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And a Star to Steer Her By: Part 3

In which Andrew grapples somewhat belatedly with his own mortality.

<- Part 2 | Zenith Station Masterlist | Part 4 ->

"Welcome aboard, Pastor Breckon."

Andrew didn't recognize the man who had just greeted him. He decided to put this down to memory loss, which was quickly becoming a convenient excuse for just about everything he did. Ducking through the shuttle doorway, he said, "Thanks. Erm…?"

The man—the shuttle pilot, by his uniform—grinned. "Colm." He stuck out a hand. "Colm Daly."

There was a little shuffle as he took in Andrew's right arm in its sling. Then, catching Andrew's left hand in an awkward half-shake, Colm tugged Andrew out of the entrance. "My sister's Grace Wilder."

That name was familiar. Andrew tried searching— Oh! The Wilders. "You came over with them when they moved to Zenith."

"Yes, sir. I wasn't sure you'd recognize me." Colm glanced over Andrew's shoulder.

The rest of the passengers were filing through, including Ambrosia Ward, who was serving as Andrew and Liz's escort out to Tauf.

Lowering his voice, Colm said, "One of the guys who picked you up from that marauder shared your picture. I tried to tell them who you were." His grin turned rueful. "No one believed me. Well, they believed you weren't a pirate. Anyone could see that."

He shouldn't ask. He didn't need to know. He wasn't going to ask.

"How do you know I'm not a pirate?" Andrew asked.

Colm bent his chin toward Andrew's boots.

It was always the boots. Laughing, Andrew said, "Well, thanks for trying.”

"Sure thing." Colm clapped a hand to Andrew's shoulder and turned toward the cockpit. "Best get seated. They're on a tight sched. Oh, and Pastor." He paused with a hand on the cockpit doorframe. "You probably saved my nephew's life, getting him off Zenith when you did. If there's any way I can repay you, you let me know."

"Do you know a way back to Zenith?" Andrew tried to make it sound like a joke. It almost worked.

Colm offered a sympathetic smile. "No, sir. But I hope you find one."

Colm closed the cockpit door, and Andrew moved into the passenger section of the shuttle. It was a short-range, capable of the hop from the Ireyon across to port and not much else. In addition to Ambrosia Ward, his and Liz’s escort included two armed guards. One look told Andrew that it was going to be a quiet trip.

Andrew pulled up the flight summary on one of the wall displays and eyed the distance between The Ireyon and the station. The flight timer showed the trip would last about an hour. He had no idea what was waiting for him at the end of that trip, even though he'd tried asking. At a guess, Ward would hand him off to station security and let them deal with him. Andrew was pretty confident that he had managed to convince her that he hadn't been in league with the pirates, which ruled out prison, but a holding cell wasn't much better.

He was sitting with his head in his good-ish hand, elbows on his knees, when his net connections came alive. Information flooded in, filling in the gaps and the silence he had endured for the past couple of weeks. The shock of it brought him bolt-upright in his seat.

Immediately he searched up Zenith Station. A half dozen articles came back, none of them useful.

Ambrosia Ward's stunned voice broke his concentration. "Your father is Owen Breckon?"

Andrew closed out of his search and blinked at her. Evidently she'd noticed whatever had happened to his link. Or she had just received a message from the station. The flight timer showed that they were about to begin their docking maneuvers.

"Does that mean I'm free to go?" Andrew asked the woman.

She wore a confused smile, her gaze inward as she read. "No. Maybe. My orders just changed. We have a different destination. Priority docking, too." She turned to say something to the guards.

Liz had watched this exchange in her usual opaque way. Catching her eye, Andrew asked Ward, "What about Liz?"

"Miss Bukharin will be given lodgings on Tauf until she decides on her next course of action."

If Liz had already decided on that course, she hadn't told Andrew. Now she unfolded her legs and reached under her seat for her bag.

Andrew had a bag, too, which contained a change of clothes and assorted toiletries courtesy of the Ireyon; and his book. He tossed it over a shoulder when they all stood to disembark. A memo from station security flashed on his display.

At the same time, Ward told him and Liz, "You've already been processed. This way."

The guards falling in behind them, Andrew and Liz followed Ward through the tunnel and into Tauf Station, Terminal E. The noise struck Andrew first. Zenith's single terminal was never this busy even when a shipment had just come in.

