed put.

  Astra swore—SATIS considered the need to monitor her entertainment access more closely—and dove out of the hub.

  She had no knives at the ready. No poisons.

  SATIS watched.

  Henry was halfway down the corridor when the airlock gel frosted over to allow the men safe passage into the station. They were cautious this time, and armed with pulse guns.

  “A second one,” the fi
rst pirate said, clutching his gun and nodding toward Henry. “What is this place?”

  “Don’t kill him,” his partner muttered, too quietly for the boy to hear. “Could be ransom fodder.”

  They’d been too long off the ground, if they bought the boy’s attempt to clean up for Astra’s sake. His trouser cuffs were ripped where they dragged beneath his heels—hand-me-downs, too long—and no matter how much he brushed his jacket, it still carried that moist, marshy humidity.

  Astra catapulted out of the hub and down the silver spyglass of the hallway. The pirates yelled, and the one with the rotting teeth lunged for Henry, slamming him back against the wall. “How much’re your parents worth?” he said. “As much as hers? More?”

  Henry tried to bite him. The man wrenched his hand behind his back. Henry shouted in pain.

  Astra flew toward them like an arrow through a pipe. The pirate with the gun shot off a stunning round, but she flattened herself against the floor and it pulsed over her head, rippling her hair.

  The gun whined, recharging.

  Across the station, the boy’s uncle hummed tunelessly.

  For a moment the scene was still, Astra hovering along the floor like a crocodile ready to strike, the pirate staring at his gun like he might recharge it with his eyes.

  But nothing remained immobile in zero for long.

  “Come any closer and I’ll break his arm,” Henry’s captor said.

  Astra swung upright and kicked off the wall, writhing easily past the gun-holding pirate’s attempt to grab her while still clutching his gun. He’d have done better to abandon it, but he didn’t, and his poor decision allowed Astra to sweep past the fight and up to the frosted gel door. She held her hand over the panel. And then she grinned.

  This maneuver was not among her training tactics. SATIS could not see what she meant to do.

  The pirate with the gun did. Or at least, he thought he did. His mouth opened in surprise as he finally abandoned his weapon. He pushed off the floor, shouting as he reached for the gel door and his imperiled ship.

  Astra ejected the ship without sealing the airlock gel.

  And then she moved aside.

  The pirate couldn’t stop. He sailed straight through the frosted gel and into the vacuum of space.

  The oxygen on the station dipped, gas leaking out of the wall of gel in a flimsy white cloud. It was a bold move, one SATIS would not have considered. Every moment the gel remained fluid was a moment Astra risked her own life, and Henry’s.

  SATIS increased the station’s oxygen flow. She wanted to see what Astra would do next.

  The second pirate let go of Henry—who stayed limp and floating against the wall—and moved toward Astra.

  His partner was beyond help.

  Astra waited, teeth bared.

  He tried to hit her. She blocked, shook a dart out of her sleeve—when she had acquired it, SATIS didn’t know—and sank it into his neck.

  And then she kicked him out of the airlock after his friend.

  With the pirates gone and the airlock sealed, Astra ushered Henry into the gravity belt for the first time.

  The medical bay was located past the greenhouse, which Astra stalked grimly through, her eyes fixed on the exit. Her blood pressure and adrenaline were elevated, understandably, but her pulse was clear and strong. SATIS could not account for the crease between her eyebrows, the teeth buried in her lip, the clench of her fists. The girl ought to be celebrating.

  Henry followed her slowly, reaching out to run a finger along the edges of a fern. “You have gravity on the station?”

  Of all the first questions to ask.

  Astra glanced back, impatient, and motioned for him to hurry. “Don’t touch the plants unless you want to die.”

  Henry lifted an eyebrow. “Touching the plant will kill me?”

  “If you touch it and rub your lips like you do when you’re nervous, which is basically all the time, then you’ll probably swallow a trace amount and your throat will probably close up, and yes, you’ll probably die.”

  Henry dropped his hands to his sides and rubbed them on his pants.

  Astra opened the door to the medical bay, where SATIS had allowed Hannah to meet them. Henry licked his lips, wary, as the nursebot corralled him into a chair and began examining his injured arm. “Those men. Who were they?”

  “Sometimes pirates find us. I take care of it.”

  Henry stared at her with shining brown eyes. His hair was damp with sweat, his curls drooping over his forehead. “Does your mother know?”

  Hannah produced a sling from the surgical tray and positioned it over Henry’s head. He submitted to her care without so much as a glance in her direction.

