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Victoria hated Hydrus III runs. It had been a dirty planet when she was a child, but now it was hard to breathe for the thick minerals that polluted the surface air. Worse, it smelled of desperation. She wouldn’t have taken the cargo job, but since—
She didn’t have as many options as she used to. Hydrus III was legitimate work, and the port had decent security. Until something better came around, she had a ship to keep in working order and a stomach to fill.
She grabbed the data chip with the customer’s order and went to go pick up her haul.
*
After two years of being on her own, Victoria would have thought she would have noticed she had another passenger on her ship before hitting deep space. But evidently old habits never really died, they just lingered, chronically ill and failing. Her little brother’s favorite place to hide had been in the air ducts of the ship. She didn’t even think twice about the signs of extra weight there.
As it was, it took a thud, a fucking thud for Victoria to catch on. She grabbed her stunspray stick and went to go check out the noise. The heat sensors in the air units, meant to keep the ship from overheating, were also good for finding body heat. The intruder, whoever it was, was near the galley.
She pried open the vent covering the ducts, and sure enough, found a stowaway. Victoria pointed her stick and said, “Get out.”
The stowaway did as told. Well, it fell out, really. The creature was probably human, although it was hard to tell with the matted hair and dirtied rags covering it. Then it looked up and said, “I’m sorry, don’t-- I mean no harm.”
Definitely human. Fuck.
*
There were two types of cargo that Victoria never shipped, no matter what the offer: guns and people. Guns because they’d killed her family; people, because this was her family’s ship and if they weren’t going to inhabit it, nobody was. Slaves, passengers, it didn’t matter—Victoria worked and lived on her own. Period.
“What the hell are you doing on my ship?” Victoria kept the stick trained on her stowaway.
The stowaway brought her hands up in a gesture of peace. Her arms were more bone than flesh, and the beds of her fingernails were bloody and torn, her palms calloused. Mine worker, Victoria realized. Hydrus III was full of them—those who had been sent there as part of a judicial sentence, or those who simply couldn’t find work elsewhere. It was, at best, a miserable existence—at worst, a death sentence.
“Well?” Victoria demanded.
“I’ll get off at the next planet,” the girl-creature said.
“Fuck yes you will.”
Softly, she said, “You left the bay open. While you were loading. I’d… I’d waited. Two days.”
Victoria cursed herself out for a long moment. Rookie mistake. And to make it worse, the next planet even in range was Tucan, four days out. She was so frustrated she could feel the sting in her eyes and that just pissed her off more. “This is my ship.”
“She’s beautiful,” the stowaway said sincerely, a small smile crawling up her face as she took a quick glance around.
The Eastern Ribbon was a converted mini-freighter, slowly transformed into something more livable and maneuverable by Victoria’s parents over the years. The ship wasn’t particularly pretty, in truth, but she was one of a kind. Victoria fought against the way the compliment made her just a little warmer inside. She scowled. “I only have enough food for one. I am headed to a restocking station.”
The station was six days out, not four, and Tucan would have supplies. Victoria didn’t say any of that. The stowaway shrugged. “I hadn’t planned on eating.”
Victoria blinked at that. “What if I’d been taking a cross-galaxy haul?”
Another shrug. “I couldn’t die there. Anywhere but there.”
Victoria was a loner by choice and a bitch by necessity, but she wasn’t dead inside, no matter how often she wished she could be. She’d made it on less than she would have even if she did share. Four days wasn’t that long. And so what if Tucan was another cesspool of lowlifes and crystal dens? It wasn’t her problem what this girl did, so long she was off Victoria’s ship.
Victoria sighed. “C’mon. I have plenty of mineral cleanser. You’re probably going to have to just cut off all the hair, though.”
Blue-grey eyes went even wider than they had been. “I-- That’s not necessary.”
“It really is,” Victoria told her. “You reek.”
*
The stowaway’s name was Ashlee. Not that Victoria cared, but Ashlee had introduced herself, and it was easier than thinking of her as “the stowaway” all the time.
