Текст книги "Hastrom City Rising (The Adventures of Letho Ferron Book 2)"

Автор книги: Doug Rickaway

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“You all right there, buddy?”

“I don’t know! What the hell, man? Are you crazy? What just happened? Where am I?” Letho shouted.

Above and all around him the sound of groaning metal filled the air. He looked up to see a giant set of jaws above him closing. Dust rained down as two huge metal plates with toothed edges slowly ground their way to meet one another. The enormous metal teeth fit together perfectly, sealing out the night sky and plunging everything into pure blackness.

Then industrial halogens kicked on, humming their simple song in the key of fifty hertz. Their harsh yellow light illuminated the falling silt and rust from the doors above.

“It’s okay, man, you can let go. Damn, you really are a strong little bastard!”

Letho looked down to see that he had left a dent in the shape of his hand on Saul’s dashboard. “Sorry Saul,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Something to remember me by?”

“Yeah, you got it. Go ahead, get out. It’s safe, I promise. I wouldn’t put my trusty mule on any unsafe ground, you know.” Saul patted the steering wheel.

Letho did as he was told. He supposed that they were in fact safe, though to Letho the term seemed rather relative. The massive steel platform they had landed on was held in place by a giant crane attached to the stone walls of what appeared to be a cylindrical cavern leading straight down into the earth.

“What is this place?” Letho asked. “And what was with that crazy entrance?”

“Oh come on, already. It wasn’t that bad, was it? That’s Tiny over there,” Saul said, offering a curt salute to a rather large but handsome woman in the crane’s cab. “She catches us on the way down and makes sure we have a happy landing. As to the entrance, well, we don’t want our friends in Hastrom City to know about this place, so we have to go in all stealth-like. That’s what the killing the lights was all about. Sorry if it scared you. I was just having a little fun. You gotta have a little fun from time to time, Letho, otherwise you might just be tempted to put an assault rifle in your mouth, you know?”

Letho looked down at himself, surveying his tattered jumpsuit. It had once been bright Fulcrum red, but was now mostly black and covered with gibbets and flecks of bone from the many mutant creatures he had killed.

“Yeah, fun. You got it, Saul.”

The landing area was a large platform constructed of metal grating, and Letho could see the places where support beams had been welded into the very bones of the earth. He looked beneath his feet and saw that the true floor of the cylinder was at least one hundred feet below him. Tiny began to lower them toward a catwalk that led to a set of enormous steel doors.

Letho was suddenly engulfed by fur and the familiar musk-scent of his friend.

“Maka!” he shouted, or at least attempted to. His lips were crushed against the bear’s chest, and if he wasn’t so happy to see his friend alive he might have been tempted to remove himself from the rather awkward embrace with force.

“You’re alive!” Maka shouted, releasing Letho from his crushing embrace and holding him at arm’s length. Letho smiled up at Maka and then made a show of spitting and pulling fur from his lips.

“Did you expect any less?” Bayorn said, smiling a bit more than was his custom, the guise of gracious leader slipping in his joy.

“You guys made it!” Letho said.

“Yes, and no thanks to you,” said Thresha. Thrown across her shoulder was a slumped and slurring Deacon, who looked a bit disoriented but otherwise no worse for the wear. Letho felt a twinge of jealousy as he noted the way that Deacon’s body was so firmly pressed against the devastating curve of Thresha’s hip and bosom, and the way her arm clutched him at the hip.

“Whatever, Thresha. My diversion was a key component to your escape,” Letho said, forcing a half-grin.

“Yeah, right. We’ll have to sit down sometime and talk about your strategies,” Thresha replied, but even she was smiling more than he had ever before witnessed.

“You gonna introduce me to your friends?” Saul asked. He inhaled deeply, and his nose wrinkled, as though he smelled something he didn’t care for. Realization hit Letho, as he knew all too well what Saul smelled.

“Wait!” Letho said, but just a moment to late. Saul’s hands had flicked down to his sidearms, and they were in his hands faster than Letho could think shine-ola. He wasn’t anywhere near as fast as Letho, but he was quick.

His eyes went cold as they locked on Thresha’s, then darted to Letho’s, whose hand went instinctively to an empty holster. At the rapier-quick movement of Letho’s arm, Saul’s eyes widened like someone who has had his disbelief in legend summarily extinguished. Letho, remembering that he had no weapons to answer Saul’s challenge, put his hand up, palm out, taking care to move slowly, calmly.

