Teenage Graff dreams of going off-world to explore the universe as a documentarian, but he never imagined the adventures awaiting him when he actually gets the chance to leave.
Short story | 6,480 words
Part 1
When we hear the crying—a high-pitched, spine-shivering series of wails—of course we go to investigate. The four of us, out on what’s supposed to be a pleasant spring hike, go around a fall of boulders at the edge of a meadow, and it’s pretty clear right away what happened.
A lamb has somehow got itself stuck on a ledge about twelve feet up. The rest of the flock is moving on, the mother ewe bleating disconsolately but not doing much about searching for the baby. I can just about picture it, the lamb playing, jumping—gamboling, as they do—pretending to graze, reaching for a higher clump of grass, then the next higher, until it couldn’t go any farther and also couldn’t turn around to go back the way it had come.
“Aw poor guy!” Suze, leggy and rumpled, walks faster than the rest of us and gets there first, staring up at the wee thing.
Bard reaches for the comm clipped to his belt. “I’ll find out who’s in charge, get a drone sent in.”
We compulsively look up, searching for the shepherd drone that ought to be swooping overhead, to spot trouble just like this. But there’s no drone, not even the buzz of motors flying. The lamb’s wailing continues. I’m worried it’s about to jump.
“I think I can get it,” I say, with bravado.
Effie, their hair cut short, wearing a tank top even though it’s a little too cold for it on this bright spring day—they’re determined to pretend that winter’s really over—crosses their arms. “A drone’ll get here before you can climb that far.”
I grin. “Wanna bet?” I study the rocks and tussocks of grass, then start up. The lamb is bouncing on spindly legs, and yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s going to jump to its doom. I’ve got a mission now.
“Graff, let’s just call it in,” Suze says, worried.
“Naw, I can do it,” I say, bursting with confidence. I’m going to be a hero.
I’m in good shape, I know how to climb. I’ve done lots of bouldering. I hop up on the first protruding stone and pull myself to the next. Decide that I should have taken my shirt off so I can show off my flexing shoulders to the others. Maybe flirt at Effie a little, though I’m pretty sure they’re not interested. Never stops me.
The first couple of steps are easy. They were probably easy for the lamb, too. I step up one ledge, then another. Dig in fingertips when the rock wall gets more sheer. The lamb cries.
“It’s okay, little guy.”
Quickly enough I’m on the same level as the lamb, and the rock here is vertical, with only a few narrow edges and grips. Cracks filled with moss and grass start to feel loose. The lamb got itself situated on a relatively stable tussock. I’ve got the toes of my boots locked in, one hand holding on at the level of my head, the other in front of me. I just have to stretch a bit to grab the lamb.
I can’t move. When I shift my weight, the bit of stone my right boot is balanced on starts to give. Maybe if I hold on extra tight with my left hand, reach extra far with my right…
The lamb backs away from me, shivering, terrified. Looks like I’m going to have to balance here while also trying to grab a flailing bundle of wool.
Suze cries out, “Graff, stop, you’re slipping!”
“No, it’s fine, I’ve got it.” If I can get my footing a little more stable, get the lamb tucked under my arm, and—
I fall. I have a split second to think that I really should have seen that coming.
Someone screams, someone shouts my name. I get twisted around, bounce once, and hit the ground. I sort of hope I black out so I can avoid the “I told you so” chorus but I don’t. Instead, I scream in pain, unheroically. When I try to sit up, it hurts even worse. The others lunge at me, holding me to the ground, shouting about broken necks and stupidity.
I check my internal processor, and the system says my neck’s fine. It’s my arm that’s broken. Suze and the others don’t listen to me, and Effie is giving me the most annoyed smirk I’ve ever seen in my life. The lamb is still stuck on the ledge. A drone with a net comes to get it down safely, no fuss, just as the emergency crew that has also arrived loads me onto a flyer for evacuation.
I’m sixteen years old, and I’m pretty sure I’m in big trouble.
I can’t even lie about what happened or put some kind of spin on it, not because of the witnesses, but because the first thing the doctor does is take hold of my interface hand to download the whole thing. Not only does she see what happened, she knows I was doing it for the glory and to impress the others, and not really to save the lamb.
She sets my arm and puts it in a brace to keep it stable while my repair function works on it. She sends me home, where Vira and Evin take one look at the brace and glare at me until I offer my hand so they can see for themselves.
