Junkyard Heroes Read online

  “Is it my imagination, or are the Cavers acting out way more often, lately?” she asked the group as they joined the throng at the back of the garden. It would take a few minutes to file everyone through the gap in the bushes and over the fence into the alley behind the garden.

  “Farnell Acardi has been vocal on the Forum,” Cai said. “At least once a day.”

  “You read his shit?” Peter challenged.

  “I read everything,” Cai said simply.

  “You’re a Caver?” Peter’s tone was withering.

  “I want to understand why they do what they do, so I read Acardi’s posts.” Cai shrugged and moved forward a small pace with those in front of him. “That does not mean I think the Endurance is really a construct buried in a cave while Terra recovers from annihilation.”

  “Or that there is a conspiracy to keep us all locked in the cave while the government grows rich from our labors,” Lizette added, her tone as dry as Cai’s.

  Everyone laughed, including some of the strangers around them.

  Cai heaved himself over the fence, then turned back and held out his hand to Ségolène, to help her over. “Most Cavers are misfits who can’t put together even a simple life for themselves. They survive only because of basic rations and government support programs. Their misery draws them to Acardi’s ranks because it is easier to believe a conspiracy is holding them back, than to acknowledge their own inadequacies.” He let Ségolène’s hand go and turned back to help the next person.

  Lizette stepped over the fence with a grin.

  “Still feel deprived, Peter?” Cai asked him as Peter hopped over and turned back to help the next person.

  “I’m still waking up alone tomorrow, aren’t I?” Peter asked.

  Cai blew him a kiss.

  Peter grinned.

  As soon as everyone was over, they stepped out of the stream of people heading back around to the front of the garden on the Field of Mars side, where the open area of the market was located. “Might be easier to use the Aventine side of the district to get back to the Wall,” Lizette said.

  “No one is heading that way, at least,” Peter added, striding in the direction of the narrow alley that formed between the last of the buildings and the hull of the ship. He rapped the wall as he reached it. “Seems pretty real to me,” he said.

  “It’s what’s on the other side of that metal the Cavers are disputing,” Cai pointed out and halted next to Peter, who had also stopped. They were both looking down the alley.

  “What the hell?” Lizette said, coming up behind them.

  Noa hurried over to them and looked.

  There was a tight pack of men halfway along the length of the alley. Noa recognized the color of one of their jackets. They had been in the Garden tonight, too. They were bent over something lying on the ground between them.

  One drew his foot back and kicked, as she watched.

  The thing on the ground between them curled up tighter and groaned.

  “Oh, my sweet stars,” Noa whispered. “It’s a man!”

  Chapter Two

  Noa ran toward the gang. “Hey! Hey!” Fury drove her forward. It made her wave her fist, even though she had no idea how she could take on seven grown men.

  Peter streaked past her. So did Lizette and Daniel. All three were bigger than her. They screamed protests, too.

  The combined sound of their anger made the gang look around.

  Noa sprinted. She could hear Ségolène and Cai behind her, keeping pace.

  Seeing six people bearing down on them made the drinkers hesitate. They looked at each other, while the man on the ground between them rolled in agony. Then they turned and ran, heading for the far end of the alley.

  Only Lizette ran past the wounded man, screaming insults at the cowards. Everyone else stopped around the man.

  “Peter,” Noa said. “Can we move him?”

  Peter dropped to his knees and put his hand on the man’s shoulder and his knee. “Let me see,” he said quietly.

  The man was aware enough to relax. Slowly, he uncurled.

  Noa drew in a breath. The man’s face was bloody and bruised. There was a long cut on one cheekbone and what looked like a deep scrape on the other, both of them adding to the blood already there.

  Despite the blood, Noa recognized him. It was one of the regulars at the garden, the one they had nicknamed “Angry Guy.” He stayed at the front of the garden with the serious drinkers. He always drank alone and scowled at anyone who got close.

  Peter was pressing his fingers along the man’s arms and legs. Then he pulled aside the edges of his coat and more gently, probed his torso. The man groaned again.