“Letho, please tell me that you don’t think that we’re all kutas. I need to hear you say it, because by not telling me that you have a goddamn Mendraga in your company and then just assuming that I wouldn’t notice… you leave me with no recourse but to believe that you think that I am just one ignorant-ass kuta.”

Maka and Bayorn glowered at the use of one of the Tarsi’s crudest words, and Letho could feel the rumble of their growls vibrating in his own chest. A momentary cacophony of clicks and the rustle of fabric filled the air as Saul’s men brought their rifles to bear.

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Thresha said.

“Shut up! You ain’t got nothing to say that we want to hear.” Saul’s next words were for Letho, but his eyes never left Thresha’s. “Waiting on you, pal. Tell me I’m not a kuta!”

“You’re not a kuta, Saul,” Letho stammered. “Look, don’t do anything crazy—give me a second to explain.”

Saul appeared to be frozen, as if the machinery in his mind had slipped a gear. A line had been crossed, one that demanded action—and Letho feared what that action would be. Saul’s and Letho’s Black Bears hung in the air like unanswered challenges, and there was no tremor in Saul’s hands. Letho felt time slipping away in the form of beads of sweat that rolled down his neck and down the curve of his back. He could sense that Saul’s men were getting antsy, and he could smell their fear, a fetid stink that rose up and stoked a desire in him to do something unequivocally insane, like snatch his Black Bear back and make it speak brimstone.

“Squad, hold your fire. Permission to fire only on my command,” Saul said calmly. “Letho, please explain. Please tell me why I’m not a kuta for allowing this walking sack of filth into my inner sanctum.”

“Oh, please. Why don’t you do something, tough guy?” Thresha said with a seductive smile. Then to Letho, she said, “He’s bluffing. He knows we can tear him and these fools to shreds. Let’s just kill them.”

“Shut up, Thresha!” Letho snarled through clenched teeth.

But Saul took the bait. The dry, concussive blasts of his sidearm thundered in the air, but Thresha had already begun to move. She slipped through the air, frictionless, dancing her way toward Saul as bullets sped by her on all sides. She pounced, blurring forward, catching him in the solar plexus with both hands and driving him to the ground.

Saul’s soldiers could have obliterated her in that instant, but they obeyed their commander’s last order and did not fire. Letho was amazed at their restraint, their absolute obedience to their commander, whom Thresha now sat astride, one hand pinning him down, the other raised in a clenched fist. Letho didn’t know what to do.

But the arrival of someone new defused the situation before Letho had time to make yet another decision he might’ve regretted later. All attention turned to the enormous steel double doors on the nearby catwalk as the weary machines that moved them began to groan and spit magnificent plumes of steam and the occasional jet of sparks. Letho thought for a moment to use this diversion to his advantage; in fact, Saladin was practically goading him by presenting ways to incapacitate Saul’s men. The vignettes skittered like arachnids across the augmented network of neurons in his mind, and Letho was disappointed to see that most of them ended with at least one of his comrades dead.

But all such thoughts were obliterated when Letho saw him.

An old man, bent by time but not broken. He was still rather thick around the waist, though his flesh seemed to hang in the manner of one who has lost a considerable amount of weight. One gnarled hand clutched a walking stick, while the other arm hung coiled just above a pistol like a pit viper.

“Just what in the hell is going on here, Saul?”

It all unfolded much like a scene in so many of the Eursan films that Letho had watched in his time on the Fulcrum station. The film director would have likely queued up an upbeat synth-riddled pop tune with sparkly guitars and a lively, crunchy snare drum, and would have used quick shots that panned to a close-up of each of the actors’ faces.

“Zedock!” Letho shouted, trying and failing to hold back tears of joy that sprang forth from his eyes, emotion causing his voice to crack like a juvenile’s.

“Je-Ha alive! Is that you, Letho?” Zedock said.

“Dad! I’ve got it under control!” Saul said.

Wait. Dad? Did he say dad?

“That ain’t what this looks like to me at all.” Zedock said, though when he did, at all it sounded more like ah-tall. “Now, I’m no soothsayer, but it looks to me like you’ve brought a goddamn Mendraga to our inner sanctum, and that she’s gotten the better of you—as they are wont to do. Why on Earth would you have done such a thing? You know they can talk to one another by talepetheh.”

“She was with Letho. What the hell was I supposed to do?” Saul pleaded. Zedock’s eyes widened and his brows leapt up, threatening to join his receding hairline.