Evin is tall, strong, with a head of thick graying hair and kind eyes. I look a lot like him. Anyone who sees us both can tell where half my genes come from. He goes quiet, reviewing, and almost laughs. “Oh kid. What are we going to do with you?” He ruffles my hair and shakes his head.
Vira is soft and matronly, a natural caretaker. She doesn’t say anything but starts making a big pot of soup, which is exactly what I need to soothe my roiling stomach and wounded pride.
The next day, we get a call from the Analytors, and that’s a surprise.
We’re invited to an office disguised as a garden. One side of a stretch of lawn is lined with rose bushes, a blooming cherry tree grows on the other, and a self-contained fountain in the corner trickles in a way that’s probably supposed to be soothing but is setting me on edge, because my arm still hurts. I’ve been trying not to take any meds for it—it’s been a whole day, it should be healed by now—but I finally had to because I couldn’t think straight.
Vira and Evin are sitting in chairs near the cherry tree. I’m sitting apart from them, hunched up and miserable, my good hand clenched between my knees. I feel stupid, they’re looking at me with pity, and I’ll probably get sent to sewage treatment camp or something, so I can prove I can be a benefit to society.
The Analytor steps through a gap in the rose bushes. He’s older than my parents, his hair sparse. He’s dressed in a plain white tunic and trousers, no frills, and wears a studious expression. He pulls up a chair, placing it across from us, forming a conversational triangle.
I start to get up, holding out my hand—it’ll probably be easier to show than to explain.
“Let’s hold off on that a minute,” he says.
I sink back, confused. Vira and Evin glance at each other.
The Analytor has likely already seen what happened, from the doctor, and he doesn’t want us to know what he’s about to discuss until he discusses it. He nods at my parents, who nod back, then takes a minute to look me over before quirking a smile. “My name is Lan. Thank you for coming. And no, Graff, you’re not in trouble.”
He’s serene, like a cleric. I suppose the Analytors are the closest thing we have to priests. They manage the archives, the experiences we all carry. It’s a record of humanity. Not just what happens but how it feels. Nothing left out.
I sit up a little straighter. My arm hurts a little less. “Why? I mean, why did you want to talk to me? Us. Sir.” I blush a little, feeling awkward. I’ve only ever talked to Analytors at annual checkups.
“I have a proposition for you. We have a gap in the archives we’re looking to fill,” he says. “We think you might be able to help. If you’re interested.”
He’s talking about going Out. Off world, out into the rest of the galaxy. Our people, we go out, we live, collect experiences. Bring them home. The rest of the galaxy doesn’t know we do this. Doesn’t know about us at all.
Vira went Out for twelve years, before I was born. She doesn’t talk about it much, but she doesn’t really need to as the whole experience is archived. She didn’t like keeping the big secret, hiding what she was. She got homesick. At this announcement, she goes closed in, guarded. Unhappy. Evin hasn’t gone Out, and his expression is merely interested.
All I’ve ever wanted to do is go Out. I’ll do anything.
“What would he be doing?” Vira asks, sensibly, before I can say yes.
“We’d like to place someone with the Military Division of Trade Guild.”
Lan said it himself, it’s a gap, no one’s ever done anything like that. I’ll get to see…everything. I want to. Yes, yes—
“You want to turn him into a soldier,” Vira says coldly.
“Yes,” Lan replies.
And I can do it, too. I know I can. “I can do it,” I say. Heroically, I hope.
The adults all give me a look, that you poor dumb kid look, full of all the experience they’ll never be able to explain. I can download them all and still wouldn’t understand. I don’t care. How am I going to learn if I don’t get out there and do something? Broken arms heal.
“I haven’t even said what the task will involve,” Lan says.
“So tell me.”
He does. The Analytors will construct an identity unconnected to Home, to make it look like I grew up out there, a citizen of Trade Guild my whole life. We’ll submit the application to Trade Guild’s training academy under that identity—but the application will be mine. The numbers, the tests, the skills, will have to be mine. That’s the kicker: we can fake the surface, but everything else I’ll have to do on my own, legitimate and for real. Once I get to the academy, assuming I get in, I have to get through on my own, and any career I have after that will be mine. I have two years to prepare.
And I do it.
The prep to go off world is extensive: upgrading memory, reflexes, hardiness, resilience. An extra boost to the repair algorithms. A specially coded transponder, so I can sense when others from Home are near, plus the compulsion to download ourselves to each other. To share, and so carry each other home. I get more upgrades than I’ve ever heard about anyone getting, all to increase my odds of surviving to pass on what I experience. It gets daunting: I get the upgrades because they’re sending me into more danger than we typically face.
