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  “Let us hope this settlement arrives before the next tuition payment is due,” Bieo said dryly. She peered at the computer screen again. “Your only listed family is your stepfather. I know your mother has been missing for several years now. Is that why you have received that monetary support from the company?”

  Amanda nodded. “The company says they’re still looking for her.” She knew they were more worried about the Nostromo’s valuable cargo than her expendable crew, but Amanda didn’t say so. That wasn’t the principal’s business.

  Bieo shivered visibly. “I do not comprehend why people feel the need to go into space. It is a brutal, vicious place that is not designed for life, only death.”

  “Um, okay,” Amanda said. “I suppose.”

  “My apologies,” Bieo said. “We are getting off the subject. There is no other family?”

  Amanda shook her head.

  Bieo again folded her hands on the desk. “Professor Rodriguez asked me to speak to you because she wanted to give you a failing grade.”

  That took Amanda aback. “Why?” She felt the beginning of anger in the pit of her stomach.

  “You did not complete the assignment, Ms. Ripley. Your task was not to repair the generator, but to provide a repair schedule.” She sat back. “I am, however, willing to suggest a compromise. If you give Professor Rodriguez a schedule, as requested, by tomorrow, she will base your grade upon that. Whatever extra credit you might imagine you should receive, for your work repairing the generator itself, will be negated by your tardiness in turning in the assignment. Is this an acceptable course of action?”

  For a moment, Amanda had no idea what to say. She was only a teenager, and Ms. Bieo was the principal. It wasn’t her place to say whether or not it was acceptable.

  “Should you not find it acceptable, of course, I will have no choice but to accede to Professor Rodriguez’s desire to fail you for the assignment, which would have a deleterious effect on your ability to achieve your certification.”

  So no real choice at all, Amanda thought, the anger spreading. Like usual.

  “Then, yeah, I’ll do that,” she said. “In fact, I can do it now, if you want.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the battered old Pad that she had acquired from a secondhand dealer. An old Seegson A99 that they didn’t make anymore, it took several seconds for the device to activate. Eventually, though, the display brightened to life, and she started writing down each step she had taken with the Bundaberg she’d been given.

  “By the way,” she said as she wrote, “the Bundaberg she gave me was in way worse shape than any of the others.”

  At that, Bieo smiled. “I am not the only one who believes you are too talented for a trade school, Ms. Ripley. Professor Rodriguez’s willingness to fail you derives entirely from your inability to complete the assignment as given, not from any perceived inadequacy she sees in you.”

  Amanda didn’t reply, but instead finished the schedule, read it over, found one typo and fixed it, then sent it to both Rodriguez’s and Bieo’s queues. “Sent.”

  Bieo stared at her for several seconds. “You finished it?”

  Unable to help herself, Amanda smiled. “I said to give me a minute.”

  “You finished it that quickly?”

  She nodded and stood up. “Is that it?”

  “Yes, Ms. Ripley.” Bieo rose also. “For now.”

  Nodding, Amanda beat a hasty retreat. Closing the office door behind her, she headed down the empty hallway and left the building that housed the Delaj Technical Institute, then walked three blocks to Kelloway’s Coffee Shop. Ordering her coffee from the dispenser and paying from her account—which barely had enough to cover the beverage—she took the full mug out of the slot and went to find a seat.

  “Hey, Manda!” A familiar dark-skinned face peeked up from behind a reader. Marvin Okeke waved.

  “Hi, Marvin.”

  “Join me?”

  There weren’t many free seats, but one of them was next to Okeke, so Amanda nodded and sat next to him.

  “Been a while,” he said.

  “My stepdad’s out on disability, so you’ll probably be seeing more of me. Easier to get my homework done here.”

  “That sucks.”

  Amanda shrugged. “It’ll be fine as long as I have enough funds to pay for my coffee—and as long as they don’t actually enforce the thirty-minute rule.”

  “Please.” Okeke made a rude gesture at the handwritten sign that hung over the door

  PLEASE DO NOT SIT IN THE COFFEE SHOP

  FOR LONGER THAN THIRTY MINUTES

  PER ORDER.

