by Brian D. Hinson

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I concentrated through my magnispeks, jaw tense, as I inked an extra ration pass on a fellow refugee’s wrist. Zosime’s hand lay palm up and strapped to the tiny plastic table, my tattwand carefully guided by the only hand I had. My art supplies and the tatt equip had made the trip, along with my son Philo. But the war on Mars had taken my wife Melia and (could things get even worse? Of course) my left arm.

I flinched at the sharp rap at the door, but thankfully the needle wasn’t on flesh at that moment. Philo opened the circular, flimsy hatch.

I cringed at the gruff voice. “Your dad here?” There floated the bulk of Drago in the null grav, his black hair cut in bands along his skull, his trademark shirt with the red horizontal stripes wet at the armpits. And he was near enough to smell. Drago smiled in a friendly-not-friendly manner. “Good afternoon, Fane.”

“What can we do for you?” Out of politeness I turned off the tattwand and its high-pitched buzz wound down to silence.

“Perfect choice of words. I’m in need of a favor. A friend of mine is having some difficulty. Augustus. He needs your space. Strictly temporary.”

My stomach shriveled. We rode the Laomedon, a repurposed freighter. The vast cargo hold had been divided into sectors, each a maze of thousands of habicubes. We were in transit from Mars to the Trojan Network halfway along Jupiter’s orbit, four months into a ten-month voyage. This mission of mercy collected us refugees to be integrated into asteroid society.

There was little on-board security. Just sit tight, eat your rations. You’re safe now, thank us later. In our sector, the old warlord Drago had made sure he was in charge, his entourage of goons backing him up for the spoils of stolen goods and space. Drago aimed to reassign our cube through his unofficial authority.

“You’re known for fairness, Drago, yet you’re making a one-armed man and his ten-year-old child homeless?”

“For a bit. Only for a bit.”

“I must finish this,” I said as I motioned to the picticode on Zosime’s arm, the nest of crisscrossing lines half finished. “Please.”

Drago smiled as if magnanimous. “Of course. A couple hours.” His grin disappeared as he looked to Zosime. “Hope you didn’t pay much. My friend’s tatt didn’t work.” Drago slipped back into the corridor.

Zosime shot me an angry look. “You do work for them?”

I shook my head as I flicked the tattwand back to life. “I botched that one on purpose so they would leave me alone. I stay clear of their gangland bullshit.”

“Looks like that didn’t work out so well.” Her three gray-white braids twisted in a halo above her in the zero grav. Her lined face looked a bit older with sympathy. Sure, she was native Mars and mid-sixties, but she kept ultra-fit without any bioaugs, so she claimed, and did 2G squats in the gym daily. “I’m really sorry. Move in with me.”

“That’s a nice offer, but we can hang our sleepsacks in the common area.”

“It’s getting dangerous out there. I won’t take no for answer. And it’s me and Junia.” Zosime dropped her voice low. “I bet I know what’s going on. Junia ran off from Augustus after their last fight. She came to me. Drago told her to stay for a while. Neither of us minded. He’s moving Augustus in your space, taking the empty cube left by the both of them for himself.” Zosime had gained the status of a matriarch after looking after some of the women in trouble.

“But why not just take this one and leave Augustus alone? He’s one of his goons.”

“That space is a cubic meter larger.”

I shook my head. “Thanks. Pack everything, Philo.”

Poor kid’s been through so much he didn’t complain. He’s seen worse, losing his mother back on Mars. There wasn’t much to pack, anyway. Refugees were only allowed five kilograms of clothes and personal items.

Flipping down the magnispeks with the tail of the wand, I went back to work as Zosime chatted with Junia on her watch, spreading word of Drago’s latest cruelty. I had to trade our watches for food back on Mars, even though the speks were worth more. Crucial for work this intricate, I knew I had made the right choice.

Another hour and Zosime’s picticode was complete. I packed all my art equip as my left hand, missing for a year now, throbbed, as it often did in times of anxiety. Too often, of late.