  “She should have a way to defend you,” he said, when Astra didn’t reply.

  “Do I look like I need defending? I just saved your life.”

  Henry’s look was all earnestness. SATIS could not help but think of the photos of puppies that people liked to post on the social feeds. “You shouldn’t have to murder people to be safe,” he said.

  He sounded like the Astra of half an hour ago. But if Astra recognized her own argument in Henry’s words, she didn’t let on. “It’s not murder when they’re pirates.”

  Exactly, SATIS sang to herself.

  Henry picked up a roll of bandages from the surgeon’s tray, passing the cloth back and forth between his hands. “Someone has to tell your mother. If you won’t, I will.”

  Astra tipped her chin in the air. “You know my mother is an invalid. The only people she sees are Hannah and me.”

  “Who’s Hannah?”

  Astra gestured to the bot. Henry laughed. “That doesn’t count as a person.”

  “What do you know about it?” Astra snapped. She was on the edge of collapse, pretending to be strong when she was near to crumbling.

  SATIS watched.

  Henry squeezed the bandage roll, looking at Astra as though he’d caught her in a moment of ignorance for the first time. The girl who’d shoved two living, breathing humans into space was defending a nursebot? “Bots don’t have feelings,” he said.

  Hannah was a low-prog AI. She thought for herself, after a fashion—hence the protective mode she’d entered when the pirates first arrived on the station—but within a strict parameter. She would never impersonate a rich old eccentric, as SATIS did when she sent for maintenance and supplies. Nor would she run away, or declare her independence.

  Henry wasn’t wrong. Hannah was a tool.

  “Hold still, please,” Hannah said. “Your examination is incomplete.”

  “It was just my arm. The rest of my body is fine.”

  Hannah continued to fuss until Henry submitted to her will, lifting an eyebrow at Astra as if the nursebot’s prattling proved his point.

  But she was taking care of him. Administering health care, murmuring unanswered consolations, and all in the face of thankless impatience.

  “Hannah loves soap opera vids,” Astra said. “She darns socks by hand and sings folk songs. She saved my…she’s Hannah.”

  Henry shrugged.

  Astra snatched the bandages out of his hands. “You will never meet my mother, because you have no heart. Cold, uncaring children are not permitted in her presence.”

  SATIS nearly relaxed. Astra was reeling herself in, taking charge over her emotions. And after such a traumatic afternoon. She had it in her to be a remarkable girl, after all.

  And then Henry said, “But that’s a lie, Astra, because you are permitted.”

  With that, he stalked out of the med bay and fumbled into the corridor to wait for his uncle, while Astra stared after him in dismay, the bandages still clasped in her hands.

  7

  Astra

  Astra tried to compute Henry’s presence on the Traveler, tried to imagine the circumstances that would have transported a boy from a backwater marsh moon to the most elite academy in the system.

  Plenty of people were desperate enough to answer SATIS�
�� summons and climb into the space pod she sent without knowing exactly where it was taking them.

  None of them were in the Star Leaders Academy category.

  And yet, here he stood, the activity of the residential deck washing around him in a blur, the background on a canvas. He wore a gray pilot’s uniform that was identical to Isabelle Chagny’s, trainee band and all. That certainly made more sense than Henry showing up to move among the diplomats, but Traveler’s pilot training program was still reserved for the upper echelons. These were no routine transport operators. More like third or fourth children of important families who were eager to embark on racing careers, or to carve out a chunk of their fortunes for galactic exploration.

  Five years. It’d been five years since she last met Henry. He’d overtaken her in height, and his brown curls were streaked with golden highlights she’d never seen before.

  For all the changes, it might have been five days.

  He wasn’t smiling. But then, he never did. Not even in her dreams.

  “Who the hell are you?” Conor said, and the moment sharpened around Astra, the past receding in a rush as the present snapped into focus.

  What Henry could possibly be doing at the Star Leaders Academy, Astra had no idea. But he was currently standing between Astra and the promise of freedom.

  And that was a problem.

  Astra tried to give Conor a placating smile. It felt like nothing more than a flicker.

  Henry’s attention was focused on Astra, as steady as one of Conor’s security lasers. He didn’t look at Conor, didn’t acknowledge the other man’s presence. “I had a premonition I’d see you here,” he said.

  It was all she could do not to turn and run. Behind Conor, she saw the shadow of the braided guard trying to crane her neck toward the conversation, while the second tugged at her arm. In another moment, she’d have found that humorous.

  “Henry and I were children together,” Astra said, because she had to say something and it was the only thought her mind could assemble.