Page 107 of Star Bringer
Kali jiggles my arm. “You’re staring into space as though the end of the system is coming,” she says.
“Isn’t it?” I blow out my breath, then turn to Gage. “You studied the maps. Where to?”
“The port supervisor’s office. He might talk to me. Do you have any money left if we need it?”
“A little,” I reply, which isn’t quite true. I’ve actually got a lot left over from selling Kali’s buttons, but I’m not telling Gage that. He goes a little funny in the presence of large sums of money.
We start walking, and every step takes twice as much energy as normal due to Glacea’s extremely high gravity—higher, even, than that of Kridacus, where just walking to the end of the street is enough to give you a cardiovascular workout.
Add in the fact that the air seems really thin here, as though you have to work twice as hard to get enough oxygen, and it’s hard to think of Glacea as anything but a shithole. I definitely don’t envy the poor sods who live here.
“This city is horrible.” Kali is obviously on my same wavelength as we struggle across the open space, blasted by the freezing wind that seems to be picking up a little more speed with each second that passes. The good part of coming into a sky port is that there are fewer laymen around with time to connect our faces to wanted posters; the bad part is that sky ports are always at high elevation and designed for loading and off-loading, so really fucking hard to navigate on foot. A perfect storm of freezing cold, out of the way, and hostile to outsiders. Fucking terrific.
“Why would anyone live here?” Kali asks as if she can hear my grouching.
“It’s not as though they have a choice,” I say. “If you’re born here, then you live here and you die here. That’s the way it is on all the planets.”
It feels like her silver eyes slice right through me. “Not for you, though?”
“Sometimes the system’s a terrible place, Princess.”
“I know that!” she exclaims, sounding offended.
I lift a brow. “I guess you do now.”
Gage stops in front of a dilapidated gray building. “We’re here,” he says, then looks at Kali. “It’s not all bad, actually. Some of us have a chance to get out, to better ourselves. My family were farm laborers on Vistenia. You want to know what hard work is, try digging up root vegetables for a thirty-five-hour day. I was given an Imperial sanction to change categories and a place in the Corporation.”
“That’s because you’ve got a brain as big as a space station,” I say. I’ve always wondered about Gage’s background, and hearing it now, I can’t say I’m surprised. No wonder he’s so obsessed with money—when you’re born literally dirt poor, you have to farm a shitload of vegetables to make one-tenth of what I paid him to help us out on theCaelestis. “Though I do question whether joining the Corporation is ‘bettering yourself.’”
Gage grimaces. “Yeah, me too. Especially lately.”
Then he pushes open the building’s front door and waves us inside.
The room is slightly warmer than outside, but not a lot. A single meager fire burns in a grate at the far side of the large room. There’s a desk close to the fire, and a man in beige coveralls sits behind it, wrapped in a dirty gray fur. Even seated, he’s clearly short—Glaceans tend to be short because of the gravity—and his pale face is mostly obscured by a mat of black beard. He glances up as we enter, his little round eyes narrowing.
“Who are you?” he demands, and not in a good way.
I step forward, which has Kali shooting me a nasty glare. She’d been edging toward the fire, and when I moved, I dragged her along with me. Oh, well.Better cold than deadis my motto.
Gage gives me a let-me-handle-this look, so I don’t butt my nose in. I do, however, rest my hand on the pistol at my hip, just in case things turn bad.
The first thing Gage does is turn his head so the bearded man can see the CT tattooed on his neck—the sign of the Corporation. The man purses his lips but doesn’t look particularly happy—not that I blame him. A visit from the Corporation isn’t usually a reason for joyous celebration.
“We’re looking for information on theReformer,” Gage says.
“Yeah, you and me both.” He snorts. “All I know about that ship is she was supposed to show up on our extra-atmosphere radar two days ago, and we still haven’t caught sight of her. She never even pinged Vistenia.”
Well, that’s interesting. Looks like the Corporation hasn’t told anybody about what happened to the ship. Does that mean no one knows about theCaelestisat all?
I glance at Kali, who looks as surprised as I feel. “That’s not possible,” she whispers to me. “There’s no way they could hide—” She breaks off when I shake my head sharply.
Now isn’t the time or place to talk about that.
“We’re more interested in the last time she was here,” Gage tells him. “Where did she ship out to? And did she drop off any…cargo?”
“How the fuck would I know? I don’t keep track of everything the Corporation does.”
Gage nods to the terminal on the desk. “Look it up.”