Now, I’d be able to climb that rock and grab that lamb with no trouble. I’m a little annoyed about that. I’m not sure I appreciate that a person should be able to do more at eighteen than at sixteen, even without upgrades.
It’s not a pleasant process. I sleep a lot, as my body settles into itself. Effie finally sleeps with me, mostly because they feel sorry for me. Like I’m being sent off to war, which I suppose I am.
Then I leave. Bag over my shoulder, eighteen and squirrely, ready to go. Evin doesn’t say a word. Hugs me hard, ruffles my hair. Vira’s the one who walks me to the space port and takes my hand, sharing the moment with me. She’s worried I won’t be coming back. I can’t think that far ahead. I’m too excited.
And, well, chances are at least part of me will come back. The part that matters. The experience. My place in the archives.
Part 2
The shuttle from the planet to the transfer station is still Home. The ship I take off the transfer station is still Home. It’s a small transport with a disguised identity as an independent cargo hauler, and it really is hauling cargo, but it also delivers our people in and out. Its crew are all from Home.
We reach Tre Ateyna, a major commercial station. I don’t get a chance to look around because the second officer walks me from the ship, down the docking ring, to the next ship that will carry me to a different station where I’ll be staying for a month. He shakes my hand, and I get that same sense from him, that he feels he’s sending me off to war. Like most other adults he’s got this you naïve kid attitude that he can’t hide. I don’t know what I’m getting into, is what they think, and my enthusiasm only reinforces that. I’m not worried and they think I should be.
But he also says, “Don’t listen to any of us. You’re the right one for this and you’ll do fine.”
I’m grateful for that, and he knows it.
When he walks away, it means I’ve finally left Home for real.
I board the next ship and I’m surrounded by people not from Home. People I don’t know—can’t know. If I shake their hands, we’ll only be shaking hands, and our processors won’t synch because they don’t have processors. Trade Guild has outlawed most of the modifications we take for granted.
So that’s a thing I have to learn: how to meet people.
I start to get scared. I don’t make eye contact. Barely speak unless I have to—I have an accent compared to them. What happens when someone asks about my accent? I lock myself in my cabin, barely bigger than a closet, and vow not to leave for the entire trip. Turns out, that’s pretty normal on a passenger flight like this. Most passengers keep to themselves. No one is staring at me, no one can tell how different I am. They’d have to cut me open for that, and I’d like to avoid that.
We reach Draco Secundus.
I’ve been locked into little compartments, so it’s easy to forget I’m in space. I did it, I’m out here, I’m in space…and it’s just like being in a particularly small, plain room. I’m not expecting that, and I should have. What else will surprise me that shouldn’t?
Docking feels interminably slow. The ship trembles as it fires thrusters to maneuver. My stomach can feel the movement, the subtle changes in velocity, and starts to turn over itself.
I refuse to throw up. Absolutely refuse.
The minor assaults on my stomach and inner ear continue as speed and direction shift yet again, matching the station’s rotation, and finally docking.
I’m exhausted. I’m thrilled. I want to explore. I want to sleep.
Instructions over the ship’s comm have us leaving by cabin number. This also seems to take forever. Idents are scanned as we’re checked off the ship. Scanned again at the other end of the docking hatch, on the station. As if something could happen to us in the thirty meters between the two places. Over the shoulders of the passengers in front of me I catch glimpses of bright lights, the hum of a crowd, the clanging of something industrial happening nearby.
Another scanner checks our gear, reads for diseases. I have a flash of terror, wondering what would happen if my ident gets flagged, if one of the scanners pings to what I am. That’s one of the things I had to practice, before I left Home: how to remotely hack systems to feed them the information I want them to see. Particularly my medical scans.
I need to practice that some more, I think.
But the lights that are supposed to be green turn green, and none of the uniformed officials on hand gives me a second look. It’s almost anticlimactic. Feeling jittery and lost, I’m suddenly standing in a utilitarian passenger lounge, at the edge of Draco’s commercial concourse.
I spot my new mentor immediately. My system hums, reaching out to hers. I could find her with my eyes closed. That’s new, part of the upgrades. This is how we find each other, I get it now.