Liz, walking on his deaf side, pulled up short.

"What?" Andrew had to raise his voice to be heard.

Rather than shouting back at him, Liz sent, I forgot to disconnect from the public net.

Andrew grimaced in support, though he couldn’t sympathize. Most people didn’t have the kind of filters he’d sported since he’d first gone off-planet as a kid, and so he had didn’t share most people’s experience of being subjected to the dizzying array of news blasts, pop-up advertisements, digital hawkers, and inscrutable maps that you found in a public system. There were work-arounds, the easiest of which was to simply disconnect; but that option left only scant physical markers to use for finding your destination. Better to adapt to the noise, his college friends had told him, and maybe invest in a basic directory filter.

Some stations, like Zenith, had strict rules governing automated activity on the net. Part of that was because Zenith was so far beyond the regular communication lines that all news was old news, and so none of it was tagged for priority broadcasting.

Now, mostly as a way to distract himself from the worry threatening to override his hard-won self-control, Andrew connected to the net to see what the noise was all about. He cycled through predictable horror-fest of bombardments and evacuations, and the opinion pieces about how the world would end this time. All of that he had heard from Liz during her brief talkative moments back in the Ireyon’s infirmary. He shifted to entertainment news, hoping to get a better sense of local sentiments. Then it was his turn to pull up short at the sight of a familiar face.

There, on a promotional piece for some new epic drama, was his old school friend Cassie Dreymore. There were new crinkles at the corners of her midnight-blue eyes, and her hair was darker than he remembered, but her winning smile was as captivating as ever. He skimmed the article and learned that Cassie had transitioned out of her old familiar role of spunky young adventure heroine into something almost matronly by comparison. Where once she had headlined every script, in this new story she had been cast as the main character’s mentor. A note toward the end mentioned the recent birth of her third child.

Had Andrew been gone that long? He hadn't paid attention to the wider world in his brief visits to the family homestead; and though he kept up a regular correspondence with as many old friends and school companions as possible, plenty had fallen away as their paths diverged. Cassiopeia Dreymore, the girl who had taught him how to swim, was no longer a rising star, but an established artist.

A tug on his elbow drew Andrew out of his reverie. Absently, he let himself be towed off of a collision course with a cluster of teenagers. Liz kept her hand on his elbow and said something he didn't catch in his bad ear. Ward was well ahead of them, having plowed through the crowd while Andrew and Liz attempted to get their bearings.

“What?” Andrew called.

Liz’s short answer spelled it all out: “Rooter.”

Translation: He was conducting himself like a dirt-bound tourist with no concept of transit etiquette. Andrew bobbed his head in acknowledgement of this reproof and plowed on.

Fifteen minutes' walking brought them out of the terminal, down two decks, along a concourse lined with shops, and through a security gate into a private lounge with walls thick enough to muffle the chaos of the port.

"Miss Bukharin," Ward said, "you're with me. Mr. Breckon, through there." She pointed to a door marked "private office". To Andrew she added, "I'll be on-station another day or two if you need me for anything." She held out a hand. "Best of luck."

Andrew shook her hand absently, his eyes on the office. It had to be one of his father's people. That was the only thing that made sense. Someone had picked up news of his rescue and had come to meet him. To take him back to Andraste. He couldn't— No. Better see what they had to say before he started constructing elaborate escape plans.

"I'll find you in a bit," Andrew told Liz.

She shrugged at him and turned to follow their escort. Andrew tossed a prayer at her retreating back, just in case he was wrong and had missed another good-bye. Then, squaring his shoulders, he went to confront whatever Breckon Family representative had been sent to fetch him.

++++++++

In his sophomore year of college (the regular one, not the biblical one), Andrew had developed a drinking habit. Why, he never could say, because that period of his life was something of a void. Very likely it had had something to do with a dare. What he did know was that it had lasted all of four months before his brother Cade had shown up to remind him that he had Responsibilities and the Family Reputation to think about, and Andrew had promptly quit. (Which Cade had also warned against, but Andrew had been too terrified to take anything but the most direct route to sobriety.)

Cade probably hadn’t meant to sort his brother out so properly that Andrew later pivoted to a life in the ministry, but no one could say his scolding hadn’t been effective.

