Tin Star by Cecil Castellucci Read Free Book Online

disputes. After all, it’s easier to clean up blood off a mat when the two contenders walk away alive.”
    It had surprised me to learn that most aliens carried knives, which was the leading cause of murder in space. Only the officers of the law like Tournour were allowed to keep two shot phase guns for absolute emergencies. Guns were too dangerous. Projectiles could cause hull ruptures. Phase guns could cause electrical problems. Both of those things meant death for all. Everyone followed this gun law on a spaceship or a space station.
    The color of the dreary days changed when a solar flare or a meteor shower forced us all to evacuate to the station’s emergency shelters. When a hocht happened or a ship arrived there was equal excitement. New people meant a slight increase in activity. The few legitimate vendors on the station would raise their prices. The black market thrived. The dwellers in the underguts would rush to the docks to beg for day work. The prostitutes got paid enough to get them through until the next ship wandered this far away from the Central Systems.
    After that first hocht, I grew to enjoy going to hochts when they were called every few months. I liked that there were postings that called out the charges that the instigator held against the opponent. The injustices were made public for all to see. I took a slight comfort in imagining myself calling a hocht on Brother Blue if he ever came back to the station. I liked the idea of everyone seeing his sins on display. But my argument with him was not minor, and I would not be soothed by a fight. I would not want him to walk away.
    When Heckleck tired of gossip, he would sometimes talk to me about the old days. Of his youth. Of his planet. Of the places he’d seen. Of the enemies he’d made. Of those who he’d destroy when he could finally save enough to leave the station. He never talked about what had stranded him here, and I could read that it was a deep wound—likely as deep as mine. Betrayal and grief have a certain color no matter what the species is. Everyone in the underguts seemed to carry that color with them in their voice or walk or hunch.
    If Heckleck was not around, I kept to myself, always plotting my way off the station. But eventually time dragged on and a few months turned into a year and here I was still on the Yertina Feray.
    Despite my permanent numbness, there was a shard of hate in my heart that the inevitable march of time did not quell, and every day I was hit with the fact that everything was still strange. Still alien . The only thing that soothed me in any way was to look out of the largest windows at the planet Quint.
    The arboretum was the only place with plant life, and it held the best view of the planet. No one ever seemed to gather there, as though looking at the greenery reminded them too much of the metal shell that surrounded them. But I liked it for the dirt and the strips of gel floor, soft to the feet, which mimicked standing on the surface of a planet.
    Only Thado, the caretaker, ever spent as much time there as I did. After seeing that I did not come to do harm to the plant life, or to steal anything, he began to trust me. Often he would hand me a flash pad with a wish list of things he needed. Most of his harvest was presold at set times of the year. Legally, he was not allowed to sell anything from the arboretum. But anything that fell and was not harvested or matured out of season was fair game for him to trade with. He gifted the fruits and vegetables to me, and I made sure that they were gifted around the station. In return, the things that he needed seemed to find their way to him. I took a cut and no rules were breached. It was usually only a small basket, but fresh produce meant everything to space dwellers, regardless of if they lived in the underguts or above. Everyone traded for something fresh to eat.
    I would go there, mostly to stare at Quint and at her continents and oceans until I swear I saw a