Out in the hexagonal corridor we went, Philo with his backpack strapped, his favorite model of a UN Hurricane space fighter in his hand. Each wall held three stacked cubes, the third and sixth saved for traffic handholds. The stink of sweat, rotting food, and piss was so familiar as to not be a bother. Not a sanibot in sight the past month, likely all pillaged for parts. Floating debris, mostly food bubble wrappers and piss bags, were swatted aside.

Philo followed me as I one-handed handhold to handhold, awash in the noise of a thousand conversations and a loud scrap band thrumming beats on makeshift metal drums.

We passed the common area, aka the CA, the nexus of our sector, the newsscreen blaring propaganda of the fabulous new life awaiting us. Here was the gym, the toilets and ablution center, the ration dispensary.

In Zosime’s cube floated Junia in a corner, her left arm in a cast of cloth strips. Things were worse than I’d thought. She saw where my eyes lingered. “It’s nothing. More from my lack of exercise than anything else.” She turned from me and the lie, allowing us space with our duffles. Junia flicked a lock of her short black hair behind her ear and resumed some entertainment on her watch.

“How long are we going to be here?” asked Philo.

“I don’t know.”

*–***–*-*-

Screams woke me. I struggled free of my sleepsack in the darkness. From my thigh pocket I pulled my sharpened palette knife. Silhouetted by the red light of simulated night beyond the open hatch, Junia’s screams devolved to sobs. News, not violence, had birthed the tears.

Zosime hugged her. Someone outside the hatch pushed away. Junia cried as Zosime held her and offered soothing words. Beyond the hatch people popped out to see if there was any danger. I closed the door. Philo’s eyes were wide, his arms out from his sleepsack, fingers picking at his ravaged nails. “It’s okay,” I told him.

“It’s not okay!” shouted Junia, breaking from Zosime’s embrace, her glare boring into me. “You did this!”

Zosime grabbed Junia by her hair. “Shush. Don’t you dare bring any more attention to this cube,” she hissed. “You’ll get someone else killed.”

Someone had been killed. My phantom left hand throbbed.

Junia resumed her crying, muffled in Zosime’s shoulder.

I raised my eyebrows in a question.

Zosime whispered, just loud enough to be heard over Junia, “Last night they announced that rations would be cut. They know there’s cheat pictocodes.”

“No one told me,” I replied.

“Some went out hunting, forcing people to show their arms, looking for extra codes. Someone murdered Augustus.”

“But he was one of Drago’s —”

“It didn’t matter to that mob.”

The tragic irony: The code I had done for Augustus didn’t even work. And if they murdered him, what would they do to the guy with the tattwand? But did I really do so many as to unbalance the food supply? There had to be more artists out there.

Zosime stroked Junia’s back in circles as she held her, the sobs now silent but her body still shook. Zosime grit her teeth. She had always struck me as tough, the sector matriarch, but anxiety wrinkled her forehead. She’d be a target with the new code I did for her just yesterday.

I pulled the tattwand from my duffle and loaded the ink cartridge.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, eyes crystals of anger.

“When you’re ready, let’s make your pictocode into something else.”

 *–***–*-*-

I still inked the flowering vines over Zosime’s pictocode when the corridor lights transitioned from the red of night to the white of day. A Samaritan had stopped by with a sedative for Junia and she slept, mouth open and a drool drifting away in stringed droplets.

“That’s good for now, okay? It can be a work in progress and no one will kill me. It’s about ration time.” Zosime examined her forearm. “It looks really nice.”

Bleary-eyed Philo, just crawling from his sleepsack, said, “Make yourself some tough-looking tatts so no one messes with you.” He often joked about my lack of skinart.

“No one messes with the one-armed guy because it’d make them look bad.”

Zosime shot me a hard look that stated: Don’t be so sure of that. Not anymore. She headed out to the CA.

I disassembled the tattwand. As I snapped the case shut Junia snorted and opened her red-rimmed eyes. I didn’t say anything. What’s to be said? Her husband, although not the kindest soul, had been murdered. She was not okay, and it would be pointless to ask. Except, “Can I get you anything? Yesterday’s coffee?”

She shook her head and wiped her mouth, wincing — her injured arm must have sounded off. She mumbled something, voice thick with grogginess.

“What was that?”

“I said,” Junia enunciated loudly, “you have to go.” Her eyes no longer dull, but iced with resentment.

