Dark Space (Sentients of Orion) Page 3

  Trin knew the arguments for it—he’d just spent three years in political science at the Araldis Studium. The immersion-texts were full of explanations of how the Cipriano Clan had purchased and settled Araldis and had then realised that they had neither the population nor the breadth of skills to sustain a mining economy.

  But how short-sighted to accept just anyone. Hadn’t they learned anything from the cultural catastrophe of Latino Crux? The one time he had challenged his father about it he’d received a cold, unforgiving stare.

  Trin strode towards his friends, putting Franco from his mind.

  ‘Trin!’ called out Thomasi.

  ‘Cousin! Pilot First, by Crux,’ said Kotta.

  ‘Don Trinder, you un-bastard, where have you been? We have had to drink without you. Congratulations.’

  Trin soaked in the salve of their clamour for a moment before taking a seat between Chocetta and Lancia Silvio. They fell apart like halves of sliced moistfruit, making room for him against their ample thighs. Lancia threw lima pellets at the containment film around the uuli, and clapped as the creature changed colour.

  ‘You know that it is the pain that makes them change,’ Trin commented idly.

  Lancia laughed and threw another handful.

  The uuli squealed, its membrane flaring luminously. Most eyes were drawn to it.

  Trin looked away, annoyed. Its helplessness bothered him. How could the stupid creature allow itself to be treated so?

  Chocetta slid her hand along his leg. ‘My turn tonight, Trinder?’

  Picking up the jug of wine, he drank deeply from it. ‘If you say so. I have lost track.’

  She lifted her aquiline nose in the air, mock-aggrieved. He’d been sleeping with the Silvio Marchesas on alternate nights, and sometimes with both of them together, during their last term at the Studium. He knew it should have been exhilarating, two women, but their constant need for reassurance and attention spoiled things. He could smell his mother on them and the same weak familia-women’s way. No doubt both wanted to bear a Pellegrini child. But it would not be them that he chose. Never them.

  As if sensing his distraction, Chocetta leaned closer, pinching the flesh of his forearm under his fellalo. ‘Did you see Mira Fedor go loco at the announcement? How unsurprising.’ She raised her skilfully drawn eyebrows.

  Mira Fedor. Trin hid a flare of embarrassment with a shrug as the memories ambushed him...

  * * *

  Crimson-grained Tourmaline Island sand.

  ‘Why did you invite me here, Trin Pellegrini?’ Mira Fedor asked.

  She sat away from him on the shifting line between wet and dry as he wallowed in the surf. ‘Is the eccentric Fedor female not beneath a Principe’s son? Or do I make you curious? Or maybe it is simply that my familia is too distant to have me properly chaperoned?’

  ‘Which do you think?’ Trin parried, shocked at her directness, her perceptiveness. He could see the outline of her body through her bathing skins. Strange to be close to such a thin, fine-boned female.

  ‘I cannot decide.’

  He let the waves roll him closer to her.

  Mira did not retreat so he kissed her on impulse, to see what she would do.

  Surprisingly, she kissed him back. Her hands slipped down the outside of his bathing skin. She touched his stomach with tentative fingers that created only fear in him.

  His ardour softened.

  What if she told people that the Principe’s son was soffice?

  Suddenly, he pushed her away.

  Mira rolled up onto her knees as if slapped but he could not tell her that she scared him—that women scared him.

  Without another word Trin ran to his AiV, leaving her behind... stranded...

  * * *

  The consequences of that night had lived on, for the next day Trin had purchased bravura from a dealer at Dockside. A safeguard, he told himself. So it would never happen again.

  It never had—the bravura kept it that way.

  While Trin and Mira kept their distance from each other, she excelled in her studies and he began to fail. Bravura addiction ruined his concentration and stole his focus. He hated her for it, but he hated his father more for what he had done this evening. Trin did not want Mira Fedor’s heritage. He had no wish to fly Insignia—in truth the thought frightened him. But mostly he did not want the guilt of her insanity upon his shoulders.

  This evening, when Mira had fled the grand anteroom before the entire Studium, whispers began immediately—would she go the way of her most famous ancestor, mad Lancio Fedor?