When Ashlee emerged from the cleaning station, she had short tufts of blonde hair in uneven lengths all around her face, but it was clean. The pair of pants Victoria had loaned her were rolled up at the cuff at least three times, and she’d clamped the waist together with a hair clip. The shirt looked like it was being worn by a child.
Clean, Ashlee was even thinner than she’d appeared before, little more than a walking skeleton. There were bruises all along her arms, and Victoria suspected in other places.
She was good at staying out of the way. Her favorite spot was clearly at the viewing bay window. She would sit on the floor and watch for hours. When Victoria looked out, she remembered the games her and her brother had played—trying to count the stars, name them, make pictures out of them.
She found Ashlee staring out the second evening and said, hoarsely, “I used to think I could ride them, if I could just catch one.”
Ashlee whipped around, clearly startled. After a second, though, she grinned. “I’d never seen them before. They’re awesome.”
“You’d never-- You grew up on Hydrus III?” Victoria sat down and offered Ashlee a plate. There wasn’t much food, between the two of them, but they’d both make it.
Ashlee looked at the offering. “You said—“
“Sometimes I say shit without thinking. Take it.” Victoria didn’t leave any room for argument.
Ashlee took it and didn’t thank her. Victoria appreciated the restraint. Instead, Ashlee said, “My mom and dad were both sent there, y’know, for-- My mom was a thief, I guess. Mostly to survive, but. And my dad spoke out against the September Treaty. Anyway, they met and she had me and we all actually kinda managed, even with them in the mines, until the Uprising. My dad was killed. I was eleven, and you only have to be ten to work, so I went to help, but then my mom got caught in a rockslide a couple of years later and I had to go to the Children’s Camp.”
Victoria waited, but evidently that was the whole story. She knew about Children’s Camps. Everyone knew about Children’s Camps. “So you ran and you found me. Your luck just never quits, huh?”
Ashlee giggled, an actual giggle. Victoria wasn’t entirely sure how the hell a person who’d been in a Children’s Camp for at least four or five years could manage that, but Ashlee did. She said, “Oh, I don’t know. You’re helping me ride the stars, aren’t you?”
Victoria didn’t really have an answer for that. She concentrated on her food instead.
*
Victoria surprised herself by not letting Ashlee off at Tucan. They stopped there, and Victoria even splurged on some native fruits, but she told Ashlee, “Not here. My buyers are on Cepheus. You’ll have a better chance there.”
Ashlee tilted her head and said, “But it’s your ship.”
That truth was starting to sound more and more like the curse it had been since her family’s death. “Yeah. And I get to say if I have passengers or not.”
Ashlee grinned that ridiculous, face-swallowing grin of hers and leaned in to press her lips chastely to Victoria’s cheek before running off to wherever it was she planned to celebrate on board. Victoria pressed her hand to her cheek and didn’t think about how long it had been since someone had touched her with kindness. She closed her eyes. “Fucking pull it together, Asher.”
She requested permission to leave, and got the fuck out of there.
*
Ashlee sniffed at the fruit uncertainly, but then looked intrigued. “What is this? It smells like… I don’t even know, what’s a really good smell?”
Victoria laughed. “Yeah, Hydrus isn’t really known for its tantalizing smells.”
Ashlee screwed up her face. “This ship has the freshest air I’ve ever breathed. I love breathing on this ship.”
Victoria understood. She was always glad to inhale the recycled-but-filtered air when she got off of mining planets. “I guess they smell like sunshine.”
“Sunshine? Oh, wait, my mom told me this. That’s on those planets where the stars are really close and it warms them up during the day, right?”
“Sometimes it’s not warm, but it’s bright.”
“Does Cepheus have a sun?”
Victoria smiled. “Two.”
Ashlee laughed and shoved at her slightly. “No, really.”
“Really,” Victoria said.
“Wow.” Ashlee’s gaze wandered back to the fruit. Victoria took pity on her and reached out for it, peeling the skin back so that it was edible.