“To get rations? It’s not time —”

“You can’t stay here. Your tattoo got Augustus killed last night. You think I can look at your face every minute of every day?”

“I… didn’t mean anything bad to happen.”

“Doesn’t matter, does it? He’s dead.” She pulled herself from her sleepsack and plucked a bubble of cold coffee from the wall.

I clasped my hands together. “Can Philo stay here? Just nights, maybe?”

Junia sucked a draught of coffee, closed the valve and stuck it back to the wall. She kicked off violently at me, bouncing us both off the far wall. She grunted as her broken arm struck my chest, adding more fire to her eyes. “You want me to start screaming that the tattoo guy is in here? Huh? What’ll happen then?”

“All right.”

“You and your little boy need to pack your shit. Other people know you. Don’t need anyone breaking in here. Even Zosime said something like that, didn’t she? Find another friend.”

Keep Philo safe, whispered my wife’s ghost.

“Okay,” I said, palm forward in surrender. “Just give us a minute to pack.”

*–***–*-*-

Back on Mars in the warrens of Argos we had a decent life before the war. The botched election threw the politically polarized city into riotous chaos. Armed bands organized, claimed territories, and attacked the splintered government remains. Farms and greenhouses had been destroyed as collateral, and mercy supply drops were confiscated by the neighborhood warlord du jour. My wife Melia and I had been working on a wall mural, something for the Red Roses, the faction lip servicing us working folks. A flash, a bang, then darkness. When dragged from the rubble I was semiconscious, my left arm no longer with me. The body of Melia was never recovered. Some nights Philo still called for his mother in his sleep.

Those with means had succeeded in escaping the once proud and prosperous city in Utopia Planitia. The rest of us waited for an angel.

Or something disguised as one.

The Trojan Network, a vast consortium of ore and mineral corporations, funded an exodus. A Typhon class freighter was reengineered, its guts rebuilt in Mars orbit to bring thousands of us out to the Trojans in a huge expansion of labor and culture.

Under UN arms came the shuttles to whisk us skyward to a ship run hardly better than our war-torn city.

On our shuttle up I had promised Philo that I would never get involved in anything political ever again. I would steer clear of all trouble and focus on our new future. That hopeful future was now six months away. The Trojans were known for their decent education and plentiful opportunities. We were an investment more than a mission of mercy. In these times you take whatever wasn’t war.

Philo and I made our way down to the CA, my pictocode auto-scanned and our bubbles of food dispensed into my waiting carry-all. I handed it to Philo, who said nothing since we left Junia. No kid should have to live like this. He should be playing with his Hurricane fighter and have no worries.

“You shouldn’t be out here.” Zosime was at my arm.

“Not much choice. Junia kicked me out.”

“What? That’s my place.”

I relayed Junia’s threats.

Zosime sighed. “I get it. And she’s… understandably fragile right now. But we have to get you somewhere. You’ve done work for people. And you’re pretty easy to spot.”

Obviously. “We need the food.”

Zosime looked to Philo who gripped a handhold and had three bag handles laced through his arms. It broke my heart to see him hovering expressionless. It just wasn’t him. Not the kid quick with a smile or a joke. He didn’t even look bothered. That’s what churned my guts the most. “Can you give me and your dad a minute?” she asked.

He nodded and pushed away into the morning crowd queued for the rations.

“Can he keep a secret?” she asked.

“Yeah, if I make that crystal clear. He grew up too damn fast.”

“There’s a place I broke into,” she said. “It’s secure, but it won’t be if anyone finds out.”

*–***–*-*-

Zosime had been a bot wrangler and a maintenance tech back on the Red. Retired, but she still knew all the tricks. Like how to pop a deactivated airlock.

Four corridors terminated into an open space that faced the huge freight door on the other side of the trash cyclone. Air circulation here created a slow and constant swirl of debris that grew more dense by the week. A personnel airlock stood to the side of the freight door. It had to be cranked open manually since the power nodes were missing. It was three meters deep and two and a half wide. Empty lockers and shelves lined one wall. The small outer door window looked out to the void.

“There’s no lights in here.” Zosime produced a pen light.

