Despite being in the rougher part of the station, Patonga’s did a brisk business most days. Kalan had to assume they did okay since the restaurant had stood the test of time. It had been there when he arrived. It had even been his place of employment for a short while, during the brief interlude between his arrival and his first job on a cargo transport. A decade later, it was still standing when most of the other shops around it had changed hands half a dozen times in the intervening years. Kalan smiled a little as it occurred to him that Patonga’s was the gravitational center of his personal universe. It was the place he orbited and returned to over and over again.

A waitress he recognized led him and Fresia to a small booth away from the hustle and bustle of the tables nearer to the door. The waitress took drink orders from them both and disappeared. Kalan sat in uncomfortable silence with the girl across the booth until the waitress reappeared with the drinks.

“The usual, Kalan?”

“Yes, please.”

The waitress gave the girl a curious look, glanced at Kalan, and then focused on Fresia. “And you, miss?”

Fresia stared at the waitress like a startled animal. Kalan let it go on for a five count before he intervened. “Same for her.”

The waitress nodded and tapped the screen of her order pad. “Shouldn’t be long. They saw you come in.”

“Thanks, Mercina.”

The waitress gave him a bright smile before heading off to help another customer. Kalan sipped his drink a few times. It was a fruity concoction that had just the right mix of sweetness and citrus tang. They made it in the restaurant, and he’d never found an adequate substitute for it. After a fifth sip at the drink, Kalan realized he was procrastinating. He’d intervened with the intention of giving the girl some breathing room. Now, he was stuck with her for some indeterminate amount of time. He just wished he knew what to do with her. For that matter, he wished he had some idea of how to talk to her.

Kalan was a solitary man by nature. It was why he ran a minimal crew. It was part of the reason he took so much work. Out in the empty, he could escape the press of people that baffled him. The people on the station had been kind enough to him, but they didn’t understand him any better than he understood them. How could they understand him? He’d been raised in a tradition that was thousands of years old and immersed in a society that served that tradition. The planet below had only had a stable culture for the last five hundred years. It might seem like a long time to the citizens, but their beliefs, their government, and even their religions seemed tenuous and fragile to Kalan. In fact, they seemed only slightly less fragile and tenuous to him than Fresia. He pushed aside his own discomfort and pressed forward.

“Do you understand what happened today?”

Fresia gave him a suspicious look and shook her head. “Not really.”

“I bought your debt.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I understood that part.”

Kalan hesitated again, unsure of how to broach the rest of the subject. Fresia spoke again before Kalan managed to pull together his thoughts.

“I can’t pay you,” she said in a rush.

“I know. If you had money to pay, you’d have given it to Monsell. You’ll have to work it off on my ship.”

Fresia went very still again. She stared at him for a long time as emotions flicked across her face so fast that Kalan couldn’t identify them.

“Work it off how?” She finally asked.

Kalan had no idea. He thought for a second before he shrugged. “Help the engineer. Learn to fly. Cook sometimes.”

More emotions crossed the girl’s face. There was confusion, flickers of stubbornness, but mostly relief. Kalan frowned across the table at her while he tried to make sense of the expressions. The relief was the oddest part. He hadn’t threatened her. He tried to imagine what she thought he could have meant and came up empty for the better part of thirty seconds. When he realized what she’d been afraid of, he felt a wave of revulsion. Kalan hadn’t meant to show that revulsion, but some of it must have bled through on his face.

“What?” Fresia demanded.

“You won’t be touched by anyone on my ship.”

“Easy to say here,” she muttered.

“It’s not easy or hard,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “It just is.”

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She tried to keep the skepticism going, but he saw the moment when she decided that she believed him. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t go with you.”

Kalan shook his head. “It’s not optional. You have to go. It was part of the deal with Monsell.”

“But,” she objected, and Kalan cut her off.

“It’s not forever. Six months. Maybe a year. Monsell didn’t come out and say it, but I don’t think good things will happen to you if you’re still here in a week.”

“I can’t go with you,” Fresia insisted. “My mother is here. She was sick, and she still can’t work. If I leave, she’ll be homeless.”

The girl looked like she was on the point of tears. A few things clicked into place for Kalan at that point. Not the least of which was what the girl had spent Monsell’s money on and why the loan shark had let it go for so long. Doctors weren’t exactly a luxury item, but they didn’t come especially cheap on the station either. Fresia was right that her mother would get tossed out of their quarters if they couldn’t pay. Rent was an automated process on the station, which meant there was no one to appeal to for mercy or more time.

“How much is it?”

“How much is what?” Demanded Fresia.

“The fees for your place?”

Fresia heaved a sigh and told him. The number was lower than Kalan expected. The girl must be sharing a tiny space with her mother, he thought.