She’s maybe in her forties, her expression stern. Her red hair, streaked with gray, is drawn back in a braid. She’s wearing a dark jacket over a tunic and loose trousers, boots, jewelry at her ears and wrists. She doesn’t look out of place—on a commercial station like this, no one really looks like any one thing. People come from everywhere, look like anything.
I’m still feeling lost. I walk up to her, holding out my hand kind of desperately. I want the reassurance of Home. But she waits, hiding her hands under crossed arms.
“So you’re the kid they decided to throw at MilDiv, huh?” Her voice is lighter than I expect, and wry.
“Uh. Yeah.”
She takes pity on me and grabs my hand.
Her name is Yarrow. She’s a little bit nuts. She’s been out here twenty years, doing this job, and it feels like she’s seen everything. She doesn’t think I’m a naïve kid—or rather, she thinks of everyone as a naïve kid. It’s hard to take it all in. I’ve got…too much to think about, standing here goggling like a complete naif.
“Hi,” I say weakly.
“Come on, Rookie, let’s get you settled.”
Yarrow runs a cover business in a section that combines commercial and residential spaces. Her flat has a small office in front and a series of hostel rooms in back. In fact, the place started out as a hostel, where travelers could stay during layovers. She’s taken it over as a refuge for people from Home.
I’m supposed to stay here a month, acclimating while working for her. After I get over the space lag, it’s all shockingly boring.
I think I assumed Yarrow’s business was going to be an adventure: high-powered trade negotiations, business mediation, or freelance exploration. A smuggling ring or floating poker game. But no, it’s none of that.
She has me running errands. Light years away from Home, the start of my adventure, and I’m dropping off and picking up laundry, shopping for food, and delivering packages from one place on the station to another. That’s it, I’m a glorified drone, handing envelopes back and forth and checking off the little box on the data form. Turns out, even with drones, some people still want an actual person to carry their food or their cargo or whatever can’t be transmitted. Some people just don’t trust machines.
That makes me think about Home, and the implants and modifications we use that Trade Guild has made illegal. I wonder about that.
This is the thing I have to do to get to where I want, so I don’t complain. In fact, I learn a lot. Which is the point, I suppose. Learn how the rest of galaxy gets on. Learn how to be ready for what I don’t expect. After the first week, I start to enjoy myself.
Julie at the noodle place where I pick up lunches for an office block every day remembers my name after just one visit. That gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. I flirt with the guy at one of the cargo receiving offices—nothing big, just a look up and down, a wink. And he smiles back, before I turn and saunter off.
Maybe the best thing: I get to see space. Draco Secundus has one of those tourist passenger lounges with a giant viewport that offers a panoramic vista of the deep black, the rocky planet below, moons in the distance, the station traffic orbiting, running lights like a festival, all of it sliding past with the station’s rotation. I stop there every chance I get, my face pressed to the window and I don’t even care how much like a rookie it makes me look.
At the end of each day, Yarrow asks if I have questions, if there’s anything I want to talk about, and we chat over a cup of tea or a meal.
“Do you ever just ask?” I say, when I wonder if the guy in the shipping office is flirting back but I’m not sure, and besides, is it even worth following up when I’m going to be gone in a couple weeks. “What someone’s story is, what they’re thinking, what they know?”
She leans back, taps the rim of her cup. “Have you been listening to conversations like I told you? Eavesdropping?”
I have. Especially in the tourist lounge, where a lot of people gather to chat, to go on dates, and to kill time. Sometimes, people talk into their comms without seeming to care who listens in. The conversations are mostly what I expect, questions and answers and small talk. Instead of talking about the weather, people on a station talk about the traffic and where the good food is. But there also seems to be a carelessness, a shallowness. It seems like it’s assumed that everyone is keeping secrets.
So I’ll fit right in, I guess. “Nobody really asks questions like that. Big questions.”
“Big questions are a sign of intimacy, to them. To know certain things about someone is to assume closeness.”
I understand. I think.
Yarrow shrugs expansively. “Or you’re involved in blackmail, one or the other.”
I have to think about that a minute. “Am I ever likely to be involved in blackmail?”
“I’m not going to make any predictions about you, Rookie. But I look forward to getting your stories.”
All the food vendors are on a level between the passenger docking ring and the residential sections. It smells wonderful all the time—grilled vegetables at one end, fresh baked bread at the other, and everything in between. I have a goal to eat at every one of them before I leave Draco Secundus. Favorites so far: pad thai and cinnamon rolls.