I waved it way. “We have some, thanks.”

She hugged me. “It would be nice if people looked after one another, instead of this dog-eat-dog business.”

“Some people do.”

Philo perched by the window. We hadn’t seen a sky since before the war. Maybe getting trounced from the cubes would be a small blessing.

Zosime’s watch chirped and her face fell as she read. Tears welled and she wiped them away, leaving her face a mask of fury. “Someone else got lynched. Just minutes ago.”

I cringed as my left hand flared with pain. I reflexively reached to rub it, but it still wasn’t there. My ears rang against the background thumping of blood pounding in my temples as I retreated into myself, Zosime’s voice receding into the distance as she read the name of the murdered, of his husband, of their children. The name brought up a face, a smiling guy leaving my cube after the tatt was done. The face of someone thrilled to be giving his kids more food.

What have I done?

I felt Zosime’s hand on my shoulder, gently bringing me back to a reality I wanted no part of.

“I need to find all the people I did work for and change their pictocodes to something new.”

“And what if you’re spotted?” she asked. “Some people know about the one-armed tattoo artist.”

“People are dying.”

My dead wife whispered, You can’t risk leaving Philo fatherless and motherless.

“Could you bring them here?” I asked Zosime. “To the airlock?”

Zosime bit her lower lip, calculating.

“Everyone knows you,” I continued. “And respects you. You’d be okay. Shit. I shouldn’t involve you. I’m sorry. This is my own doing.”

She sighed. “You were just trying to make do. And help people. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She punched the flimsy metal of a locker door, making me and Philo flinch. “Give me a few names. Let’s see what I can do.”

*–***–*-*-

Zosime escorted Althea to the airlock in the red of night. As I transformed her cheat code into a tree, Zosime and Philo kept watch by the door, the trash cyclone swirling in front of the four corridors that terminated here.

Before Althea hurried off back to her two children, I cautioned her to keep her new tatt hidden for a couple days since it was red and swollen. Her skin was sensitive.

The next morning a tired Philo shaved my head down to stubble with borrowed clippers. I felt a bit safer en route to retrieve rations. Until I thought it made me stand out even more.

While in the queue, a steady rhythm echoed from a scrap metal drum down corridor two. It grew louder and conversations withered as people looked curiously.

The drummer led the procession. Behind him glided two of Drago’s goons dragging two others on tethers, both bound hand and foot with wire. Drago brought up the rear with a few of his lieutenants. The drum stopped as did the procession.

I swallowed hard. I wished to shrink and scuttle away.

“Lots of you think I’m behind the rations cut,” said Drago. He stripped off his striped shirt, revealing his dragon tattoo on his back but only a single ration pass on his left arm. His men did the same, showing off their single passes. They tore the shirts from the bound men, revealing extra codes. The crowd murmured their disapproval. “These men may be with me, but I don’t tolerate the theft of food from my people.” Drago made a slitting motion across his throat, and his free men closed about the bound ones, who kicked and pleaded. Piss bags were wrestled over their heads and taped about their necks. Everyone watched as they bled the last of the oxygen from the bags that pulsed with their breaths.

Some people cheered the spectacle.

Over the din Melia whispered, Keep Philo safe.

Soon the thrashing bodies were still.

Drago was once again a man of the people. Perhaps cruel, but fair.

I had just watched two men die but there was small comforting takeaway: I didn’t make those guys’ pictos. Other artists tatted cheats.

That night Zosime came alone. “I couldn’t get them to come out. They were spooked by…this morning.”

“So was I.”

“I really don’t feel like going back to my cube.”

“Don’t then. We could use the company.”

From her backpack she pulled a large bubble half-filled with a liquid almost clear, almost, sloshing about within. “Someone gave me homemade vodka.”

I told Philo he could sleep, no lookout duties tonight. Zosime and I drank and talked. The recent trials were fogged like memories decades past. The pain of missing my wife, my fucking arm, the stress of keeping my son safe, all blunted by the alcohol. Not erased, but dimmed enough that I could laugh. Dimmed enough that Zosime and I embraced for comfort, then kissed.