“That does present somewhat of a wrinkle, don’t it.” Zedock turned to Letho, his look at first filled with reproach; but the old, softhearted man couldn’t maintain the facade, and his eyes began to twinkle with unabashed joy. He didn’t rush to hug Letho, though Letho desperately wanted him to do so. Instead the old man regained his composure and screwed on a face that was more befitting of a leader.

“Letho. I would say that the ball is decidedly in your court. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“She killed her own to save me, sir. She’s on our side,” Letho said.

Zedock turned to the Mendraga. “That true?” he asked.

Thresha nodded.

“Well, I still can’t take you inside. It would violate every rule in our book,” Zedock said.

“You guys actually have a book?” Letho asked.

Zedock ignored him.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Thresha said. “I can take care of myself. I just want a shot at Alastor.”

“Well, that sounds really good, but aside from the aforementioned conundrum, there’s another problem, and it happens to be rather significant. What are you going to eat? You ain’t going to be sucking on my people. And one thing I’ve learned is that we all gotta eat, Mendraga and Eursan alike.”

“You guys have animals down there? Pigs? Or do you dress them up in uniforms and make them your personal guard?” Thresha looked at Saul and his soldiers as she said this. They did not seem amused.

“Very funny. Yeah, we got pigs. How did you know?”

“Pigs will do. It’s close enough to the real thing. And I know you have pigs because the guy I’m holding down here smells a little like pig shit,” Thresha said.

Zedock laughed a little at this, then focused his deep-set eyes on Thresha. “Well, it would go a long way with me if you’d let my son up off the floor,” he said.

Thresha nodded and rose to her feet. She offered Saul a hand, which he grudgingly accepted, allowing her to help him to his feet.

Zedock stepped off the catwalk and onto the suspended platform, past a dumbfounded Saul. He now stood in front of Letho and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s really you, it’nt it?” Zedock said.

“Yeah, it really is me. Sorry it took me so long to get back. I got a little sidetracked,” Letho said. Zedock chuckled a little at this, and then his face became serious again.

“You’re a real square shooter, son, and you’ve never done anything to cause me to doubt your motives in any way. But runnin’ around with a Mendraga in your group…”

“I know it looks really bad. I haven’t figured it out myself. But I’m telling you, she saved my life. You remember the crew that attacked the Centennial?”

“I do,” Zedock responded, tipping his head in a curt nod.

“Well, there was one with them, body all covered in tattoos. Do you remember him?”

“Yeah. He seemed like a real son of a bitch.”

“He was. And she killed him. Saved my life. Ripped his damn head clean off his shoulders. It was disgusting, but also one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,” Letho said. He chuckled a bit, hoping it would inject a bit of levity into the proceedings. It didn’t.

Letho didn’t like seeing that look in people’s eyes, the telltale expression people wore when they were measuring him, for Letho feared that they would always find him lacking. Most of all, he hated seeing it in the eyes of those he loved.

“I trust you, Letho. God knows it’s crazy, but I trust you sure enough. But you have to know, a lot of things have changed since you’ve been gone. You have to understand that I can’t bring her inside. People are counting on me, son. You understand that, don’t you?”

“But if you cut her loose, she’s going to run straight to Abraxas!” Saul exclaimed.

“There’s that,” Zedock said, clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he drifted into a trance-like state. Letho could practically hear the gears turning in his mind. After a time he spoke: “Well, it looks like our options are either to kill her where she stands or bring her inside. Now, no man can say that I harbor any secret love for the ones we call Mendraga, but it sounds like this one here is a little different than the others. Sounds like she saved my friend on a rather sordid adventure that I can’t wait to hear more about. It might help to have one of the bad guy’s people on our side…”

Saul’s jaw fell open in shock. “You can’t be serious? Bringing one of them inside? There’s no way!”

Zedock cut his son a glance that looked as thought it could burn through the sheet steel doors that loomed open behind him. “Saul, if you learn one thing in this godforsaken life, learn to not speak when your elders are speaking.”

Saul lowered his head, staring at his own dust-covered boots and glowering.

“As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted, if we take her in, we do it on our terms. You follow me, Ferron?”

Letho nodded in reply.

“She comes in as a prisoner, and we keep her in the holding cells for the time being. If she shows that she can be trusted, we’ll consider moving her to a less secure area. It’s for her safety, really. If the people inside found out we’re letting a Mendraga in, they’d riot and tear her limb from limb. With their own bare hands.”

Letho stole a glance at Thresha. She was staring off into the middling distance, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Okay. That sounds like a plan,” Letho offered.