“Hiya Graff,” Julie says when I walk up to her counter. She’s got a round face, framed with hair dyed purple. She’s got three different pendants on three different leather cords, one for each of the planets she’s visited, she says. She was born on a planet. That’s a part of peoples’ stories that’s all right to ask about—where are you from, where have you traveled. There’s this subtle difference between people born on planets and ones born in space, on stations. A feeling of permanence, maybe. People born on stations think of the stations as plenty permanent, but people born on planets seem to consider stations to be temporary and fragile. I think it’s about atmosphere. If you were born on a planet, artificial atmosphere never feels quite right. That’s how I feel about it, anyway.
As I’m checking over the orders, her gaze suddenly darts over and her whole expression drops.
“Shit,” she murmurs.
My senses perk up and I follow to where she’s looking. Once I spot them I can’t ignore them: a group of four, wearing the same spiffy uniforms, with creased trousers and polished boots, tailored jackets over T-shirts that fit just a smidge too tight, meant to show off athletic, intimidating bodies.
They surround a middle-aged man standing at the place that sells dumplings.
“What’s that about?” I murmur back.
“Indie security types. Think they can do whatever they want. I guess they can—not like station police ever stops them.” She gives a huff of disgust. “Nothing clears a room out like a squad of mercs.”
It’s true, lunchtime rush and the whole section has emptied of people. I glance out the corridor beyond. Draco’s a pretty laid back place and I can’t say that I’ve ever even noticed station police. Maybe around the docks? Who would notice security unless you suddenly need it?
“Captain didn’t say you could leave,” says the tallest, most intimidating one of the bunch, the one with the buzz cut and scar on his cheek that he hasn’t bothered getting repaired.
“I don’t work for the captain anymore,” the man says softly, gaze downcast, avoiding eye contact. As if they’ll go away if he tries not to see them.
“That’s not how this is going to go,” the tall one says. The others have closed ranks, blocking the guy’s escape.
There’s a story here. A bad story, I’m thinking. I wonder what it is?
“Should we call someone?” I ask Julie.
“No,” she says quickly. “No, they’ll move on soon enough.” She’s also ducked her gaze and made herself busy sorting the utensil bin that doesn’t need to be sorted. Pretending like whatever this is isn’t happening.
Me, I’m staring. I can’t look away. I’m fascinated, appalled. My heart is speeding up, and I feel a grin curling at my lips.
The tall one has taken hold of the middle-aged man’s arm. I would never have picked this guy out of a crowd—he’s dressed in an ordinary suit and jacket. His skin is space-farer pale, his dark hair thinning. He yanks his arm away; he doesn’t want to be involved with this crew, that’s clear, but they’re not giving him a choice.
I just want to know what the story is.
One of the others glances over, notices me staring back, and nudges the tall leader. Then, they’re all looking back at me.
I should be worried. There’s probably something wrong with me, that I’m excited rather than scared. I’m just…a distraction, I tell myself. I’m just going to give their target a chance to escape, that’s all.
“Hold onto that for me,” I say to Julie, patting the bag of lunches.
“Graff, don’t—”
I’m already walking over. My mouth is running before I even really know what I’m saying. “Hey, I hear the dumplings here are pretty good. What do you think?” I’ve singled out the tall one and talk right to him.
“I think they’re okay,” he says evenly. “But you might want to come back later.”
“Oh?” I say, playing dumb. “There a problem?”
One of the other toughs chuckles a little; another rolls their eyes. They’ve all gone on alert, shoulders bunching, hands closing into fists.
Their target—a former crewmate maybe?—edges away, like he’s going to make a break for it, and I mentally nudge him on.
But one of the soldiers grabs his arm. He freezes. I must look offended; the tall one gets close.
“Kid, go away before you get in trouble.”
Someday, I’ll be old enough that people will stop calling me kid. “Yeah? What kind of trouble?” This is definitely trouble, but I can handle it. I’m pretty sure I can handle it. I think.
The tall one dons a smirky kind of grin, puts a finger on my sternum, and pushes. Not even hard, just an insistent request to step back.
I swing. Throw a punch right on that square jaw of his. What else am I supposed to do?
The punch never connects. Guy grabs my wrist and twists. A sharp pain shoots up my arm and my body seems to double up on itself until I drop to my knees. There’s a scream in the distance. Might be Julie, or it might be me.
“Kid, seriously, back off.”