That’s all it took for us to shed clothes. I was still married to a ghost, but I allowed myself to be drawn in for fumbling, sloppy, drunk sex where neither of us achieved orgasm. But the touching, the tenderness, the affection was so nice.

And so needed.

*–***–*-*-

We awoke to the white light of day streaming in through a door open too wide.

Philo had taken off.

What have you done? shouted Melia, tears in her voice. She’d never been so loud.

The couple hours of drunken respite from the crushing pressures of survival had a price, a heavy price. Zosime texted her trusted friends about my missing son as I searched the area of the freight door and the cyclone. It was hopeless, but I had to do something.

“You have to stay here,” she told me, hands on my shoulders. “You have to.”

She was right. “But what if Drago finds him first?”

“Don’t think that way. Philo isn’t on Drago’s mind.”

Slapping away an empty food bubble bag that floated from the cyclone, I told her, “I’ll go mad alone in the airlock worrying.”

“I’ll bring you back a watch so we can be in contact. But it may be a while. Maybe an hour. But we already have eyes looking. Okay?” I had to stay alive. I could not get myself killed.

I retreated to the airlock and cranked it nearly closed. I watched from the window, the swirling litter a crude simulacrum of my dangerous thoughts. There wouldn’t be a reason to go on if I lost Philo, too.

“I’m so sorry, Melia,” I whispered.

She was silent. My left hand was not.

*–***–*-*-

It felt like an eternity before Zosime returned with a borrowed watch so I could keep in touch. She immediately headed back out after a hug, an embrace empty of reassurance.

For a few hours last night I had felt safe and good and my left hand didn’t bother me. So damn brief.

There was small comfort Philo practiced situational awareness. Like back in the warrens, he always scanned, eyes flicking side to side, looking for any hint of danger. It translated well to the defensive, paranoid, refugee lifestyle. It broke my heart to see him as a ten-year-old adult. Now he was angry and hurt. And still a child, damn it. And here I was stuck in an old airlock, alone and worrying up an ulcer.

I steered clear of trouble out here. I thought so. A few pictocodes for scratch, but I kept away from Drago and his entourage…everything still got fucked.

Zosime gave me the promised updates via texts every fifteen minutes. And every fifteen minutes my heart sank because they contained no Philo news. Over an hour passed before something different: Stopped searching when I saw Junia and Drago and a couple of goons heading down corridor 3. She was scratching her arm like she does when she’s either up to no good or in trouble. Will tail for a bit.

“Who cares about Junia?” I hissed to the empty airlock as I slapped my hand hard against the bulkhead. Now both hands hurt.

Zosime: I think they’re headed toward the airlock. Get out of there.

Shit. I didn’t have time to entertain the possibilities of exactly what trouble there might be, but as I hustled things into my duffle, my mind went through a checklist anyway. Drago might want to drag me out to the mob as the tattoo artist that crashed the rations. He might want to strong-arm me into being his personal artist for his goons so they have the lion’s share of food. He might want to steal my equipment for his own artist.

I cranked open the door enough for me to slip out.

Zosime: Are you out???

No time for the one-armed guy to crank it shut. I launched toward the termination of corridor 1, to the left of 3 from my perspective. Through the edge of the cyclone I coasted, an empty food bubble smacking me in the forehead. Latching to a handhold on the lip of corridor 1, I arrested my flight and settled, hunkering down.

Zosime was right. Junia, Drago and two of his men perched at the lip of 3, Junia pointing at the airlock door with her bandaged arm.

What did they want? And how did Junia know about the place?

Junia headed back and the three kicked off toward the airlock, swatting debris as they went.

I whispered in the watch to Zosime: Junia is coming your way.

Below me the three alighted by the door. Drago called inside the airlock, then entered.

My heart hammered. I hated the way Drago and his henchmen ran the sector by force. If they didn’t kick me and Philo out of our cube he wouldn’t be missing. Anger welled up from a dark place and hardened to steel ball in my chest. I was so damn sick of being a mouse in the cat’s lair. So done with hiding, with avoiding all trouble. It proved impossible, anyway.

Zosime now crouched at the lip of 3. I waved and got her attention. I took a breath and kicked off toward the airlock door below. “Come on!” I shouted. With the ventilation wind and the echoes from four corridors of chatter, there was no way Drago and the boys would notice.