Ashlee, who treated any morsel of food as though it were a deity-sent, placed the piece Victoria handed her on her tongue, then closed her mouth and her eyes. She stayed still for several moments, and Victoria found herself struggling not to sneak a taste of the fruit, right off of Ashlee’s lips. Finally, Ashlee slowly chewed and swallowed. The expression in her eyes when she opened them was distant and satisfied.
She came back to herself and told Victoria, “That is the best food ever.”
Victoria handed her another piece.
*
Ashlee found a pack of colorstiks somewhere in her ship wanderings and brought them to Victoria. “Do you draw?”
Victoria tried to force a breath and found herself stuck. Ashlee put a hand to Victoria’s wrist, but she pulled back, away. If she let Ashlee touch her at this moment, she was going to fall apart. After a few hard-fought breaths, she said, “My parents. My parents drew.”
It was the first time she had said the words since their death. She couldn’t say, exactly, why she was talking about it now, except that Ashlee looked so sincerely worried, and her touch had been soft, concerned, and kindness was evidently Victoria’s undoing. “They liked-- They would make pictures on the walls of the ship. Places my brother and I had never seen. Then they would wash it off, and start all over again. They-- I was sick, I’d gotten a Metocian Flu, and they had just erased all their work to start something new for me, as a way to make me feel better.”
“Victoria—“ Ashlee started.
Victoria shook her head. “You showed me yours; it’s only fair.”
“Mine was a long time past. I’ve had years to heal.”
“It’s been almost two years.”
“You had them for longer. You had this.” Ashlee motioned to the ship.
Victoria swallowed. “It was an average run. The Themis Sector—dangerous, but not, not anything we hadn’t done before. They took my brother because he needed to learn the other end of transactions. I would’ve gone, except I could barely walk I was so sick. The deal went sour, and my parents—“
“Victoria—“
“I woke up. I— It had been hours, I knew they should’ve been back. I tried to leave the ship, but I was so dizzy, I kept falling, and then the authorities came and they-- I had to identify them, and I’d never flown the ship by myself—“
“Stop,” the word was soft, so much so that Victoria barely heard it. Ashlee brought her thumbs up to swipe at what Victoria realized were tears. She blinked her eyes, surprised. She hadn’t cried since that first week, when she was too weak and too sick to do anything but cry.
“You’ve been alone since then?” Ashlee asked, quiet and slow.
Victoria bit the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t answer, couldn’t talk about replacing them to Ashlee who was there, in their space and somehow not an intruder.
Ashlee nodded, and then took Victoria’s hand and led her to the second cargo bay. There was mostly empty space in it. She handed her the bag of colorstiks and said, “It’s your ship. Fill it with your own colors.”
Victoria thought for a long time before picking out a bright blue.
*
Victoria’s first kiss had been when she was thirteen and they’d stopped on a moon colony for a few weeks for some serious repairs to the engine. There was a boy on the colony, a couple of years older and full of teenage bravado. It had been mostly slobbery and a little toothy—nothing she really wanted to repeat.
Two years later, they’d had passengers, one of them a pretty girl from one of the Governing Planets. Victoria and she had explored the darker parts of the ship and each other together.
When Victoria found herself leaning into Ashlee one night, the two of them watching the stars, sipping at hot root tea, she wasn’t even sure what she was doing until their lips touched. Ashlee gasped and Victoria took the moment to press her advantage.
Ashlee tasted of the honey crystals used to sweeten the root. Her tongue was hesitant but clearly interested in the proceedings. Victoria drew back. “Is this—“
Ashlee’s answering smile was incandescent. “I remember, well, not much about my mother, really. But she used to say that kisses were magical.”
Victoria laughed, but out of delight, not mockery. “Sometimes. You haven’t—“
Ashlee shook her head and then surged forward again to reconnect. Victoria wrapped her arms around Ashlee’s midsection—too sharp and slight by half—and went about seeing if she could continue the magic.
*
The last night before they were scheduled to make Cepheus, Ashlee knocked on Victoria’s door. Victoria called, “Open.”