“So,” said Kalan, “you’ll pay it.”

“With what?”

Kalan found himself wondering if the girl had never held a job before. Didn’t she understand how employment worked?

“I’m going to pay you. You get that that’s how jobs work, right?”

“But, my debt, you said,” she hesitated and then started over. “You said I had to work off what I owe you.”

“You will, but it doesn’t have to happen all at once. You’ll be on the ship for a while. I’ll hold back part of your pay against your debt. That’ll leave enough for your mom’s rent and some food. Should leave a bit for your personal needs.”

Fresia didn’t look away, but a few tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this for us?”

Kalan gave it a moment or two of thought before he shrugged. “Because I can.”

The girl stared at him, clearly unsatisfied by the vague non-answer. Kalan had a moment of discomfort, fearing for a moment that she was seeing more of him than he wanted to share. He felt his shoulders tighten, but she wasn’t asking for anything she didn’t deserve. He’d just upended her life. He found himself reaching back into those lost days before his exile, reaching back for the Code. His surroundings faded from Kalan’s conscious thought as memories of his father surfaced. He mimicked the words he heard in those memories.

“My father told me that it’s easy to be callous and indifferent, and that too many problems in the universe are met with the cowards’ credo that, ‘It’s not my concern.’ Kindness, though. A little kindness can change a life. It can save a life. A little kindness can redeem a life. So, if you can be kind, you should.”

Kalan sat there in silence, lost in memory, before his eyes focused on Fresia again. She looked a little stunned.

“I,” she said, but nothing followed.

“It’s within my power to be kind to you, Fresia. So, I choose to be kind. One day, maybe you’ll choose to be kind to someone when you can.”

“Who are you?” Fresia asked in a bewildered voice.

“Nobody important.”

Before the girl could pursue that uncomfortable line of questioning, the food arrived in the hands of Patonga herself. Patonga was a four-armed woman so short that she could almost look Kalan straight in the eye while he was sitting. She saw him notice her and shot him a smile filled with razor-sharp teeth. Those teeth looked especially menacing against her burgundy skin, but Kalan knew better. Patonga settled the plates on the table before giving Kalan an appraising look.

“Don’t you carry any food on that ship of yours? You’re so thin.”

Kalan glanced down at himself out of curiosity. He didn’t think he’d lost weight, but Patonga had always thought he was too lean to be healthy. Her people were squat, blocky beings. She probably thought most of the humans on the station looked like they were on the verge of starvation.

He gave her a meaningless shrug. “You know how the food is on ships. Long on preservatives and short on flavor.”

“That’s why you need to come home more often. I’ll fill you with good things that will keep you healthy!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Patonga turned her attention to Fresia. The girl was idly poking the food on her dish with a fork, not sure what to make of the alien fare. It took a few moments before Patonga’s gaze made her look up.

“And who is this child you’ve brought to eat my food, Kalan?”

Fresia looked nervous under Patonga’s scrutiny. Kalan held back an impulse to laugh.

“Patonga,” he said. “This is Fresia. She’s my newest crew member.”

“Don’t you feed her, either? Gods, boy, she’s going to evaporate right before my eyes.”

Fresia opened her mouth and apparently couldn’t think of anything to say. She turned slightly panicked, imploring eyes on Kalan.

“I’m sure we’ll find her something to eat.”

Patonga snorted. “Humans. It’s no wonder you all die so young. A century or two of barely eating and your bodies call it quits. Well, eat before it gets cold. If you’re just going to have appetizers, you should eat them while they’re still hot.”

“We will. Oh, Prence says hello.”

Patonga gave another smile. “Oh, now there’s a man who almost eats enough. You could learn from him. Alright, eat. Eat!”

Kalan smiled after Patonga as she bustled back into her kitchen. He turned his eyes back on Fresia, who was once again poking at the maroon slab on her plate. She looked up at him.

“Is this meat?” She asked.

“It’s fruit, actually. Though, it might as well be meat for our purposes. It comes from Patonga’s home world. Why do you think she has those teeth? They needed them to eat these things before knives came along. Try it.”

Kalan took his own advice and cut a piece of the maroon fruit on his own plate. It had the overall texture of a steak but tasted a bit like a grilled peach he’d tried once. Fresia hesitantly tried a little piece before diving into the food. He remembered those days of endless, youthful appetite. She finished her meal long before he did, and Patonga was apparently watching. She came back out from the kitchen and put a monumental slice of cake before the girl. Kalan knew from experience that it was a spongy confection that almost melted on contact with the tongue. Fresia’s eyes went wide with delight. She tore into the cake with the same abandon that she’d shown the meal.

Kalan smiled inwardly. A little kindness, indeed.