  Now, as Trin drank Riso’s wine, the Cavaliere would be taking her to the palazzo to see his father.

  ‘What is wrong, Trinder?’ wheedled Chocetta.

  ‘He is moody over Mira Fedor,’ said Lancia.

  ‘That’s because he dated her.’

  ‘I did not date her,’ Trin said harshly. He pulled Chocetta onto his lap and called for another jug.

  Chocetta began to kiss his face while Lancia stroked his neck and hair, but their thick oil-perfumes made it hard for him to breathe. Their giggles and dirty whispered promises suffocated him. He stood abruptly, pushing them off, making an excuse that the wine was poor and that he would demand another. Then he stumbled to the bar and ordered a fresh drink, slipping two tiny bravura slices under his tongue. When the wine and bravura collided, his confidence returned. Trin took some steadying breaths and returned to the table. But the Silvios had moved on to his cousin Thomasi, and ignored him. Annoyed at their capriciousness he looked around for an alternative to satisfy the stirrings that the bravura had awoken.

  Riso’s—apart from their tables—was filled with non-familia. He contemplated leaving but the court bars and ristorantes on Mount Pell bored him. Dockside was safe enough while he was with friends—but not when he was alone. Perhaps he should AiV out to the border towns for some variety?

  As Trin stood, undecided, a group of familia women entered, dressed in seductive brocade evening fellalas. They headed straight for the bar, trailed by two Palazzo Cavaliere.

  The most beautiful, and oldest, of the women bestowed an inviting smile on him as she passed. Her breasts showed through the lace of her fellala and her hips swayed in a way that sent tremors through him.

  Trin picked up his drink and followed her.

  She told him that her name was Luna and teased him with her eyes over the rim of the drink he bought her.

  The Silvios stopped necking with Thomasi, and watched.

  Aware of their jealous scrutiny, he leaned closer. ‘Luna?’ he laughed. ‘Are you madness?’

  She caught her bottom lip with her teeth. ‘I have been called that.’

  Trin felt the bravura heating him. There was something dangerous about her. Her slenderness suggested she might be an eccentric, like Mira Fedor—only far, far more beautiful. Intoxicating. With eccentrics you never quite knew... A few such familia, picked for their special talents or attributes, had been permitted to come when the Cipriano Clan abandoned Latino Crux. Fedors had been selected for their piloting skills. Trin wondered what Luna’s familia had brought to the new world—aside from sheer magnificent beauty.

  ‘Are you going to dance with me or simply admire?’

  He glanced at her minders. Something in their aspect nagged at him. ‘Who are you to have Palazzo minders, beautiful Luna?’

  She flushed a little. Her eyes flashed. This close he could see the tiny age lines round her lips. ‘Don’t you know?’ she whispered.

  Trin ran his fingers along Luna’s brocaded arm and—brushed the palm of her hand. ‘Tell me.’

  She slipped off the high-backed chair and melted into his arms. ‘Later, perhaps. But first I would like to dance with a handsome young man.’

  Her slight emphasis on his youth prickled a warning against his skin but the bravura’s urge was stronger. Insistent.

  Luna chose the dance—formal courting steps usually reserved for couples on their wedding night before they left the cel
ebrations and went to the marital bed. Using it in this context—a ginko bar with a stranger—was so shocking that it heightened Trin’s exhilaration.

  He mirrored her ritual movements. His arousal had him sweating and breathing heavily.

  She finished coyly with her back to him.

  Indifferent to who was watching now and what they were thinking, Trin thrust his hips against the crease of her flanks and slipped his hands around her to cup the stiff brocade that hid her breasts.

  Luna jerked her head back with a little faux cry.

  By some unspoken agreement, her minders, hovering close, pulled her away from Trin.

  Before he could react they had cloaked her and hustled her out. He staggered as if he had been robbed and left punch-drunk.

  The Silvios pounced on him in a moment, pulling them back to their table.

  ‘Did she dump you, Trinder?’

  ‘Trinny, Trinny.’

  ‘Did she leave you rovente, poor darling?’

