Local Star by Aimee Ogden (ebook reader online free txt) 📕

the temporary air circulators brought in to work around the damage. A Ceebee agent in the Hab had handed off a biobomb packet to Lanniq. That agent had then fled Vivik for greener Ceebee pastures in the Webward Pearls or farther still. Lanniq was left to plant the packet on the surface of the Hab during one of his training flights. Upon detonation, it had opened a hole in Justice, and the microorganisms hadn’t been stopped before they wreaked havoc on the facilities of the Arcade. Every plastic surface had been consumed by the corrosion Triz had seen from the wrenchworks wallport. In Justice, too, there had once been circles of plastiprint benches in the spectator ring. Now, most of the gathered crowd stood. But they stood solemnly, and proudly, to listen as the ashen-faced Ceebees recited their confessions.

A sedate pallor hung over the hearings, absent of the usual theatrics from the Advocates. Four civilians and two Fleet officers had been killed by the Ceebee plot. And then there was Lanniq.

The crowds did not boo or jeer when the Ceebees explained the placement of undetonated missiles in the destroyed Arcology at Hedgehome, as an insurance technique against the expected Fleet reprisal. Only a few angry murmurs cut through as the junior Ceebee officer demonstrated the advanced techniques used to falsify the firing solution Casne had allegedly programmed. Finally, the Ceebee’s Advocate instructed them to demonstrate the final component in their confession: the backdoor exploit into Fleet personnel files the Ceebees used to find the best candidates to cause mayhem to the Fleet.

Lanniq had been one such candidate, of course. Originally targeted for his wife’s position in Counterintelligence, they’d been able to wield his stray Ceebee nephew as a lever against him. The boy’s life in exchange for Rocan’s freedom and Casne’s honor: a trade he had chosen, however painfully, to make.

And of course, Casne Vivik Veling herself had been a gold mine of a find for them: not only was her father the only high-ranking civilian tribune in the nearest several systems, but they also shared an unstable family psych profile to boot. Casne and Quelian sat, mirror images of stone-faced statues, as the Ceebee witnesses and Justice questioners dissected their relationship. Of course, Casne wasn’t the only one who had been affected; two more earlier Interior Watch investigations were set to be reopened immediately based on the new evidence at hand as well.

“Thorough,” noted Quelian, who looked odd to Triz in his red Justice robes rather than a stained jumpsuit. She wasn’t sure whether he meant the Ceebees’ work or that of the questioners. He didn’t look at his daughter, who sat just inside the ring of spectators. But her hard, dark eyes bored holes through the fabric over his heart. Triz, forced to watch from the distance of the spectator circle, opened and closed a valve clip from the Tiresh that she still needed to fix, to make her hands forget they weren’t holding Casne’s. She checked the back of the gallery from time to time, too, but Kalo never did manage to put in an appearance. In fact, Triz hadn’t seen him since she deposited him at the medical bay. As if she wasn’t worried enough already.

Earlier, in private, the Ceebees had testified about Lanniq, and provided details on the location of his family to be passed on to those in the Fleet who could do something about the situation. His Ceebee nephew was still alive, they swore. The Fleet assured Casne that the young man would be retrieved and returned to his family in due course; that Lanniq had not died for nothing. That loyalty to family over Fleet was not an offense to be paid out in the boy’s blood. Triz had heard about that part of the deal only in passing, a few terse words between Casne and her father on the way into the hearing. For now, in public, they kept to the matter at hand, and finally, the three tribunes voted unanimously to void the charges against Casne. Beside Triz, Veling burst into tears, and the other quadparents were unable to contain a gleeful whoop. Casne looked up at the three quadparents, a half-grin splitting her face as the Fleet tribune told her to go join them. She didn’t wait for the guard to open the gate around the spectators’ ring, but leaped it with a one-handed boost and flung herself into her mother’s waiting arms. Triz’s face warmed watching them and she turned to go, to let Casne and her family celebrate together.

But Veling caught her sleeve before she could retreat. “Where do you think you’re going? This family has a lot of celebrating to catch up on.”

Now the warm flush in Triz’s cheeks felt close to superheating. Too bad she didn’t have a deft mechanic around to manually input some coolant. “I should let you have some time to yourselves,” she protested, tugging her arm free of Veling’s grasp.

“‘To ourselves’ is supposed to include you, woman, so stop trying to wriggle out of it. You’re not a guttergirl anymore, and we’re not a churnpit you have to escape from before it crushes you.”

“Aren’t we?” said Casne, and picked Triz up in a black hole of a hug. The sensation was not unlike struggling for air in the vented Tiresh cockpit, except warmer and with a much stronger sense of up and down. “Tea at Mirede’s. Come on.”

“Our treat!” Veling insisted.

The crowd thinned around them, and they started picking their way toward the nearest entrance. But Casne stopped and looked over her shoulder at the empty dais. Triz’s hand found her waist, and Casne turned back to her with a small, taut smile. “I’ll tell you what, Mama,” she said. “You and Dad and Damu go on ahead. We’ll meet you there in a little while.”

Veling’s hands stretched out to squeeze one of Casne’s shoulders and one of Triz’s. “We’re a family, you know that, don’t you? All of us, and