Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

The look Schyler gave her was thoughtful. His brown eyes seemed to deepen. “You live the life, don’t you?”

Yerusha’s hands gripped her shins. “I try to,” she answered softly. “I believe it. We’re free out here in the environments that we build and we maintain. We pay a heavy price when we’re confined to a planet. We’ve got to watch every move we make and worry about all the other life that we might upset by blundering around down there. We have to die to make way for other life. We pay for the freedom of space too; we have to help each other out no matter what. We have to take charge of what we do and never stop learning. We have to constantly build on our achievements because if we slow down, our worlds, our freedom will fall apart. But we can get reckless and we can get stupid and we can do dangerous things and not have to worry about anything but ourselves, and we can live as long as we can manage it.”

Schyler nodded. The lines in his square face had deepened into grooves and Yerusha found herself wondering what had put them all there. The backs of his hands and the stance of his body belonged to a much younger man than that face did.

“Well, I’ve got a friend on the justice council at Free Home Titania.” He clapped both hands on his knees and stood up. “If you want me to, I’ll submit a detailed report of the whole thing. The word of a starbird’s got to count for more than the word of a burn-brained groundhugger.” He gave her a ghost of a smile and turned away.

Yerusha stared after him. “Hey, Watch?”

He turned his head so she could see a one-quarter profile of him. His eyebrow arched.

“How’d you get out here?” She couldn’t believe she was asking. This was rude. This was extremely rude. Your fellow crewmember’s past was their own. Your only concern should be their present. But she found that she wanted to know the answer more than she wanted to be polite.

He sighed deeply and turned all the way around. “You ever hear of the Liberty colonies?”

Yerusha pulled back a little. “Yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

Schyler’s smile was tight. His hands had thrust themselves back into his pockets. “They’re as bad as you’ve heard.”

Liberty colonies were based on an old philosophy that said large, centralized governments, controls on trade, and questioning what a person did do within the bounds of their personal property were all detrimental to humanity’s freedom. A full dozen colonies had been settled with that philosophy of “true” liberty.

Yerusha’s first outside contract had been under a pilot who’d hauled freight out of a Liberty colony. He never said what kind of freight, but he had plenty to say about the colony.

“Picture a whole world made up of tiny armies,” he’d said. “Blood feuds over who did what to who’s grandmother, or who’s ancestor might’ve been a Khurd or a Muslim, or who shuffled who out of the last contract. Nobody’s stopped from doing whatever they want, until their neighbors gang up on them and put an end to it permanently. Those neighbors have to make sure they’ve got to take out the whole family in the bargain though, or they’ve just started another feud. People can trade in anything they want, sure, and some of them are rich as all the heavens, and they aren’t constrained by most of the social niceties that the rest of us have to deal with, but free?” He’d just shuddered and shook his head.

Schyler met her eyes. “My folks died when I was three. I never knew why. When I was twenty, I watched three brothers and two sisters die from taking bio-exotics from one port to another. Hal and Andie went to hijackers. Mark and Shelly decided to lift some of the cargo for themselves and it got into their bloodstreams, which was when we found out we were weapons running. Ray got it when the family went after the guys who had us hauling weapons without telling us.” He wasn’t even blinking. Yerusha did not want to have to guess how tightly he was reigning his emotions in. “I wasn’t very good at killing, or at covering my own back. I knew if I stayed there I’d be dead before I hit twenty-five.” He shrugged. “So, I left.”

Yerusha opened her mouth to say, “And nobody tried to stop you?” But she remembered the place they were talking about and stopped herself.

“A freighter’s engineer took pity on me and then a tanker pilot did the same. They got me as far as Kilimanjaro Station. I was so lost.” He gave a small laugh. “I wasn’t even sure how to take a friendly suggestion, never mind how to follow a regulation. I didn’t even know how to buy something that had a fixed price.” His right had came out his pocket and he jerked his thumb towards the hatch. “Al Shei was apprenticing on the station. She found me trying to argue price with an auto-server.” His smile spread, becoming reminiscent. “She helped me out, gave me etiquette lessons, got me a job, after she convinced me that she didn’t have fangs under her hijab, that is.” Yerusha raised her eyebrows. Schyler mimicked the gesture. “All Muslims have fangs and are crazy terrorists, didn’t you know that? That’s one of the reasons the Liberty colonies have to exist, to keep Us Good Folks safe from Them.”

Yerusha chuckled. “I heard the exact same thing from an African Purist once.”

“I heard it from an Aryan.” His hand delved back into his pocket. “Anyway, when Al Shei offered me watch on board the Pasadena , I didn’t even think about saying no. I never got really good at…large groups. Too many rules, shifting all the time. A crew of sixteen and a place I knew like the back of my hand was just about what I could handle. As long as I’m here, I know who I am, who she is, and…” he paused. “Well, now I know who you are.” Schyler cycled the hatch open and left her sitting there.

Now that there was no one left to see, Yerusha wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. You may know who I am, Watch, she thought. But I’m not so sure some days.

She had thought he was going to ask about her exile. It would have been natural. After all, he had just offered up his life’s story. Even while he was talking, Yerusha had found herself replaying that whole fractured day in her head.

Maybe he didn’t ask because he was from a Liberty colony. That was something else her freighter-boss had said; “You’re free to do anything you want, except ask another idiot what they’re doing.”

“Just as well,” she whispered to the empty room. “I didn’t want to tell him.”

She most definitely did not want to tell him how Kim and Thatcher had come to the duty station she shared with Holden and told her there was a conspiracy meeting going down with a group that wanted to create trouble for Port Oberon. She did not want to say how she’d heard these two were organizers for the quiet dole but had refused to believe it because they were candidates for the Senior Guard, just like she was. She had seen the fear in Holden’s eyes and had heard the tension in his voice as he all but begged her to stay at her post. She decided to ignore all that. She let Thatcher cover for her, and let Kim take her down to what proved to be an empty cargo hold and explain quietly that there were only so many openings for Senior, and it was position with so many possibilities for someone who knew how to really use it, that it couldn’t go to somebody like Yerusha. Not that this was just about her, of course. Holden had refused several very polite offers for promotion in the ranks of those who ran the dole, and they couldn’t have that either.

There was, of course, no reason for Yerusha to remain in such an uncomfortable position. There was plenty she could do to get out of it. She had a lot of ingenuity, and great prospects. All she had to do was accept a little extra credit on the side, for a few simple tasks.