He let the young man’s fist go.

#

“What were you thinkin’?” she screamed once the Transport clan had dispersed.

“I was thinkin’ that I wanted ‘em to stop hittin’ on me.”

“Well, d’you know how much they’d payin’ us? D’you? You couldn’t’a just took it a bit? How’d you know if they’re gonna pay, now?”

“Cathai,” said a voice near them both.

They both turned to look. Cathai stopped her yelling, Bondo stopped his looking off into space.

It was PawPaw. Larger than Bondo, he had never needed to raise his voice in either of their memories unless someone had been in danger. He’d also put the emphasis on the second syllable of Cathai’s name, which meant she was in for loads of trouble if she didn’t stop.

“Cathai, go take y’break. Then get a younglin’ to clean that mess up from the grain bag that busted out. Got?”

“Yessir,” Cathai said and walked off, cradling her datapad like it was a child, and looking for something to yell at someone else over.

“Bondo, c’mere,” father said.

“You sure? Cathai wants me to...”

“I want you c’mere.”

No explanation, no need for one. Bondo walked alongside his father, who started walking in the dirt-filled fields underneath the transparent roof.

“What, Bondo?”

Bondo told him.

“They still gon’ pay?” Bondo asked after he was done.

“H’yah, Bondo, they try to pay...pay half what they owe us. When I say no, they say, ‘we gon’ load up and leave ennaways.’ And I say, ‘no, no you won’t. I got your ship locked down, shiny new tractor mags. You ain’t goin’ nowheres, not ‘til I punch the codes.’

“What they say then?”

“They try say, ‘we kill you all an’ take your argo freighter.’ And I say, ‘We has this freighter since my great-grandfather. You think no one try take it from us before? Another Transport clan try that already. We killed their men, took their transport ship nice an’ legal, dropped their women an’ children off nearest core world, and sold they ship. How’d you think we afford those shiny new tractor mags we holding you down with?’

“What then?”

“Then? Well, they get mad. Madder’n Cathai when you bust open the grain bag. That’s why they sons, they do what they did to you, And then you do back, you showed ‘em. We got they money, now. All it. When the grain loaded up, they go. They said they come after us with blasters inner hands, and they take Crasna from us, an’ I laugh, an’ laugh.”

Bondo chuckled, too. They both looked at the vast, transparent ceiling of the freighter. Blasters were banned on freighters like this, since one stray shot could go through the thick plexiglass and expose everyone to the vacuum of space. No one had ever fired a blaster of any kind in their fields, and no one would. No sane person, anyway.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

They walked some more through the fields, just beginning to ripen in the glow of the red sun they were orbiting.

In the distance, they heard the elders gather everyone for end-of-day vespers.

From the Outer Rim in to the Core,” the voices wafted over to them over the dirt hills as the glowglobes dimmed,

The grain is ours to grow and store

The Maker give us strength each day

To store and sell and take our pay

We take our pay for fuel and seed

To grow our crop, the stores to feed.

“Bondo, you like it here?” PawPaw asked.

“Nosir, not late.” Bondo answered. He’d grown up without the need to hide the truth from his folks, and PawPaw could always tell when he lied anyway.

PawPaw wasn’t upset. It had been a question, not an accusation. “Where y’want to be instead?”

Bondo looked up through the roof at the stars.

PawPaw nodded, needing no explanation. “The Maker makes us all, Bondo. Some get made f’this, some f’other things. Me, I always knew I’d be here, just like m’father an’grandfather. An’ I like it like that. But you, Bondo, well, y’want something diff’rent, huh?”

Bondo looked from the stars to the place the transport clan’s daughter had been, then back at the dirt. His worker-man’s boot left large footprints as he walked.

“Bondo,” said Father, “my brother wanted something diff’rent too. He told our father that, and he got dropped off on a core world. He works there, now. Don’t hear from him much. But he likes it, he say, when I hear from ‘im. He drives a taxi for folks. Your aunt, my sister? She tried to for a year, too. Worked in a place called a rest-a-rawnt. A place where core folks eat.”

“Why don’ they eat at home?”

“Sometimes they’s wanting to eat something different, or have someone else cook it for ‘em and wash up after. Core folks’re strange that way, Bondo. Your aunt ‘n uncle, they learned quick not to ask too many questions ‘bout that kinda thing. Point is, your aunt did that for a year, and when we came through ‘gain, she came back aboard. She like it, now. She know this’s where she s’pose be. But she wouldn’t-a known that, if she didn’t look outside first.”

They walked a few more seconds.

“You think I should look outside, then?” Bondo said.

“Well, better you do now than later. Me, like I said, you grown up in here. You know how it all work, everything from how to drive or fix a hover truck, to how you never lose at cards. Any cards, these days, right?

“They still mad at that?”

“Nope, son. You’re just th’guy to beat. But gettin’ back: That girl from Transpor’? The one you lookin’ at? What if she married you? What’f you marry someone else? You get married, you have younglin’s here, well, then you can’t go nowhere and you have that look in your eyes your whole life.”

“What look issat?”

“The look that...remember how y’felt, when you heard those new guys plannin’ to try an take the ship, and hurt Cathai? Few years back?

“Yeah. I got so mad, I got real quiet, crept up behind, an’ did my thing.”

“Yeah. And at least one of those guys ain’ never gonna walk all the way right again. It was right when you did it then- you were protecting Cathai, and we always look aft’ ours. Always. Point is, Bondo, if you ain’t where you’re supposed to be, you gon’ be feeling like that all the time. Like you’re just creepin’ around, wanting to hurt something, like you did to those guys when you’s lookin’ aft’ Cathai.

“An’ even if you never hurt anybody, you’ll keep feelin’ that way, alla time. Everybody sees it, you always feel it, an’ your wife, your kids always feel like they come second. I say, eyeah, try it out. If it’s you, good. If it isn’t, good. You come back on board when we come back a year from now.”

Bondo kept walking, looking at the ground.

“Bondo, we had this freighter, the Crasna, since my great-grandfather got it. We live here, worked it, it’s home for me, your MawMaw, most of us. But you may need to be elsewhere. Maybe f’good, maybe just f’while. And that’s alright, you know that? It’s alright. We got enough hands to run the ship for now. We make enough each harvest to hire hands when we need ‘em. You can try living out there, like y’uncle, y’aunt. We’ll b’back a year from now, we see you again. You decide.”

#