  ‘Ohh. Aah,’ they mocked. ‘Take it out on us.’

  Furious, Trin brushed them aside and grabbed a jug from the table, swilling down the entire contents in several gulps. The bar began to swirl around him. Cold shivers crawled across his overheated body. He looked around wildly for a focus, something to quell the nausea.

  Uuli.

  It slithered dejectedly in its transparent containment film. Streaks of mucus coloured the sides, creating a kaleidoscope. Its pathetic manner infuriated him. For Crux sake...

  Trin climbed onto the table and smashed the empty jug into the containment film. It gave a pressure-change thud as it cracked open.

  ‘Get out. Get out,’ he shrieked at the uuli.

  It blazed scarlet and shrank from him.

  He reached in and grasped it with both hands, intending to release it. But it shredded, lumps of mucus sloughing onto his fingers.

  ‘Trinder!’

  ‘Trinny—no!’

  They were shouting at him now. All of them. Not just the Silvios.

  ‘Come here,’ Trin shouted at it. ‘I’m trying to help you.’

  The uuli screamed and churned through a rainbow of colours.

  Rough hands dragged him down and took him to Riso’s den.

  Riso stood by his desk, rigid with rage, staring through the wall film into the bar. He turned slowly. ‘If the uuli dies, even Franco won’t be able to afford the bill. Here’s my favour to you,’ said Riso, his voice thick with fury. ‘I will not call the Carabinere. Go home and sober up. Never come here again. Your behaviour blasphemes against the name Pellegrini.’

  Trin laughed at him.

  ‘Spurious idios,’ spat Riso. ‘Throw him out.’

  * * *

  Trin’s father woke him the next day.

  Half drunk still, Trin dragged the covers up over his chest like a ragazzo shrinking from a bedtime monster.

  ‘I risked a great deal last night for your future,’ said Franco, coldly. ‘Making you Pilot First will cause discontent.’

  ‘I did not ask for that honour, father. I do not wish to be Pilot First. I wish to be Principe.’

  Franco’s thick lips contracted into a cruel line. ‘Then you must learn the value of things.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Trin.

  ‘I have decided that tomorrow you will accept a position in the Carabinere, working for Jus Malocchi. The cost of replacing Riso’s uuli will be deducted from your gratis.’

  Trin grappled for the pieces of the previous night. ‘It died?’

  ‘Yes. Aside from its visceral injuries, that particular subspecies of uuli does not tolerate the Araldis atmosphere. That was why it was sealed. You should have known that. You have bought an OLOSS humanitarian inquiry to my door when I have other matters, more important matters of concern.’

  Trin hid his shock behind a sullen look. ‘I thought the containment was just an affectation, one of Riso’s circus tricks.’

  ‘The only circus tricks at Riso’s were yours.’ Franco stared at his son.

  Trin sensed another unspoken grievance threatening to upset his father’s composure.

  ‘Why did you attack it?’ Franco said eventually.

  Trin opened his mouth to explain but the words wouldn’t form. Franco would not believe him. He sat up straighter instead, forcing himself to drop the covers. ‘You care nothing for ginkos, Papa.’ He used the diminutive deliberately.

  But Franco was unmoved by it. ‘No, I do not,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then why are you doing this? I do not wish to work for the Malocchis. The entire family is loco. Like the Fedors.’

  Franco’s stern expression softened the tiniest bit. ‘In that case, my suggestion is that you are on time for your interview.’

  MIRA

  Liveried vehicles crowded the tarmac behind the Studium cucina, their chauffeurs trading insults and boldly nudging each other as they waited for the graduation festivities to end.

  Mira pressed the biometric stripe on her inner arm to the lock of a battered TerV that crouched between a large passenger AiV and a victuals haulier. When the door sprang open she slipped inside and dimmed the windows. If any of the chauffeurs had noticed her, they would be too distracted by the mayhem—she hoped—to realise that she was the Baronessa Fedor.