And memorable. Because it wasn’t the shock of his brother's impossible presence in the narrow office that now held Andrew frozen in the doorway. It was the fact that he recognized the expression on Cade’s face. It said “Responsibilities” and “The Family Reputation” and “I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This, We’re All So Ashamed of You”.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Andrew blurted.

Cade pressed his lips against several impolite replies and addressed the uniformed young woman he had been speaking with. “That should be all. Would you excuse us?”

The woman didn't even hesitate. Murmuring a polite good-bye and a reminder about where to find something-or-other, she scurried around Andrew and out the door.

“Close the door,” Cade said.

There commenced a brief war in Andrew’s head about the best response to the command, with the prevailing logic being that he could best retain his last shreds of dignity by not arguing.

When he turned back from closing the door, Cade was standing directly in front of him. He held his breath while his brother surveyed the bruising and scars on Andrew's face.

“How are you here?” Andrew asked.

Cade’s mouth pulled down into a frown. He caught Andrew’s left wrist and held it up to look at the splint on the ring finger. “Gigi sent a note.”

Translation: We (the family and their oldest and most useful friends) can’t trust you to stay out of trouble, so your name is automatically flagged on any reports we have access to; and, because it was the military, Gigi saw this report first.

“Right,” Andrew said as Cade finally released him. “But how? I was only on the ship for a week." No request for information could have run the comm lines all the way to Andraste, or wherever else Cade might have been. Given the current intergalactic situation, he had probably been off-world putting out fires.

Cade moved around the desk that filled half of the office and sat in the bare metal chair there. "We got the buoy ping." When Andrew only stared uncomprehendingly, he clarified, "The rendezvous buoy? You sent the pirates right to it."

"I did?"

Andrew had coordinates to a distress beacon on the line between Zenith and Westfell. It was one of the many fail-safes someone in the family had arranged during an early bout of paranoia after he moved to Zenith. However, he had zero recollection of sending the pirates to that location and activating that beacon.

Was that how the Ireyon had found them? Ward hadn't said anything about the beacon.

Cade swore under his breath. "It sent a signal. The inquiry from that ship reached me while I was in transit." Cade's frown deepened. He gestured to one of the chairs facing him across the desk. "Sit down, Andrew."

Andrew remained standing. “I thought Dad would have sent one of his security guys.”

“I was already in the area, trying to track you down.”

In spite of a persistent apprehension, Andrew smiled. “Not so you could pay my ransom, of course.”

Cade ignored the peace offering. "Sit."

Andrew tapped his splinted finger against his leg.

“Please.”

Andrew sat. The chair was as uncomfortable as it looked. “Is there any word from Zenith?” he asked.

“Mom and Dad are fine,” Cade said stiffly. “I sent them a note after I made contact with the ship that rescued you. From pirates.”

"The pirates who were probably not thrilled when they realized what the buoy was." A few gaps in his memory filled in with all of the flair of a toddler possessed with a box full of crayons. He waggled the fingers sticking out of the cast on his forearm. "Huh."

“What were you doing, Andrew?”

“Trying to help.”

“By getting kidnapped?”

So no chance at smalltalk. Oddly enough, that suited Andrew. “They came through the gate without any warning,” he said as calmly as he could. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I thought I was getting on the shuttle out to Kate’s cargo hauler—”

Cade cut in. “And that’s another thing. You of all people should know that shipping is monitored, especially at a time like this.” He was trying and failing to keep his tone level. “You should know better than to put in an unscheduled supply request like that!”

“Who said it was me?” Andrew cried.

Cade bent his chin to look down his nose at Andrew. He gave Andrew such an impression of their father’s “stop and think” look that Andrew flinched. “No one on Zenith has that kind of credit,” Cade said. “No one except Zenith’s own Pastor Breckon, who swore himself to a life of poverty so he could fit in with the locals.”

“That’s not fair.”

“And you dragged Kate into it,” Cade added, still speaking over him. “It’s bad enough that you got our family mixed up in this, but Kate?”

“She offered!”

“She wouldn’t have if you hadn’t said something in the first place!”

This was too much. “We’re out on the brink, Cade. No one would have thought twice about us until it was too late. I had to do something.”