  Peter screwed up his nose. “Nothing is broken. Without diagnostics, the best I can say is that I think he’s just got bruising. Next time he pees, we’ll know if that’s all it is.”

  “Then we need to watch him for a while?” Noa asked.

  “Best if we do,” Peter said.

  “My place,” Cai said. “No one else is there at the moment.”

  Cai’s apartment was on the Fifth Wall and closer than anyone else’s.

  “You go ahead and get the spatula,” Noa told him. “Lizette, Peter, could you carry him?”

  “Shouldn’t we just drop him at the hospice?” Ségolène asked.

  “No!” the man said and gasped.

  Noa understood why Ségolène thought a hospice was the right place for him. She was the only one of them who wasn’t Wall-raised. She came from an upright family in the Esquiline, law-abiding and prosperous.

  Noa also understood why the angry man was saying no to being taken to a government-run establishment. Wall-dwellers looked after themselves. They had to. It was why all of them had melted away from the Garden the moment the Bridge guards had shown up.

  “The nearest hospice is on the other side of the Field,” Noa pointed out, as Peter and Lizette hauled the man to his feet, an arm each around him. His head hung between them, his shaggy hair flopping forward.

  Blood dripped to the floor.

  “I’ll fix him up, no problems,” Peter assured Ségolène.

  Ségolène looked unhappy. “Well….”

  “We should hurry,” Daniel added, pointing out the blood splatters with his toe.

  Ségolène nodded. “I’ll go ahead and help Cai. What do you need, Peter?”

  “Clean rags, water. The rest I have on me.”

  He and Lizette moved as fast as they could down the lane. That left Daniel and Noa staring at the blood pooled on the ground.

  “It’ll dry up and no one will notice it by morning,” Noa decided. The floor was a dark, raw metal here and the lights were always dim.

  “People use this alley all the time,” Daniel pointed out as he stepped over the splatters and walked along beside her. His head was no higher than hers. They were the shortest of the group, although only Daniel seemed to genuinely not care about that.

  “I don’t think anyone will use it tonight,” Noa replied. “Not with the fuss at the Garden.”

  Peter had long legs, so he and Lizette soon turned at the end of the alley and disappeared from view, their patient between them.

  “Hey, Noa,” Daniel said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know, if it had been me tonight, I wouldn’t have dumped you. I’d still be there, waiting for you.” His pale blue eyes skittered away from her gaze.

  Noa squeezed his arm. “I know that, Daniel,” she said gently.

  “Good.” He picked up the pace. “We should hurry and catch the spatula the rest of them are using. There’s only one working right now.”

  * * * * *

  Peter carried a small pharmacy of drugs and tools around in his coat pockets, as well as more esoteric recreational substances that brought in the money he used to develop the medicinals that really helped people.

  While Ségolène and Cai stood by as assistants, Peter cleaned off the angry man’s face and neck, then sealed and dressed the su
perficial wounds. He prodded the man’s belly and looked thoughtful when he groaned again.

  Then he pulled out a thick, blocky instrument and slotted a cap-stick into it and tapped on the control screen.

  “Nanobots?” Cai asked softly.

  “I can’t see inside, so I’ll send in nanos that can assess and fix at the same time,” Peter said. “If there’s nothing more than bruising, they’ll just pass out in his urine.” He glanced at the man. “Do you understand?”

  “I’m in pain, not stupid,” the man gasped.

  “Well, then,” Peter said shortly and jammed the instrument up against his side.

  The man hissed.

  Peter plucked the cap stick out of the instrument and tossed it into the recycler. He put the instrument away. “Happy recovery,” he told the man. He resettled his coat. “I’m going home,” he announced to everyone crowded into the tiny sitting room, up by the end of the bed the man laid on.

  He shouldered his way through them and slammed the door as he left. Outside, Noa heard the spatula edge grind against the wall, as it lifted away.