  “I’m usually sitting in here for two or three hours on one mug of tea,” he added. “They just put the sign there to convince people that it’s a rule. Power of suggestion’s a powerful thing—if you know what I mean.”

  “I guess,” she replied. “So how’ve you been?”

  “Not too bad.” He turned off the reader’s display and set it down. “Doing my thing, y’know? You still over at that technical school?”

  Amanda nodded. “Just kept myself from failing a class.” She gave Okeke the short version of her assignment from Rodriguez, and the subsequent conversation with Bieo.

  “That’s jacked up.” Okeke stared at her. “Why aren’t you going to a good school instead of that shithole?”

  “Same reason why I need to sit here for more than half an hour on one cup of coffee. No money.”

  “I heard that.” Okeke took a sip from his tea and then leaned back and regarded Amanda with a look she couldn’t quite identify. “Um, so I’m kinda glad you’re here, actually.” He looked… uncomfortable. “You never really talk about your mother.”

  Amanda bristled. “Why are you asking about my mother?”

  “I might have some info about her.”

  “What the fuck, Marvin?” She stood up so fast her chair scraped against the floor. Okeke held up both hands and pushed back in his seat.

  “Easy, easy, Manda, calm down.”

  She wasn’t having it. “What the fuck do you know about my mother?”

  “More than you, I bet,” he said, and that surprised her enough to slow things down. He put his hands down, but still looked tense. “C’mon, Manda, you know what I do.”

  “Um, no I don’t,” she said truthfully. She’d never asked what he did for a living.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Okeke blinked and turned his head in surprise.

  “You’re just a guy in the coffee shop, Marvin.” She leaned in toward him. “And you’ve got two seconds to tell me what the fuck—”

  “I’m a deedee.”

  That brought Amanda up short. If Okeke was a data dealer, then it made perfect sense that he might know something about her mother.

  “You sure I didn’t tell you?” he said.

  “Very sure.”

  “Coulda sworn I did. Look, Manda, I’m real sorry. I thought you knew what I do. Would’ve led with that, if I’d realized.” He glanced around the coffee shop. “Could you sit down, please? People are staring.”

  Only then did Amanda realize that a few of the coffee shop patrons were looking at them funny. One peered nervously over her NohtPad, and Amanda wondered if she was contacting the authorities.

  So she sat back down.

  “You should’ve fucking told me, Marvin.”

  Okeke held up both hands again. “Mea maxima culpa, Manda,” he said, and it sounded as if he meant it. “Really thought you knew.”

  “So fine, what is it that you know about my mother?” She was skeptical.

  “I met a guy who wants to sell some info on the Nostromo.”

  Skepticism blossomed into full-on disbelief. “If he’s got info on the Nostromo, your guy should be going to the authorities,” she said. “Or the company.”

  “Yeah, my guy?” Okeke shook his head. “He don’t talk to Wey-Yu, ’cause they b
lacklisted his ass. You go to them, he’s gone. As for the authorities, he don’t talk to them either, on account of the authorities don’t pay him. Mostly, they just arrest him.”

  Amanda didn’t like the way this was going. “I don’t want to get involved in anything illegal.”

  “It isn’t illegal—well, this isn’t,” he said. “This is legitimate. Trust me.”

  “Why the hell should I trust you?”

  “Okay, you shouldn’t.” Okeke grinned. “But my guy did provide what you might call a make-good.” He pulled a Pad out of his pocket and showed it to her. For a moment, Amanda just stared at the Pad itself. It was one of new Moran VDNs, top of the line, and newly on the market.

  Once she got past her tech envy, she actually looked at what was on the display—a picture of Mom with shorter hair, though it was still curly. On the side was the Weyland-Yutani logo, and it listed Mom as a “contractor.”

  “This is her service record from about fourteen or fifteen years ago.”

  Not long after I was born, Amanda thought.

  “Did you know that she had to get a waiver to have you?”

