On the white-paved streets of the Academic Walk, past shopfronts with symmetrical, ruffled trim, a young woman walked with books pressed to her chest. The sun just kissed the brows of the taller buildings, giving every university spire and professor’s loft an angelic sheen of gold. Workers were cleaning and setting up shop in earnest, fuelled only by morning coffee and the promise of a busy day; robots running errands for their masters passed with the carts on their backs empty, waiting to buy their goods.

The woman headed for the skyline of skyscrapers just beyond the commercial areas, in the University Plaza. A white-faced building with five, finger-like fascias awaited her; she always thought it looked like a palm, fingers reaching to the heavens. In the centre was the huge double door, inlaid in bronze, which she entered thanks to a helpful robot, and she began down the lobby. The lobby floor glittered with star maps and constellations, set into blue marble. There was Earth, so very far away, where her ancestors had started their journey; there Sirius; and at the tip of the room, in front of the library doors, was Star’s Reach.

She had come prepared, as she always did, with her university ID in her hand, pressed to the back of her book. She bent to swipe it at the desk and said, “Good morning, Winston,” to the robot working the computer.

Winston turned, his goggle-eyes flashing with recognition and his mouth-grille lighting up as he spoke.

“Good morning, Clara Robertson! You are signed in!”

Clara smiled and continued through the doors.

The library was tall, like a cathedral, with white shelves curved like ribs in the navy room. Everything echoed reverently – the sounds of the robots pushing carts and sorting books, the flicking of pages, the scribbling of notes in old-fashioned notebooks. Some of Clara’s colleagues got there even earlier than she did, and were already bent-backed over their studies as she passed. Nobody spoke, but when they saw each other they nodded or smiled.

Clara settled at her desk, put down her books and tied her honey-coloured hair in a sky-blue ribbon, and as soon as her fingers were free, she got to work. The desk was the same as the others but it was an unspoken truth that this one was hers – it had an inlaid white computer with a track-ball and some of the books she had previously been working on already stacked up, their pages marked with various pieces of string and paper. All of the books were ancient, and oddly varied. There were books of archaeological digs, poetry books, plays and novels, biographies, mythology texts, but Clara went straight to the computer and typed on the screen.

‘William Shakespeare’

The computer processed the request and long paragraphs of text appeared, appended by pages of ancient folios and images. Clara peered at the information.

“Earth calendar and almanac,” she whispered. “Earth calendar…”

She selected it from the pile and began to read.

The engine room of Wyvern was dark, mostly because of the soot from the crash still lining the shelving and tables. Five Enfant Robots worked beside Keil. There was still a lot to do to stabilise the engines and truthfully, a lot of the study that Keil had done on ship engines was largely theoretical. He remembered most of what he had learned from books and holovids, but a Zephyr scout ship was a model he had never worked on. Some things never changed – fuel injection and clearing vents – but the piecing together of the parts was unique. He was relying largely on the lead robot’s knowledge. He liked ER-001 but understood little of its squeaks and beeps; that was a brainteaser in itself. Around him, pipes hissed and spluttered, and pistons shunted, and all was noise and bustle.

“Keil?”

Keil jumped. He slammed his head on the top of the engine casing, dropped his tools as he went to nurse his head and narrowly avoided swiping ER-001 clean across to the other side of the room. It leapt away with an indignant “Arr!”

“Oh, um…” Keil turned. Blake stood, silent and still, in the darkness. “Blake. I didn’t know you were there!”

Blake nodded, his face stoic. Keil rubbed the throbbing on his head and readjusted his goggles.

“Is…” He looked at Blake’s face, trying to find an emotion there, but found none. “Is everything all right?”

Blake nodded, and said, “I want to apologise.”

“Apologise? What on Greevo for?”

“For dragging you into this.”

Keil frowned. “Into what?”

“A man hunt. There’s Green on my head, apparently.”

“Oh, that,” Keil said, relieved. He wiped his goggles with the cleanest cloth he could find and smiled. “To tell you the truth, I… well, I am almost glad for the diversion. It is quite the adventure. I feel a little giddy about it, in all honesty.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Blake blinked, doubt etched all over his face. Keil immediately felt anxious. He did not always say the right thing at the right time, he knew that, and he could understand why what he had said seemed strange.

“I mean, not that it’s a good thing that you’re a wanted man, and by this… this Milo King, and all that. What I mean is… I mean, what I’m trying to say…”

But he saw Blake smile and shake his head.

“I know what you’re trying to say, Keil,” he said, real warmth in his voice. “And it’s very kind of you.”

Keil sighed, grateful, and turned to the engine. “All else aside, at least I have regular work now. And I must say, your robot is very helpful.”

“He isn’t really mine.”

The robot hopped back into place and his little face burst into a pixel-grin. “Arr-bop!”

Keil smiled back.

“His name is Miki,” said Blake. “Miki, this is Keil Oxley. He’s a mechanic.”

Keil held out a gloved hand for Miki to shake.

“An honour, Miki,” he said. The robot took his finger with both of his long, cuboid arms and hopped up and down.

“He runs the ship, so it’s probably Captain Miki,” said Blake, shrugging. Miki saluted; Keil laughed and saluted back. “I’ll… I’ll leave you to it. It’ll be hours before we get to Star’s Reach.”