Zedock extended his hand and Letho took it. Even with Letho’s considerable strength, Zedock’s grip was formidable, and Letho had to make a conscious effort not to return the gesture, knowing that the force he was capable of exerting could grind the old man’s bones to a pulp.

“It’s settled then. Miss, if you would allow my men to put some cuffs on you without any further shenanigans, I would greatly appreciate it. I promise you they will treat you with care, and as my guest, no harm shall befall you while you are staying at Chateau Wartimer.”

“Whatever, old man,” Thresha said, not turning her gaze to him.

“All right, then. Prickly pear, ain’t she?” Zedock said to Letho.

“Fascinating—the males are speaking as though the ‘inferior’ female of the species isn’t even present,” Thresha said.

“She has a bit of a dry personality,” Letho said. “You get used to it.”

SIX – Hideout

Letho and company followed Zedock and Saul onto the catwalk and through a massive metal doorway. A long hallway stretched out in front of them. The metal walkway below and lighting system above had been bolted to the stone walls of the enclosure.

“Right now we’re about two hundred feet below ground, surrounded by solid granite,” Zedock said, employing the vocal timbre of a somewhat weary tour guide.

At the end of the hall was a twin to the entry door. Zedock typed in a series of numbers into a keypad, and the door opened onto a large area that was attempting in vain to look open and airy. The air was stale with overuse and had a hint of the spicy-stink of people living too close together. Letho’s thoughts turned to the sophisticated air treatment center he had once spent a small portion of his life cleaning, and felt its absence as the fetid aroma of humanity tickled his nostrils.

“This is the dormitory area. There are three floors below us, containing living quarters for a crew of three hundred, including a recreation area. It’s not as nice as, say, a Fulcrum station, but it’s home, and it keeps the Mendraga out,” Zedock explained. “Right now we’re at about five hundred, so space is limited, but we’ll find you guys a place to bunk up.”

“Zedock, what is this place?” Bayorn asked.

“It’s a missile silo,” Letho answered. “Minus the missile, of course.”

“Attaboy, Letho!” said Zedock, clapping him on the back. “We call it Haven.”

Saul stepped toward Zedock and whispered something into the old man’s ear. Zedock looked down at Saul’s belt and his eyes grew wide. There was a wordless exchange between the two; Letho could almost sense it, the transmission between the two men crackling like a lightning bolt in the space between them. Saul was the first to drop his gaze. After a string of curses under his breath, he pulled one of the Black Bears and handed it to Zedock. Letho didn’t like the way Saul handed Zedock the weapon—with the weapon pointed in the old man’s direction. Zedock examined the gun for a moment and then placed it in a holster on his own waist. Saul, somewhat red-faced, turned toward his men.

“Soldiers, we are secure. We’ll see you bright and early for mission briefing,” he said. The men cheered somewhat desultorily, and as they filed past, Saul shook hands with some of them and clapped a few on the back. One of the soldiers shouldered Thresha, causing her to totter on her feet.

“Hey! Watch it!” shouted Letho.

“You better tell your girlfriend she needs to watch it,” said the man with a gap-toothed grin that reminded Letho of a building with half its windows smashed out.

“Soldier! That little maneuver just cost you your evening chow,” Saul shouted.

“I was just funnin’ with her is all, Saul. I didn’t mean no harm,” the soldier said.

“Boy, if I want to hear trash rollin’ out that gutter hole you call a mouth, I’ll ask for it. Now get the hell out of here before I stomp the rest of your teeth out!”

So Saul likes to take his frustrations out on his subordinates.

The poor soldier. There was no look of surprise on his face; in fact there was hardly a discernible change in his expression. It was in the way his eyes were already cast down toward the floor before Saul even began to speak. The way his shoulders slumped forward as though he had long since given up the lifelong struggle to push back gravity. Letho didn’t like to see anyone treated in such a fashion, and he certainly didn’t like to see a grown man dressed down in front of newcomers, shamed not only for his poor behavior but also his hygiene. But the soldier saluted, and there was a cowed expression in his eyes as he jogged off to catch up with his fellow soldiers.

“And get yourself a damned toothbrush!” Saul shouted after him. Letho thought about speaking up for the man, but he knew he was already treading on wafer-thin ice. Zedock said nothing either, but his displeasure was apparent in the way his mouth pursed and his facial expression seemed to sag. The wrinkles were bunched up and craggy around his eyes, and Letho saw a tiredness there.

“How were the mutants tonight, Saul?” Zedock asked.

“Horrible as usual. Your little friend over there stirred ’em up pretty good.”

“Well, at least y’all made it back in one piece.”