  She shot Okeke a look. “What?”

  He pointed at the Pad. “Scroll down a little. See, Wey-Yu has a family planning division.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you’re planning on having a kid, you have to let them know. Thing is, your mother—and, I guess, your father—didn’t know that.”

  “What, they kept it a secret?” Then Amanda saw a notation that Mom wasn’t originally employed by Weyland-Yutani, but rather by Hannus Shipping on Luna, which was bought by the larger corporation ten months before Amanda was born. “Shit.”

  Looking over her shoulder, Okeke saw what she was reading.

  “Yeah, she basically got screwed. Normally, Wey-Yu’s policy is to fire you if you violate the family planning rules, but they gave your mother a waiver because of the timing.”

  Scrolling down, Amanda saw the notation about the waiver.

  There was more beyond that.

  “Fuck.”

  “What?” Okeke asked.

  “My mother stopped a terrorist attack!” She held the Pad’s display toward Okeke for a moment, then looked at it again. “It was when she was at officer training school. That’s when I was a kid, right after she graduated Evansbrook Academy with honors.” She remembered Mom’s time at OTS, but reading this was the first time she recalled anything about Evansbrook. “Turns out, while she was there she helped stop some Mother Earthers who’d taken a shuttle hostage.”

  “Yeah, I remember that.” Okeke nodded. “That was your Mom?”

  “Apparently. She never mentioned it—not to me.” She scrolled down further, past the time at OTS, with notations on her jobs on the Kurtz and the Sephoria, but the information stopped there, when Amanda was seven. Nothing about anything after that. “I thought you said this guy had info on the Nostromo.”

  “All right, look.” Okeke leaned in and started speaking in a softer tone of voice. Amanda likewise leaned forward. “This all was just to show that my guy has information. But this is all pretty old. He’s okay with you keeping this for free, but if you want the Nostromo data, that’s going to require a payment.”

  “Well, your friend is shit outta luck,” Amanda said heatedly, “because making a payment requires actually having money.” She couldn’t believe this. All she’d wanted was some coffee, and now her emotions were on an orbital jumper. For the first time, someone was telling her she could find something out about her mother, but like a good school, like decent clothes, like food that wasn’t borderline inedible, like a Pad that wasn’t a piece of shit, it was something else she wasn’t allowed to have because she didn’t have enough money. And if she went to Weyland-Yutani for money again, they’d want to be involved in the deal themselves, since it was info about their ship. From what Okeke was saying, their involvement would kill the deal.

  Okeke sat back. “All right. I guess I’ll have to tell him to find someone else.”

  “Your eleventh birthday. I’ll be back for that, and I’ll buy you the best present ever.”

  “What kind of present?”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?”

  “Isn’t there anything you can tell me?” she asked, sounding more desperate than she liked. “Even a hint?”

  Okeke leaned forward again. “I’m sorry, Manda, but this isn’t a kid’s game. It’s serious.” She’d never seen him like this, and she didn’t like it. “You want anything, it’ll cost you a hundred—and if you can’t pay it, my guy will go to someone else. As it is, I’ve been asking him to hold onto it, because I knew you’d want first shot at it.”

  Amanda’s mind raced. She had her own account, but there wasn’t very much in it. She’d done some work here and there, but just enough that she could occasionally get some coffee after school, and buy meals whenever Paul was so drunk he forgot to get food and didn’t remember where he’d put his credit chip. Pascoe-Keane had given her a stipend, but that had been spent within a month after the internship had ended.

  “Can you give me a day?”

  “What will change in a day?” Okeke looked dubious.

  “I’m not the only one who wants to know what happened to my mother,” she said. When Okeke flinched, she added, “Not the company, don’t worry. Let me talk to my stepdad, see if he’s willing to pay a hundred for this.”

  “You sure?” Okeke folded his arms, and didn’t look convinced. But he didn’t shut her down.

  “No, I’m not sure,” she said honestly. Okeke had heard her bitching about her stepfather any number of times, so she couldn’t blame him for not believing her. But even if Paul didn’t give a space-bound shit about her mother, and wouldn’t give her the hundred, she was pretty sure she knew where he kept his credit chip.