Kid—I’m almost as tall as this guy, and I know for a fact none of them have my augmented strength and reflexes. I’m in it now, so I just keep going. I charge, intending to knock him over, not even really thinking about what happens after that. I’m faster than him. I’m supposed to be faster than him, I just have to get him down before he can react—
Somehow, he steps aside and strikes. I’m not sure where or how but I’m on the ground, writhing. Two of his crew have hold of my arms. And no, their previous victim didn’t escape. I catch a glimpse of him and he just looks sad.
I struggle on principle. If I can just get the right angle, the right leverage, but they’re holding my arms out and angled up. I can’t get any leverage at all. All I can do is glare, so that’s what I do. The tall one isn’t even winded.
“Well, you’ve got gumption, I’ll give you that,” he mutters.
“Let me go,” I say, and feel stupid for doing so. They’re not going to let me go. In fact, I suddenly wonder if they’re into kidnapping, if they’ll drag me onto their ship as pressed crew, like some kind of old-school pirate.
That would be a hell of an experience for the archives, wouldn’t it?
He says, “This isn’t personal. This is a lesson to think about it first, the next time you want to stick your nose into something.”
The goons on my arms haul me up, exposing my gut, and the guy punches me there. He doesn’t punch hard, I realize later when I go back to review the memory. Like he said, just enough that I’ll remember.
But I’ve never been punched in the gut before so it’s a shock. The blow collapses my stomach—I think I’m going to throw up. The breath wheezes out of me, and I can’t seem to inhale another. They drop me to the floor, chuckling the whole time. And I recover. A couple of deep breaths, my lungs fill and my gut steadies. I’m on hands and knees, back in control of my body. I bet they’re not expecting me to recover this fast. Definitely not expecting me to try again—
“Stand down! Stand down now! Security command, stand down!”
Guards in chest plates and helmets charge down the corridor, some from the left, some from the right. Don’t know how many; my vision’s still swimming. Someone’s called station security, or maybe they just showed up. After all this, I guarantee I’m going to be a lot better at noticing where uniformed folks are and what they’re doing.
They’ve got guns drawn. The mouths of the barrels seem impossibly wide, and that’s a cliché, about how the barrels of guns seem bigger when they’re pointed at you, right?
Turns out these guns have extra-wide barrels because they fire nets. Sticky, restraining, nonlethal nets. After a sharp thud of compressed air, a net flies right at me and knocks me over. If I’d known what it was I maybe could have dodged. I close my eyes when it hits and the next moment I’m pinned to the floor, safely immobilized.
The mercenary crew knows to put their hands up when security shows up. They get to walk off under their own power.
Half an hour later I’m alone in a holding cell at the security office. There’s a bench and the lights are too bright. I’m running over scenarios of what’s going to happen next. The worst case scenario—they put me out an airlock for breaking some arcane station rule—doesn’t seem very likely so I’m not too worried. But the second worst: that gang of whoever they were comes looking for me, to teach me another lesson and maybe put me out an airlock. That doesn’t seem outlandish. I might be a little worried. I decide that when the door opens, whoever’s standing there, I’m going to play the young and stupid card and maybe that will smooth things over.
When the door opens, it’s Yarrow. There’s a security guy at the keypad, but she’s the one framed in the doorway, arms crossed and glaring. The young and stupid card will probably still work, but I can’t even find a smile at the moment. I blush harder and harder the longer she stares without saying anything. I recognize the emotion I’m feeling: it’s shame.
“Come on, Rookie,” she says finally, tilting her head out the door. I spring to my feet and follow.
We walk straight out of the office. Nobody stops us. Evidently, I’m not even worth bothering with, as far as security is concerned. I’m too relieved to be offended that apparently, the young and stupid card got played without me having to do anything.
There’s no sign of the mercenary crew.
Out in the corridor I ask, “What—”
“Not here,” she says, making a calming gesture.
“I’m not in trouble? Or rather, how much trouble am I in?”
“We’ll talk.”
To top it all off, there’s a carton of pad thai from Julie’s place waiting for me back at Yarrow’s hostel. I was sure I’d lost my appetite but the smell gets me. I eat.
She explains that I’m not in trouble. Mostly because the mercenary crew at the dumpling window didn’t make a complaint. All just a misunderstanding. They were on their way out, so no harm done. I’m let off with a warning to maybe not start fights in the food concourse. My gut is still sore, and I’m not sure it’s from getting punched.