Ashlee stood in the doorway, clearly fidgeting. Victoria knew she shouldn’t be thinking the things running through her mind. They were foolish thoughts when Ashlee was only going to leave, go somewhere with blue skies and fresh air and fruit from the ground. Victoria should sleep this last night alone. Instead, she held her hand out.
Ashlee came quickly, sliding in front of Victoria. Victoria wrapped her arms around Ashlee, settling one hand over Ashlee’s abdomen. There was tight skin over the spot, stretched like a healed wound. Ashlee whispered, “Sorry, it’s-- Burns happen in the mines.”
Something in Ashlee’s tone, maybe the hesitation in her words, told Victoria that this particular burn—at least—hadn’t been accidental; maybe others, but not those. Victoria placed a soft kiss to the back of Ashlee’s neck. “Don’t apologize.”
*
Cepheus was one of the agricultural planets. It laid claim to no building materials, but the air was clean, the soil damp and sweet-smelling, and all kinds of vegetables, grains and fruits could be found for relatively cheap. As paradises went, agricultural planets were about as close as it got in any of the existing galaxies.
Ashlee could barely wait until they were safely docked to run down the catwalk. Victoria stood at the top and watched as Ashlee tilted her face up into the sunlight, taking deep breaths. After a moment, Victoria made herself walk down and stand next to Ashlee. Ashlee turned to her, and smiled so widely Victoria was surprised it could fit on her face.
“It’s so warm,” Ashlee said.
“Summer,” Victoria told her. None of the Hydra planets had a summer season.
“C’mon,” Ashlee said, grabbing Victoria’s hand. “I think I saw grass while you were landing the ship.”
Victoria knew perfectly well where there was an outdoor recreation area. Her parents had often taken the family to Cepheus when they needed some time off the ship. The thought hurt less than she expected it to—less than any thought of them had in two years.
She led Ashlee there over the Common Paths. Once they had come to the wide greens, largely used for picnicking and catch games, Ashlee took of her shoes and jumped around. She ran and twirled and at one point turned to Victoria and said, “Shoes off!”
Victoria, who hadn’t even listened to her parents much after she’d hit sixteen, didn’t even think about it, just toed off her practical slip-shoes and walked to where Ashlee was. It had been a while since she’d taken time to feel grass between her toes, let her feet flatten down the warm earth beneath them.
There were a few older kids playing catch further along the greenway. Ashlee asked, “Think they’d let us join?”
“Probably.” The people on agricultural planets were hard-working, not as wealthy as those on the technological planets, and not always as educated. They were also generally welcoming and fairly easy-going.
“Race you,” Ashlee challenged, and then was off, without waiting for Victoria’s response.
Victoria had never been one to give up without a fight.
*
Victoria went and took care of business later in the afternoon. She’d sent Ashlee to the Processing Center so that she could get papers for a stay on Cepheus, and see what sorts of jobs were being offered. Ashlee didn’t have many skills that could translate to an agricultural job, but she was strong from all the mine work, and willing to put in long hours. Victoria had no doubt she’d find a place.
She picked Ashlee up on her way back into town and took her to the big farmhouse, where there was always food for sale. Victoria splurged, getting them a crock of golden simmer stew packed full of late summer vegetables, a garden vegetable platter—more mundane, but every bit as delicious—and a variety of fruit pies and cobblers for afterward.
Ashlee couldn’t stop eating or drinking. On her third cup of water she said, “It’s just so clean. Have you ever tasted anything this clean?”
Victoria had, but she also remembered her first time tasting it. She didn’t blame Ashlee one bit.
The Processing Center had given Ashlee a place to stay at one of the Traveler’s Homes until she could settle and start having a credit flow. Victoria had meant the dinner as a goodbye, a way for Ashlee to have a good last memory of her. She needed to go before she didn’t, or worse, before she asked Ashlee to come away from this place that was so clearly everything Ashlee wanted.
She stood when they were done and put on her best smile in order to say, “Well, it was—“
But Ashlee threw herself into Victoria, arms wrapping tight. She said, “Thank you. You--you saved my life.”
“I just gave you a ride,” Victoria argued, but she hugged back.