  Okeke’s expression softened. She thought it was genuine.

  “Tell you what, keep that Pad.” He reached into his pocket. “And here’s my business card. Call me tonight and let me know if you can send the money. I’ll give you my code then, and we’ll meet back here tomorrow with another Pad from my guy.”

  “I can keep this?” Amanda’s eyes went wide.

  “Sure, why not?” Okeke said. “I got plenty.”

  Amanda bit her tongue. After struggling through on the piece-of-shit Seegson, she would have killed for a Moran. But she didn’t tell him that—it wasn’t the sort of thing that would inspire confidence in the person who was expecting payment.

  “I have to go,” Okeke said, jerking his thumb toward the exit. With his other hand, he gulped down the rest of his tea. “I’ll see you tomorrow… with any luck.”

  She nodded, and couldn’t help herself. Amanda started playing around with the Pad, and after Okeke left, she spent the next hour transferring all her files over from the Seegson. It shouldn’t have taken so long, but the Seegson kept crashing.

  Once that was done, she tried to work on her assignments, which luckily didn’t take long. Bieo hadn’t been wrong about Amanda being too smart for Delaj. Once she had finished, however, she read her mother’s service record again.

  Mostly, though, she just stared at the picture.

  I miss you so much.

  Why didn’t you come home?

  You promised!

  13

  VANCOUVER, CANADA, EARTH

  APRIL 2127

  Eventually, she worked her way home. Her RailPass was almost empty, and she needed to keep money in reserve—especially if she had any hope of coming up with the hundred.

  So instead, she walked the Burard Skyway, which would take her to the building where Paul’s apartment was. It meant about forty-five minutes to get home on foot, but the longer it took, the more likely her stepfather would be passed out on the couch.

  The route was familiar—she’d taken it any number of times, and usually her mind bounced from subject to subject. Her homework, her teachers, what she’d eaten, whether or not she co
uld afford to buy new clothes, and so on.

  This time, all she could think about was her mother. She wished she’d kept the recordings of the messages they’d sent each other while the Nostromo had still been in-system.

  “I’ll be back for that, and I’ll buy you the best present ever.”

  She’d erased them in anger on her twelfth birthday.

  The most vivid memory she had of her mother, though, was how she would sing lullabies to Amanda when she was an infant. They weren’t wholly formed memories, though—more like a screen grab, a brief moment in time. An ingrained impression with a soundtrack.

  O little lotus flower in the shadow of the wall

  O little lotus flower, far far away

  O little lotus flower shines like the moon

  O little lotus flower, gone, gone too soon

  Then reality set in. On the one hand, a hundred was a lot of money. On the other hand, it was a miniscule price to pay to find out something, anything. If her mother had died, she would be sad. In fact, she would be miserable—but at least that would be the end of it. Anything would be better than being stuck in this ridiculous limbo.

  Okeke’s friend could get her out of that limbo. For that, plus a working Pad—two, really, since he’d promised another one with the Nostromo stuff on it—a hundred was next-to-nothing.

  “I love you, I miss you, and I will definitely see you when you’re eleven.”

  The more she had learned about space travel, and how it worked, the more hope she’d had that her mother was still alive. Mom always talked about “going sleepy-byes,” but for years Amanda had never really understood what that meant. Now that she knew about cryogenics, she realized that Mom might still be alive in stasis somewhere, and she could still be roughly the same age as when she left.

  If only they knew where the ship was.

  If only Okeke’s friend had something that could tell her.

  She had to find out, no matter what.

  After nearly an hour she reached her building. There was an entrance that came directly from the skyway, which put her on the ninth floor. She headed over to a small group of people who stood in the elevator bay, and waited for one that would take her up to the forty-first floor, where her stepfather’s apartment was. The building was poorly kept, with walls that needed to be cleaned and trash in a lot of the hallways. Yet it was relatively safe, and for the most part people kept to themselves.