  Ségolène looked down at the man. “You just pissed off the one man who can help you. If you’re bleeding internally, you’ll drown in your own blood, because none of us know what to do about it.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Ségolène shrugged. “We should have left you in the alley, for all the gratitude you’re offering.” She moved past Cai, shifting awkwardly around him in the narrow cot-space between the sitting room and the wet areas at the back of the apartment.

  Noa patted her shoulder.

  “Why were they beating you?” Cai asked him. “I know who did it. I know their tempers. You must have set them off in some way.”

  The man was in pain, yet he still shrugged, even lying restlessly on the bed. “I looked at them wrong. Is there anything I can have for the pain?”

  “All the pain killers just left with Peter,” Cai told him. He didn’t sound upset about it. “You just looked at them?”

  “They were upset because the Cavers interrupted their drinking.” He hissed as he shifted on the bed and pressed his hand to his belly. “I was a handy vent.”

  “Why you?” Noa asked, moving up beside Cai.

  The man looked away.

  “Who are you?” Noa added.

  “Good question,” Cai said.

  “None of your fucking business,” the man growled.

  Cai’s jaw rippled. He opened his mouth to speak, his eyes glittering. Noa put her hand on his arm, forestalling him. She shook her head.

  Cai rolled his eyes and moved back into the sitting room with the others.

  Noa settled at the end of the bed where Cai had been standing. It put her directly in front of the man. She could see his face clearly now. His black eyes watched her. There was wariness there.

  “You use your anger as a shield,” she told him. “That’s okay. I know a lot of people who do it. Lots of Wall-dwellers find it saves time to be pissed at everything. So I recognize when anger is just a habit, as it is with you. We helped you tonight, just because we don’t like the idea of seven people attacking one. We could easily have turned around and gone home the other way, but we didn’t. You owe us for that. Instead, you’ve offended Peter and Ségolène and Cai and they’re my friends. So I’m telling you now that if you don’t back down and be nice, then I’m going to ask Cai and Lizette to dump you right back in the alley where we found you. Bleeding or not, I don’t care. You can spend the night on cold metal instead of a warm mattress.”

  His jaw moved as he clenched it. Then his gaze shifted away from her. “Thanks for helping me,” he said brusquely.

  “You’re welcome,” Noa said just as stiffly.

  “I’m just…not used to it,” he added.

  “Used to what?”

  “Kindness.”

  “Lots of Wallers aren’t,” Cai said softly.

  The man rolled his eyes. “I’m not a Waller.”

  Noa blinked. “You’re not? Then why are you always here? In the Garden? I see you in the market, too.”

  He tried to shift himself into a more comfortable position and hissed again and paused. Moving more slowly, he resettled. “No one knows me here.”

  Cai pressed forward. “Those seven did, though, didn’t they? That’s why they thought you’d be a good punching bag.”

  “Who are you?” Noa repeated. “Is who you are the reason you’re so angry?”

  The man breathed heavily. Fury shone in his eyes.

  “Remember, be nice,” Cai said.

  That seemed to add to his temper. The man’s jaw rippled as he worked it.

  “We’re not those people,” Noa said, trying to coax him into speaking.

  “No, you’re the mechanics. The losers at the back of the bar.”

  Lizette sucked in a hurt breath. The others shifted on their feet, swallowing the insult.

  Noa nodded, letting the truth of his barb sink in. “Yeah, that’s us,” she agreed softly. “Only, we’re the ones who stopped and helped you. No one else did.”

  He swallowed. Closed his eyes. “The first few times, you let it go,” he said quietly.

  “Let what go?” Noa asked.

  “The insults. The jeers.” His eyes opened and he looked past Noa to where the others stood behind her. “I know you know what I mean. You just did it yourselves.”

  Cai cleared his throat.

  The man’s gaze came back to Noa. “The first dozen times, the first hundred times, it slides off. You make it run off because what else can you do?”

  Noa’s heart hurt. There was such agony in the man’s voice, buried deep. It was a pain she recognized.