Saul made no reply, and Letho suddenly felt as if all eyes were on him and his severed arm. He cleared his throat, kicked the metal plate floor, and finished up his dance of discomfort with a hearty scratch of the skin just above his ragged elbow. Gods, it itched! Zedock’s eyes widened at the sight of Letho’s missing arm. Again he said nothing. Perhaps, like Letho, he was biding his time until Saul went away and took the awkward funk that hung over them with him.

“Well, anyways, thank you, son. Thank you for going out and getting Letho for me. You have no idea how much good it does this old man’s heart to see him alive.”

“Just doing my job, Pops. Like I always do. Everything good here while I was gone?”

“Yep. The digester’s full of enough pig shit to power us for another month, and Cookey’s got some tasty slabs of bacon in the smoker right now. Should be a good breakfast tomorrow.”

“Bacon? What’s that?” Letho asked.

“Oh, Letho, you are in for a treat. Bacon is probably the most delightful indulgence you never knew you’ve been missing your entire life.”

“Well then, something to look forward to.” Letho paused. “You promise nothing bad’s going to happen to the Mendraga?”

“You have my word, Letho,” Zedock said.

“And what of the Tarsi?” Bayorn asked.

“You’re not slaves anymore, if that’s what you’re asking. The way I see it, we all got our asses on the line right now, and there’s no sense in squabbling over where people get to eat and sleep. Most of the Tarsi tend to congregate on the bottom floor though.” Zedock raised his arms and made a two-handed dismissive gesture. “Now I know what y’all are thinking, and you’re wrong. Nobody forced ’em to live down there at the bottom. They chose it. Something about the sound of the pipes down there. Old habits, I guess. Now, Letho, Deacon, you’ll be with me in the officers’ quarters. Bayorn, you’re free to bunk with us or with the Tarsi. Your call.”

“I will stay with my own kind,” Bayorn said.

“Very well. Let’s go then.”

They filed past Saul, who shook Zedock’s hand as he passed. Letho offered his own hand as well, and Saul appeared ready to accept the gesture—but at the last moment Saul slipped his hand past Letho’s and swatted the bicep of Letho’s severed arm instead.

Letho recoiled and stifled a rising gasp, clutching his wounded arm. He was so completely taken aback by the brazenness of the gesture that he was left speechless. He simply had no response to such an affront. So he just gaped.

“See you around, friend,” Saul said. He headed back toward the entrance to the missile silo, humming in an angular, off pitch fashion.

“Yeah, can’t wait,” Letho said, rubbing what remained of his arm.

****

Zedock led them past a non-functioning elevator to the stairs, where they parted ways with the Tarsi. Bayorn gave Zedock a simple handshake, but Maka swooped in and wrapped the old man in a bone-grinding hug.

The number of original Tarsi who had made the trek to Alastor’s ship now numbered low enough that Letho could count them on his remaining hand. Apart from Bayorn and Maka, only three others remained of the original group that went on the failed expedition to Abraxas’s ship. Perhaps for one night they would have a respite from the hell they had known throughout every waking moment since setting foot on Alastor’s ship.

“You will find a large number of Tarsi down below, just how y’all like it,” Zedock said. “Nice and dim and damp. Lots of Tarsi from every Fulcrum station. No doubt you’ll have many tales to tell tonight. I would send some food down, but I think they’ve already got a bootleg protein synthesizer up and running”—Zedock paused—”which of course I’m turning a blind eye to, even though it taxes our power system a little bit more than I’m comfortable with.”

“We cannot thank you enough, Zedock Wartimer, friend of the Tarsi.”

“My pleasure. You don’t know how good it does me to see you all again. Every night since you left I’ve wondered what in the hell happened. Then when it all went down and Alastor called all the Fulcrum stations back, I assumed the worst. Now, here you are, and I could even hug the Mendraga.”

“Why don’t you let me out of those cuffs then,” Thresha responded.

“Thresha, ease off the old man. He’s a friend,” Letho said.

“Well, that’s easy for you to say, considering you aren’t being taken into custody. And if this is how your friends treat friends, I would hate to see how they treat enemies.”

Letho considered reminding Thresha that the one who had sired her was their greatest enemy, but instead he opted for silence. Ultimately it proved a wise decision, as Thresha went back to staring blankly at the stone walls and the industrial materials that had been fastened to them to make them livable. Cheap plastics, alloys, and fiberboard tiles abounded. It was all a rather cloying pastiche, and the fifty-hertz whine of the fluorescents above was the icing on the cabin fever cake.

