brothers tormented her by flaunting their larger portions of food in her face, there was a sense of desperation, of gratefulness, to their behaviour. To eat and not care who was watching or how much you chewed or how many calories were left for others was a dream. Brannick Station was some kind of paradise.
Pendt slid up to the end of the bar, hoping to avoid the server’s notice for as long as possible, and helped herself to one of the tabs. It was salty, but more than edible, and Pendt took a handful to put in her pockets in case the servers chased her out when they realized she didn’t have any money. These would give her enough calories to hold on until she found a more reliable source. A little voice whispered that she could change back, if she wanted. That it wasn’t too late, and she could go home, but she didn’t listen. Home was behind her now. She was never going back to the Harland again. She ate four more of the tabs in a single mouthful, breaking them with her teeth and dragging the sharp edges along her tongue.
She was so focused on the little cup and the balls that she didn’t notice the two figures that came to sit beside her until they were perched on the stools. They didn’t flank her, so she didn’t panic entirely, but they definitely noticed her, and Pendt didn’t like what followed when people noticed her, particularly when she was eating. They were between her and the main exit, but she thought that she could lose them on the dance floor, if she needed to. She was smaller than they were, and had spent a lot of time moving through small spaces. She took a quick glance sideways to get a better look at them.
One of the figures had an open face—the sort of mark that her aunt liked to trade with—and was already smiling, half lost in the music. It was striking, to see someone so relaxed. Pendt didn’t think she had ever been that comfortable in her life, let alone in a crowd. A part of her ached, wondering what her life would have been like if she hadn’t always been so afraid. She was going to change that now too.
The other boy was all lines and angles, his nose like the prow of a grounding-ship and his face shaped to cut through atmosphere with no resistance. He had the face of someone who was listened to, but unlike her brothers, he didn’t seem made cruel by it. Neither of them looked to be much older than Pendt’s seventeen years, and she hadn’t made herself look older when she changed, so maybe they just thought she would be good company. For some reason.
The first boy was looking straight at her, the way her aunt did when she was about to administer a judgement. Pendt was no stranger to direct confrontation; it just always went badly for her. She braced herself for something terrible, but when the second boy spoke, his words held none of the venom she was so used to taking.
“Now tell me,” he drawled, helping himself to the tabs Pendt had left in the cup, “what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“HIGH, HIGH HOPES FOR A LIVING”
As dying breaths go, the Stavenger Empire had a good one. They made sure they didn’t go into the dark alone. Unwilling to cede power, even in death, the Stavengers took a large portion of the galaxy with them when they went, and made life challenging for all those who remained.
The empire used up the last of their grain-mages by making æther locks. Each station was locked to the genetic code of the station’s ruling family and controlled by the Y chromosome. If either code or chromosome was ever absent from the station, all functions ceased. It wasn’t just that the Nets and Wells wouldn’t work, the lights and the air recyclers and the heaters would cease to function too. To leave a station un-ruled was to kill it. The rebel leaders could no longer command from the front, and their sons’ every breath was the future of the station’s entire population.
* * *
• • •
The stations had been almost entirely united. The leaders of each family rallied their people to battle, and the people were willing to fight for them. No one could have anticipated the deterioration of the æther, and even after