  Yet he wasn’t looking for acknowledgement. “Finally, eventually, I got sick of apologizing for being my father’s son.”

  Surprise skittered through her. Noa stared at him, confused.

  Cai, the reader, the only one of them who liked to hang out on the Forum, stepped to the end of the bed next to her and gripped the edges, his knuckles white. “Stars and space save us…you’re Haydn Forney.”

  “Who?” Daniel asked, sounding as puzzled as Noa.

  The man Cai had called Haydn Forney looked bitter.

  “Haydn Forney…” Cai repeated. “Farnell Acardi’s son.”

  Chapter Three

  After a night of broken sleep, Noa was more than happy to get up and go to work. At least work would take her mind off the events of last night.

  Haydn Forney. The son of the leader of the Cavers, right there in Cai’s bed!

  Now they knew who he was, it explained everything—including why seven inebriated men thought taking their temper out on him would make up for the Cavers interrupting their evening of drinking.

  Understanding didn’t get rid of Hadyn Forney, though. He was a responsibility that, suddenly, none of them wanted. A fellow Waller in trouble didn’t even require thinking about. Of course they would help. Hadyn Forney was a different issue.

  They had huddled right next to the apartment door to discuss it, which was as far away from the seething man in the bed they could get while still remaining in the apartment. It was only five meters away, so they kept their voices down.

  “Peter said we had to watch him,” Noa reminded them.

  “What if the Cavers come after us for getting involved?” Daniel asked. “They’re not just smelly, those guys. They like to use their fists when no one is looking.”

  “That’s just rumor,” Cai said.

  “Is it?” Lizette asked seriously. “I saw what those rumors did to Eddie Horner on the Third Wall. And he just called them stupid. What we’ve done…that’s different.”

  “He said he hangs around the Walls because no one knows him here,” Noa said.

  “No wonder he didn’t want to go to a hospice,” Ségolène added.

  “We haven’t done anything wrong,” Noa said firmly. “We helped him. Not even the Cavers could be offended about that.”

 
“They find everything objectionable,” Cai said. “It rationalizes their delusions.”

  “How soon until we can get rid of him?” Noa asked.

  “I’ll be gone by morning,” Haydn Forney said, from the bed. “Then you can forget I was here.”

  Noa turned, her cheeks heating. “Not until we know you’re not going to collapse and die from some complication we overlooked.”

  “I’ll be gone by morning,” he repeated and rolled over onto his side, obscuring his face.

  Cai shrugged, his brow raised. He was happy with that answer. He pulled out his reader. “I found a new archive, anyway. I think it might actually date back to before the Endurance left Earth. I’ll sit and read and watch him. I can always call Peter back if something happens. The rest of you should go home. We all have work in the morning.”

  They had reluctantly left Cai alone with Haydn Forney. Noa comforted herself with the knowledge that Forney wanted to escape the apartment sooner than anyone else wanted him gone.

  As soon as she rose, she moved quietly over to the kitchen counter, to avoid waking Rowena, her assigned roommate, and sent a text message to Cai. His response was swift.

  Gone when I woke from a doze. All good.

  It relieved her, yet her guilt still nagged. They had washed their hands of him as soon as they realized who he was. If he really did suffer complications, they would share the blame.

  She dressed and headed for the Field of Mars. Her unit had been assigned to cleaning the tops of the horizontal ducts and pipes on the port side of the Field. Like everyone else, Noa had assumed it was make-work, until Cai pointed out that dust was a real problem in an enclosed ship like the Endurance. It decreased air quality, clogged vents and carbon strippers and could work its way inside machinery and equipment that had been sealed air-tight, to cause even more mischief.

  Noa reminded herself of that as the weeks of cleaning dragged on. Lately, though, they had moved higher up the structures, using harnesses and safety tethers. It had added an element of fun to the work. The view from the top of the Field of Mars was breathtaking. Sometimes, she could see all the way from the Palatine hub to the top of the Aventine, where the Bridge pressure wall ran. From up near the roof, people looked very small, down below.