Zedock followed her gaze. “Looks a lot like the Fulcrum station, don’t it? Least the parts we lived in. You aren’t the first to notice that.”

“Yeah. Maybe they hired the same architect,” Letho said, chuckling to himself.

Zedock’s eyes twinkled at this. “Boy, I have so much to tell you,” he said.

At this Bayorn smiled and placed a hand on Letho’s shoulder. “We will go now. I would like to take Deacon with us, to administer Tarsi medicine. We will help him pass through this dark time, just as we did for you, not so long ago.”

“Yippee! More drugs!” Deacon shouted to no one in particular. “Captain, take me to the head promontory, so that I can evacuate my irritables!”

Maka chuckled and patted Deacon on the chest like a baby in need of a burp. Then they turned and began to head down the stairs into the welcoming cavern below.

Moments later, a cadre of soldiers arrived, wearing garb similar to that of the Fulcrum stationinspectors Letho had once tussled with.

“Sir, requesting permission to take custody of the prisoner,” the lead soldier said.

Letho’s stomach lurched as the moment that he had feared arrived. Numerous scenarios ran rampant in his imagination. He saw Thresha snapping her restraints and then the necks of the guards. He saw Zedock withering under her necromantic kiss, and last, he saw Saladin bringing an abrupt end to the drama, the final chords punctuated by the wet percussion of her severed head bouncing across the floor.

But none of these things happened, and the panic response released him, freeing Letho to see things as they truly were.

“Can I trust you lads to be gentlemen?” Zedock asked. “I know I’m asking a lot of y’all, but I need you to get her to a cell safe and sound. Can I count on you to do that for me?”

If he had asked them to tether an anchor to the moon and haul it back for him, the response would have been the same:

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Letho was in awe, and perhaps a little jealous of the outward respect the soldiers showed Zedock. How could a man inspire such all-encompassing loyalty in others? Letho had experienced this same loyalty himself; he had been ready to fight a war with a formidable alien race for this man, only shortly after meeting him.

Letho’s eyes turned to Thresha’s, and he was a little surprised to see that she was looking at him. He had that preternatural itch that said she had been doing so for some time.

“It’s okay, Zedock,” Thresha said, though her eyes remained locked with Letho’s. “I’ll be a good girl. Think you can fetch one of those pigs for me?”

“That all depends, m’lady,” Zedock said with an antique flourish that would have been outdated even a thousand years before. “Can you consume the aforementioned swine in an inconspicuous fashion?”

“You bet I can,” she said, licking her lips. Letho caught a glimpse of the feeding snake that lived behind her teeth, and his stomach soured.

“Well then, little lady, your wish is my command. Just try to make it last a meal or two, if you could. People ‘round here like their bacon.”

****

“So what was he like?” Letho asked.

“My pops? He was a hard-ass. He once backhanded me at the dinner table for talking back to him. The fact that I was right and he was wrong didn’t even enter his head-space.”

Letho’s and Zedock’s jaws had been loosened by the whiskey that had aged well beyond the advertisement on the bottle, and Letho’s belly was full of some old leftovers that Zedock had scrounged up for him and his mates. It was a veritable buffet of semi-fresh foodstuffs and stale bread. Letho slurped the juice left behind from a bowl of beans and then looked at Zedock, who had begun to stare deep into the middling distance where the videodocs of lost memories always seemed to play. Zedock reclined in a beaten cloth and plastic office chair, his boots propped on a formica desk that doubled as a meal prep counter. On the stone wall beside him, a galaxy of quartz stars glittered, and layer upon layer of stratified sediment told the planet’s ancient story.

“I’m not quite sure he ever liked me, though by honor and duty he was expected to love me,” Zedock said. “And on some level, I know he did. But I can still feel his hand on my cheek. He had big hands, Letho, like a giant’s.”

He paused, kicking his boots down from the surface of the counter, which groaned in appreciation. He extended his own hand, palm toward Letho, fingers splayed. Letho placed his hand against Zedock’s, felt the sandpaper vibrance of his skin, and surveyed the difference. Against Zedock’s hand, Letho’s hands were those of a child. Zedock’s father’s hands must have been enormous. Letho pictured a stumpy, paunched man, with hands twice too big for his own body, and chuckled. Zedock, taking notice of the considerable difference between the size of their hands, chuckled as well.

“Well, Letho. As my pops said, it ain’t the size of the vessel that matters, but the motion of the ocean. ‘Course that doesn’t seem to apply to you so much, since you seem to be able to make your own waves, despite what the ocean itself is doin’.”