“And what good did it do?” Cade snapped. “You painted a target on Zenith Station, calling in those shipments way out to a place that’s supposed to be of no consequence. It’s pure luck the gate went down when it did.”

“You don’t know—”

Cade’s voice continued to rise, moving out of boardroom territory and into broken-curfew-and-public-stunt levels. “And then you had to go and get yourself captured. For all we know, you were those pirates’ actual target. Lacerations and burns, a broken finger, a cracked wrist, cracked ribs, a bruised lung, and probably brain damage.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious.”

Andrew braced his hand on the arm of his chair and barely caught himself before he put weight on it. “I had to do something,” he said again. “And besides, you started it.”

“Started what?”

By a monumental effort, Andrew didn’t roll his eyes, but even that was almost too much for him. Even if he’d had the chance to prepare for this interrogation, his already-strained nerves wouldn’t have fared any better. Why was he being forced to defend himself for something he’d had no control over?

The ringing in his ear was getting worse. Feeling like he had to shout over it just to hear himself, Andrew said, “You sent me that message in the first place. And you knew there was no way for me to leave. Not with Nikki. Not with— What did you expect me to do?”

“Find a way!” Cade finally gave up on decorum and slapped his palm against the desk. “Those travel restrictions are just a precaution, not a rule. You could have taken a carrier that didn’t make any jumps. Stop glaring at me!”

“She almost died, Cade!”

It came out as nearly a scream. If it wasn't for the raw ache in his throat, Andrew never would have recognized the sound as coming from his own mouth.

Cade drew back, his eyebrows pulling together. “Who?” he demanded.

“Nikki!”

It was all he could get out past the animal terror bubbling in his chest and crowding out his airflow. Knowing, on a level too far down for him to reach, Andrew knew that he was panicking. He wrestled his broken arm out of its sling and leaned forward, elbows digging into his knees, face in his hands.

Here was the nightmare that had caught him out back home, the first reminder that his family wasn’t safe. The very thought of it consumed him the moment he gave it the slightest attention; and so he had ignored it, refused to confront it, pretended everything was fine.

And then Cade’s message had come through: Get out before it gets worse.

The cast on his right hand chafed against his skin and snagged on the scabbed-over cuts on his face. He couldn’t get enough oxygen. Over the ringing in his ears, he could just hear Cade calling his name.

Andrew didn’t move. Didn’t dare. Someone had fired a weapon right next to his face, and his ear screamed with the pain of it. The chaos in the room was a whine against that horrible ringing.

All he could see was blood.

Hands caught his wrists, pulling his hands down. Cade’s blue eyes searched his. His mouth moved.

Shifting his grip to Andrew’s shoulders, Cade shook him once, hard enough that their heads knocked together. That was enough to jar Andrew back to reality. He blinked and tried to pull away.

Cade held on. “What is going on?” he demanded. He wasn’t shouting now, but his voice was raw with strain. He sat back on his heels, bracing his hands on Andrew’s knees. “Tell me.”

Andrew anchored himself in his brother’s gaze and said, as quickly as he could, “She almost died when Jayme was born. And then you sent that message, and I didn’t know what to do, and I asked Kate because I didn’t want to get the family involved. I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t do that. Kate hid my name on everything, covered it up as much as she could.”

He stopped to take a breath. Spots danced in his vision. He traced a finger along the scar on his temple and focused on his breathing until his vision was clear again.

Cade was frowning at that ring of raised scar tissue.

Pressing his arm against his ribs, Andrew whispered, “I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t going to let Zenith die. Not without a fight.”

For a long minute they sat there, neither speaking, both trying to make sense of everything that had led to this point, trying to see what they should have done differently. Trying to decide if it mattered.

To Andrew’s shock, Cade looked away first. He reached behind for the edge of the desk and pulled himself to his feet. Leaning heavily against the desk, he said, “Oasis.” At last he began to understand the scope of Andrew’s dilemma.

“I wasn’t just going to run away.” Andrew lifted his chin to frown at his brother. One leg jogged in spite of his efforts to calm down. “Even if I could have taken Nikki and Jayme with me. That’s not— I’m not—”

But it didn’t matter, because he’d left anyway. Against his will, but he’d left. And he didn’t know why those men had come in the first place, whether it was to take advantage of an isolated station with a jump gate or because they thought Zenith hid something valuable beneath the surface. Zenith had gone dark, and he didn’t know why.