Keil lifted his head to say farewell, but Blake was already walking out of the door.

Blake had other business. People were not his strong suit but he knew that the first order of business was making sure that the two people he now lived with were on his side. Keil, he liked. Jace, less so.

The sick bay was tidy, now. Jace had at least made light work of that. It was set up with three examination tables in the back and sterile cupboards of tools and medicines. Tucked up in the far-right corner was a modesty curtain and a full body scanner, which Blake assumed Jace had used to produce the holographic scan of his own body that he was currently prodding at. The holo-computer sat in the centre of the sick bay, a circular podium which Jace wandered around, ignoring the wheeled chair that was attached.

Blake watched for a moment, trying to figure out what he was going to say or do.

“What are you doing?” he said at last.

Jace did not jump or stop working, but he said, “I’m uploading my vitals to the ship’s database. I should probably do yours, too. And the genius in the engine room. What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“I see.”

Jace highlighted the brown blob that was his liver and typed some numbers without much care, then slotted the organ back inside the skeleton. Then he took the heart, dragged it out, spun it around. At last, he glared through his own body at Blake.

“It’d be a lot easier to do this maths if you weren’t watching me, y’know,” he said testily.

Blake blinked but did not move. Jace rolled his eyes, threw the heart back into the ribcage and shut the screen down.

“Triple suns,” he whispered, “you are beyond words.”

Blake took a deep breath.

“If you tell anyone about what happened in the workshop, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?” he said, without a hint of emotion.

Jace blinked, glanced at him. There was an air of lazy threat in Blake’s tone that was designed to unnerve anyone he wanted it to, and it seemed to be working.

“What, you mean when that thing –“ Jace started.

“I am not going to discuss this with you,” said Blake firmly. “And I don’t want it discussed with anyone else. I know plenty of ways to kill a man without anyone knowing I did it. It wouldn’t be hard. I want you to remember that, before your big mouth gets us into trouble. Or worse, killed.”

Jace slid his jaw left, then right. Blake kept staring.

“What do you want?” said Jace.

“I want you to swear.”

“Okay, I swear,” he said, raising his hands. “Swear on my life. Happy?”

“I want you to swear on her,” Blake said.

He knew Jace had heard him correctly, but the way Jace’s shoulders stiffened told Blake that he had touched a nerve. Jace tried to look annoyed instead of ruffled.

“On what, sorry?”

“On the girl in the photograph, in your apartment.”

Jace froze. His eyes glazed over. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

That’s the play, Blake thought. That’s my only leverage.

“I want you to swear on the girl in the photograph that for as long as you live, you will never speak of what happened in the workshop, to anyone, even to me, unless I give you my express permission,” he said.

Jace blinked himself back into the room, cleared his throat. It was the face of a man without any other way out.

“I… okay,” he said, defeated. “Okay, I swear.”

“On the girl,” Blake said.

“All right, I swear on the girl! Triple suns, what is it you want from me?”

“That’s all,” he said calmly. He turned to leave, and as the door opened, he said, “And I’m not giving you my vitals.”

He left Jace speechless, which was all he ever wanted from the man.

Keil insisted on putting together a meal and everyone sitting together to eat it. Blake had to hand it to him – he was persistent. They sat in the dorm room with plates of crackers and jerky, which was all the pantry cupboards could offer up, and glasses of filtered water. Jace shovelled food down like he had never eaten before, but Keil picked and pulled at every morsel, tearing it into smaller pieces and delicately chewing them.

Blake ate nothing. Miki sat on his lap, poking the jerky.

“Hey Genius,” said Jace through his mouthful of crackers, “were you born on Greevo-16?”

“In that self-same city, yes,” said Keil. “It is where I went to school, learned my trade and set up my business. I never thought I would leave.” His voice became dreamy. “I used to read of distant lands when I was a boy… and oh, what adventures I had planned!”

His face was alight with wonder, but it fell again.

“But I have always been a clumsy fool,” he said, a hint of bitterness in his voice, “and nobody would have me on their voyages. So I set up shop.” He chewed some jerky and glanced up at Jace. “With a saying like ‘triple suns’, I would imagine you’re from one of the Triad planets.”

Jace stuffed a cracker in his mouth and kept his eyes low. Blake watched him closely. When someone had a big mouth, it was more enlightening to examine their silence.

“I have always wanted to visit a Triad planet,” said Keil, not noticing. “People say it is so hot there, they had to build underground. Live beneath domes. I would love to see such a structure.”

Jace filled his mouth with crackers again. Keil hesitated, about to question, but Blake caught his eye and shook his head. Keil nodded and returned to his plate.

Jace, seeing that the danger had passed, swallowed his mouthful.

“So if you know Milo King, Moon-head,” he said casually, “you must have lived on Silverrim for a time, yeah?”

Blake stared coldly at him, but all Jace did was give a patronising smile.

“Just making an observation,” he said.

The conversation was halted by a beeping noise from the wall computer. Miki leapt from Blake’s lap and scurried to a panel by the floor, and jumped up and down in joy.

“We must be nearly there,” said Blake. He passed his plate to Jace, scooped up Miki and headed to the bridge.