Sadie had found, through the years, that everyone who found themselves out in the black had a different reason for leaving their home planet. For some people, adventure was in their blood, and tying them down to one world would simply be cruel. For others, there was nothing on their birth planet that could qualify it as a home. There were also, of course, those who were born in the black and destined to die there. Sadie figured she didn’t fit into any of the categories.
She’d always known she wasn’t going to stay on the planet she’d been born on. It was a poor world, and everyone who could get out did it as soon as possible. The soil wasn’t good for anything, and the people who lived there survived on rations alone. She’d hated it for as long as she could remember. There were some reasons to stay of course; while her two oldest brothers generally wanted nothing to do with her, Chris, who was only two years older than her, had always had her back. He’d been her best friend growing up, and she liked to think that, if she’d gotten the chance, she would have gotten him out, too.
The thing was, she hadn’t gotten the chance.
She’d started pretty young, like a lot of thieves did. That had been out of necessity. There wasn’t much to steal on her barren world, so if you wanted to build up any kind of wealth, you had to build for a long time. Taking from the people on top, the ones getting ready to leave themselves, and the occasional bigwig coming by in search of cheap land or cheap labor. By the time she was twenty, Sadie had nearly enough to get herself and her brother off their hellhole of a planet and to the nearest space station. Then, she’d fucked up and stolen from the wrong person. She hadn’t had time to go back for Chris and, knowing that her most recent victim would kill her if he got his hands on her, fled on her own. Without Chris, the stolen credits took her twice as far, and she managed to make something of herself on Andromeda Station.
Every day, she dreamed about going back for her brother, but she never knew if anyone was still looking for her back home, and getting herself killed wasn’t going to get him off the planet. She always told herself she’d go back someday, but now seven years had passed, and she was still living comfortably on Andromeda. She’d never contacted her family, never commed Chris. They probably didn’t even think she was alive. She told herself that was fine by her, but there was an ache in her chest that was hard to ignore.
Maybe that was why she paused walking home when she saw a guy who was definitely about to get his ass kicked. He looked a few years older than her, probably about Chris’s age, and he was hopelessly outmatched. Even if he’d only been facing one Zetanbren, he’d have been lunch meat. Against three, there probably wouldn’t even be enough left of him to qualify as that.
She knew she ought to walk away. She ought to go back to her nice living quarters and settle down with an old book or something, but she found her legs moving of their own accord and approaching the group with her hand on her pistol.
“Hey,” she called, loud enough to make their heads turn towards her, “bozos! I gotta remind you about the violence rules in this colony? I mean, I know reading is challenging, but surely you must consider the law important enough to have at least portions of it committed to memory, right?” It was rich, coming from Sadie. She’d never respected the law, was a thief even now, but she knew that a lot of people did, and punishments for violence tended to be severe. After all, this was a civilized society, supposedly above all forms of prejudice. It was bullshit in practice, of course, but it was an image the station’s leaders were eager to uphold, even if it meant protecting a species as insignificant as homo sapiens.
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