Cade dragged a hand through his hair. There were streaks of gray at his temples. He looked like their father.

“And Kate?” Cade asked.

“Still there. We were supposed to meet her— There was a mix-up with the shuttles. I ended up on the gate instead of her hauler. They were prepping things to send out one last carrier, to take out a bunch of mechanics and engineers whose contracts were up. We were going to put a few more of our people on with them, try to get them somewhere….” Safer? They hadn’t known then, and he still didn’t know now.

“And then what?”

“I don’t know how, but that marauder got through instead.”

Cade sat down and folded his hands on the desk. “Did they recognize you? Did it seem like they were looking for you?”

“I don’t think so. Why would they?”

“Because Gigi’s theory is that they didn’t care about the extra supply runs, and they weren’t thinking that Zenith was secretly a space port or a military base. She thinks they were looking for leverage.”

A cold feeling wormed its way into Andrew’s gut. The thought had occurred to him while he’d lain in that brig, but he hadn’t let himself entertain it. It couldn’t be possible. He refused to believe it.

Because if that was why the attack had happened, it would mean that all of this—Kate and Nikki and Jayme and the church, Liz, Martin—really was his fault, and not just because he’d been sloppy and reckless.

“You— Gigi thinks I was the target?”

Cade shrugged one shoulder. “What happened on the bridge?”

A flash of light. Thunder inches from his face. Now it was Andrew’s turn to look away as he focused on arranging his arm back in its sling. “The gate crew tried to fight. The warden knew something was up as soon as the ship came through, of course, but they were armed.” He shook his head. “I don’t really know what happened. I think there might have been a split among the marauder crew. They grabbed me.”

“And then they—” Cade broke off sharply with a disgusted noise.

Andrew smiled ruefully. “And then they beat the hell out of me.”

A mirthless laugh lifted Cade’s chest. “Well, it was bound to happen eventually. What did you say to them?”

"I thought they were just venting their frustration. Like I said, something was up with their crew. They left some of them on Zenith."

"They left part of their crew?"

"I don't— I'm not sure. I'm having trouble remembering the details."

Cade hummed in thought. "Well, that can't be helped right now."

They sat in silence for a minute, both of them contemplating the possibilities.

“So now what?” Andrew finally asked. He was aware of how he was sitting, slumped and haggard in his seat, but he couldn’t bring himself to correct the posture. He was exhausted, and Cade’s arrival had only made it worse.

"Everything's a mess right now,” Cade said. “I already put in a departure request, but it could be a couple of days. My pilot is working out a course in the meantime. Might not be any good by the time we leave. What?” Cade had explained the plan in an abstracted way, up until he caught the shift in Andrew’s expression.

“There’re ships going back toward Zenith?”

Cade answered slowly, as if speaking to a child. “No, Andrew. There’s no way back to Zenith. The gate is down and there’s a whole cold war between here and there.”

“There has to be some way—”

“There isn’t!” Cade pushed away from the desk and leaned back, covering his face with his hands. He said something unsavory through his teeth. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. You aren’t going back there. No one is.” He dragged his hands over his face. “Look. You did everything you could. You gave them a fighting chance. As soon as there’s a way back to the brink that won’t get you killed, I swear, I’ll help you get there."

Now it was Andrew who refused the peace offering. He did his best to draw himself up in his seat. “What if it was Giuliana out there?”

Not many people could make Cademon Breckon flinch. Andrew had only ever managed it twice—three times, counting just now. His stomach twisted, but he wouldn’t apologize. Cade needed to understand, and if that meant Andrew had to invoke his brother's dead wife to get through to him, then so be it.

Cade’s hands lowered into fists on his knees. He leveled a cold blue gaze on Andrew.

Andrew met him glare for glare. He wasn't going to apologize. He wasn't going back to Andraste to be put under house arrest or declared insane or whatever else the family decided they had to do to keep him there. He was going back to Nikki and Jayme. He'd made a promise.

He wouldn’t apologize.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said.

Cade pushed to his feet. “Pull yourself together, Andrew. As soon as we have clearance, we’re going home.”

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