  She fumbled with the navigation screen until it displayed a map for the Fleet hangars in Dockside. There! She set the tack, and as she watched for a gap among the jostling liveries, her mind ricocheted between past and present. Insignia’s entreaties had become such a constant in her mind that she hardly knew it from her own inner voice. Had it been so for her father—this endless monologue? Perhaps the stories of her ancestor Lancio Fedor were true? Perhaps insanity had truly claimed him? Indeed, it felt as if it would take her at any moment—due to fear and anger and disappointment at the very least.

  Auto-drive sent the TerV climbing out of the Studium surroundings to follow a well-dusted path downward. Within a short time Mira had a panoramic view up at the Pell range. The Menagerie was a patchwork of brilliant hues linking the Studium to the Museo under one transparent dome. In the afternoon light the dome glistened like an enormous soap bubble.

  East along the range, familia crests glowed in their dome fields above the lavish gilt villas. Mira saw the Silvios’ Purrcock and Crossbow and the Elenas’ Black Rainbow where their domes intersected midway down Mount Pell with the base of the Pellegrinis’ Berga-Lion Carrying Serpent.

  Far away in the small town of Loisa, the Fedor Bear, Feast and Pearl was reflected only in the small stained-glass entrance of the Villa Fedor—there were no protective domes on the plainlands.

  When Mira’s great-grandfather had been Pilot First—the one who’d led the fleet from Latino Crux to the new world—the Fedors had lived on Mount Pell. That had changed when Mira’s parents had died. The Principe had seen to it.

  Mira thought wistfully of her grandfather. The archivolos showed him dressed in a matt black fellala that made him seem extraordinarily tall and thin. His skin had been deathly pale from the time he had spent in vein-sink.

  All the early Cipriano settlers had acquired milky space-farers’ skin by the time they had reached their destination, yet as they began melanin treatments their colouring turned to the lustrous crimson of the modern, acclimatised Araldisian.

  Not everyone had fared well with the augmentations. Melanin allergy was not uncommon and sometimes developed after the boosters had accumulated in a person’s system. It had claimed Mira’s own father and when her mother died from birth complications Mira’s older sister Faja was left to bring up her younger sibling.

  The Principe had kept them on a modest gratuity, enough to maintain a villa on Mount Pell. Later, after their parents’ deaths, he had the girls shifted to one of the plainland towns and had decreed that only one of them would be educated at the Studium. Faja had given up her own chance at that for Mira.

  Faja, what will you think of Franco’s diktat? Mira wondered.

  Near the
foot of the mountain the TerV changed direction to circumvent the large, flat, functional catoplasma edifice of Carabinere Centrale, and descended further.

  Dockside had its own dome, a modest crimson-tinged field that married into the floor beneath the purple and red rock mountains. The Fleet hangars adjoined the docking stations, sharing the same launch infrastructure but with separate entrance and exit portals for the maintenance staff and pilots. The Assailants were taken up into space on rotation twice a year to blow out the dust.

  Mira raked through her memories of the hangar layout. During the first year of her Studium course she had concocted a research rationale to visit the Fleet—the history of Latino warship poetry or something similarly esoteric. To her disappointment the biozoon had been hidden from view by a large X-ray-resistant canopy. Her guide had explained that biozoons were always a target for bandits and that although Insignia had not been flown in twenty-odd years—since Mira’s father had died—the Principe kept his premier ship closely guarded.

  Insignia had felt her presence, though. I sense one of you. It spoke in her mind.

  Mira had clapped her hands to her head in shock.

  ‘Baronessa?’ Her guide had looked at her with concern.

  ‘A sudden headache, signor, nothing m-more,’ she had replied.

  The murmurs had started soon after, like a small babbling stream of half-formed words. If she concentrated she could make sense of some but for the most part it was like a language she had learned once and then forgotten.

  Mira believed it was Insignia. Yet other possibilities haunted her and there was no one to speak to about it, no one to reassure her.

  Occasionally clear meaning would break through the babble, as it had this evening. Now all she longed for was to see Insignia without covers, to know that it was real, to understand the forgotten language, to know she was sane.

  Mira’s ears popped and the TerV wallowed a little as she entered the Dockside preserv-field. Within a few seconds a Carabinere automon made contact.