“Sure,” Ashlee agreed too easily. “If you say so.”
Victoria stood still and didn’t cry. In the end, it was Ashlee who had to let go.
*
It took less than twenty-four hours in space for Victoria to be utterly miserable. Two years of pretending to be totally fine alone on The Eastern Ribbon, and two weeks of being with Ashlee tore Victoria’s precious lies away as if they’d never actually existed.
There was a well-paying, respectable hauling job waiting for her on Cassiopeia if she got there within three days. It was no problem for the ship, really, and Victoria was dead set on building up her reputation as a lone shipper, rather than coasting on the remnants of her family’s.
She tried everything: she worked long hours on the mural she and Ashlee had started; she listened to reports on the deep space frequency about politics and games and new forms of entertainment; at one point she even extracted the key-roll she’d hidden away for two years—ever since her mom had stopped being around to teach her—and started going through the scales again, all the basics. It filled the ship with sound, which was better, but it still wasn’t Ashlee.
She made it to Cassiopeia in two and a half days, pushing her capability, and managed the delivery to Minos in less than the week she was given. It garnered her a nice bonus, most of which she spent getting shit-faced in the privacy of her own ship.
When she’d had enough liquid fortification, she went out to the sound-shops, found herself a beautiful, willing girl, and spent the night trying to rid herself of desire.
In the morning, she woke up with the worst hangover she’d had since she was thirteen and decided to be rebellious by way of breaking into her parent’s liquor stash. Somewhere in the middle of voiding and trying not to cry from the pain in her head, Victoria decided to be honest with herself: something had to give.
*
It took Victoria five days and ten hours to get back to Cepheus by the most direct (and hazardous) route. It took a few more hours to finagle a landing permit, since she was not scheduled to be back. Once she was on the ground, Victoria headed straight to the Traveler’s Home she knew Ashlee had been staying in and inquired about her.
The man running the Home gave Victoria directions to the place Ashlee had registered as her work. It was a farmstead roughly three miles out. Victoria took them at a dead run. By the time she arrived, she was panting and had a cramp, but neither of those things stopped her from hastening to the nearest structure—the barn.
The barnmaster wasn’t sure who Ashlee was, but pointed Victoria to the fieldmaster. She, in turn, pointed Victoria to the fruit-pickers. Sure enough, Ashlee was there, in a tree branch, patiently picking at the harvest and dropping each fruit into her hanging baskets.
Victoria knew when she had been spotted—Ashlee nearly fell out of the tree. When she’d caught herself, she scrambled down. Her smile was wide, but unsure. “Victoria?”
“I—“ Now that Victoria was there, in front of her, she wasn’t sure exactly how to say what she needed to say. Ashlee’s skin was a shade darker than when Victoria had left, and her cheeks were glowing. She had gained a pound or two, and her hair wasn’t looking as scraggly as it had when Ashlee had just been The Stowaway.
“Hey,” Ashlee said, and pulled Victoria down so that they were sitting at the base of the tree. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re happy here,” Victoria said, a statement of fact.
“You don’t want me to be happy?” Ashlee asked with a smile that said she knew Victoria was lying.
Miserably, Victoria admitted, “Not without me. Not when I can’t be. I’m not that big a person.”
“Then I suppose we’re a perfect match.”
Victoria tilted her head.
“Oh, I only hoped every second of the day that you’d be so horribly lonely without me that you’d have no choice but to return and pick me back up.”
“But-- But you love the sun and the air and—“
“I love you,” Ashlee said. “It really kinda wins over everything else.”
“Oh,” Victoria said.
Ashlee laughed. “Oh. Also, there’s the part where I love your ship and think there would be nothing better in this life than to have you show me all the things I missed growing up. I do love it here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve no desire to explore.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you too,” Victoria said.
“Pretty sure, huh?” Ashlee leaned in for a kiss.
“Everything’s empty without you there,” Victoria explained.
“Even your ship?” Ashlee teased.
“Especially our ship,” Victoria responded. She had never been more serious about anything in her life.