At some point I should probably go apologize to Julie for scaring her.
I stare at the carton of noodles until Yarrow falls silent, and I could probably just apologize and not have to think about this ever again, except the whole incident is stored safely in my processor, including the misplaced bravado before and the wrenching shame after.
“I should have been able to stand up to them,” I say softly. I really thought I could take them.
“You might be stronger but they’ve got training and experience. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s why Home’s sending you to MilDiv.”
“So I can get the training.”
“The whole experience, front to back. Yeah.”
“What was the story with those guys? And the other guy they were after—”
“Don’t know,” Yarrow says, entirely unconcerned.
“Security didn’t ask—”
“Nope.”
“But—”
“Graff. Sometimes you don’t get to know.”
And that’s that.
Gently, she asks, “This is more than you were expecting. Do you want to keep going? You can say no if you want. Go back Home.”
Yes, I want to keep going.
I think the big thing Yarrow taught me is to do the research. To be prepared. And to avoid depending on expectations. Go in expecting anything, everything. Later, I might change my mind about the most important thing she taught me. But right now, it’s research.
I study everything about Trade Guild’s academy at Rio Verde before I get there. The layout, the weather, academic schedules, traditions. Scandals. The only one of those I find is rumors of a secret society that meets in an underground cave, which is vaguely interesting. Plenty of time to find out later.
I get to campus, riding a transport with a dozen other new students just coming off the shuttle. Everyone’s trying to act slick and unconcerned, but there’s a universal wide-eyed shockiness that’s a combination of the newness of it all, but also space-lag, gravity-lag, and simple allergies from all the gardens surrounding the place.
After a month on Draco Secundus, the gardens are nice. I leave my bag in my room, then take a walk. The thing I don’t expect, that throws me a bit: some of the trees and shrubs are familiar. Cherry trees and rose bushes. This place was terraformed with some of the same stock and techniques as Home.
A good reminder that we all came from the same place, ultimately.
Halfway around the campus, there’s commotion in a nearby courtyard. Of course I go to see what’s happening. Doesn’t mean I’m going to start a fight.
A crowd has gathered around a fountain, a wide, circular pool of water with lily pads and reeds growing artistically in randomized spots. In the center, an abstract brushed-steel kinetic sculpture is turning lazily while water splashes around it. The panels of the sculpture interrupt the streams of water now and then. It’s all very tranquil.
Except for the guy who’s waded into the middle of it.
“What’s up?” I ask the person next to me, after easing my way to the front to get a better look.
“Guy there thinks he’s a hero,” they scoff.
The guy in question is about my age. He’s got a rugged face with an intense gaze that I just want to trust. He’s soaking wet, dark hair plastered to his head, shirt and trousers waterlogged, and he’s trying to reach into the turning panels of the sculpture—
For ducklings. A handful of baby ducklings have gotten stuck.
The brown-feathered mother duck is bobbing nearby, flapping her wings and honking. A couple more ducks are joining in the fracas. I can hear the ducklings, softer peeping barely audible over the chaos.
Between the fountain’s motion and the flapping ducks, the guy can’t quite get to the trapped babies.
People in the crowd are shouting at him.
“Just get out of there!”
“Someone’s gone for help!”
“Let someone in charge handle this!”
“It’s not your job!”
I climb over the lip of the fountain and slosh out to join him. Someone behind me laughs.
The water comes almost but not quite to my knees, and it’s cold. Not freezing, but the weather here’s been rainy and there’s a chill. It’s only for a few minutes, I’ll be fine, but I don’t know how long this other guy has been at it. He’s probably cold.
He just needs an extra set of hands, a body to run interference on the flapping adult ducks, so that’s what I do. I’m taller than him, bulkier. I can gently bump the ducks away with a knee and hold the fountain’s panels still while he grabs ducklings and sets them free on the water, where they go paddling off.
There’s like fifteen ducklings. A lot of ducklings.
“And stay out of there!” the guy calls after them. They’re not listening. The adorable duck family paddles away like nothing happened.
Now we’re both dripping wet. I’m grinning like an idiot and he just looks tired.
He turns to me. “Thanks.”
I hold out my hand. “I’m Graff.”
He takes it. It’s just a handshake. I don’t learn anything about him. But he smiles warmly. “I’m Elias Ransom.”
And that’s my first day at school.
“Bravado” copyright © 2025 by Carrie Vaughn
Art copyright © 2025 by Eli Minaya
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