No! screamed Melia’s ghost.

Zosime’s followed my lead, cursing. I landed too hard and bounced from the bulkhead adjacent to the open airlock door but I grabbed the crank before I floated away. This impulse already spawned regret, but I planted my feet in the holds below the door and started cranking as fast as one arm can. “Help me!” I implored Zosime.

She only hesitated a second, and then three hands churned. “What are we doing?”

“Hey!” Came a gruff shout from within as the gap narrowed too much for a person to wriggle through. A hand shot out, gripping the corner of the door and pushing. I released the crank, pulled the palette knife and slashed. A yowl split the air and the fingers retreated, leaving spherical droplets of blood.

Zosime kept wheeling until the door clicked shut and we placed the crank into the locked position. “What have you done?” she asked.

“We trapped the bastards,” I said.

“But he’s on his watch right now, calling the rest of the bastards,” cried Zosime.

“Can’t we air them out?”

Zosime looked aghast. “No! The outer door was disabled and welded shut.”

Horror struck as I realized I never thought about that.

“I’ll broadcast what’s going on with my watch, word will get around,” said Zosime. “We’ll have a mob here, our own damn mob, ready to keep them sealed up and intimidate any of his crew that shows.”

My heart thrummed. My phantom hand throbbed.

“You should make yourself scarce,” said Zosime.

“I have to find Philo!” I kicked off toward corridor 1.

*–***–*-*-

This was miserable. My left hand wasn’t aching dully like usual. I flinched at the sharp stabs at random moments.

I went to our old corridor, where we’d been evicted, and asked around. People were sympathetic and promised to keep an eye out, but really not helpful. All the while word circulated that Drago was trapped in an airlock. People streamed down the corridor in knots of nervous excitement.

Zosime pinged the watch: Got Philo! Come to my cube!

I didn’t ask for details. I replied Coming! and turned around to head one corridor over.

I alighted at the threshold of Zosime’s open door. Zosime cradled a scared Philo in her arms. I pulled myself in and he came to me. In the tight hug the pain of my phantom hand vanished.

“You scared the shit out of me!” I said.

Still holding my son tightly I saw Zosime’s grimace. Junia floated behind her not looking any happier. Junia spoke first, “There’s some action down by your airlock.”

“I know. Someone led Drago right to it,” I replied, tone cold. “Why?”

“I followed Zosime one night. I thought Drago might need it more than you. I’d like to keep in the man’s good graces.”

“Always play the winning side?” asked Zosime. “Doesn’t matter if it’s right or who gets hurt?”

“I know how to stay alive, and I didn’t think anyone would get hurt. Tattoo man here didn’t think he’d hurt anyone, either.” Junia served me a glare and continued, “Anyway, that wasn’t what I was talking about. People ain’t just heading there to give locked-up Drago shit. Now the mob got a couple more they want to put down.”

“Who?” My heart couldn’t take this wild ride of horrors anymore.

“Someone said they have a tattoo guy,” she said as she pointed to Philo. “And someone else, don’t know who.”

“What did you see?” I asked Philo.

“Some guy with snake skinart was getting beat by two other guys,” he said, voice small. “No one came to help. They kept saying they would kill him for doing pictocodes.”

“After that your boy came in here looking like he saw a ghost,” said Junia. “He asked for Zosime, so I pinged her. Then word coming around about a lynching down by the freight door.”

Zosime stared at her watch. “They’re doing some sort of ‘trial’ down there. I have to see if there’s anything I can do.”

As she pushed past me to leave, I said, “Be careful.” That felt plenty weak. Junia followed her and I was alone with my son, who I hugged again. “Don’t run off like that. You know how dangerous it is. Right? We have to stay together.”

I felt his nodding head in my shoulder. He didn’t want to talk; had seen enough for one day. And I was tired, so damn tired, but things had to be said. I broke the embrace to look in his eyes. “So, it really pissed you off seeing me with Zosime?”

Philo scowled. That was a yes.

“Look. Mom’s not with us anymore and it hurts, right? Seeing me with someone else I guess hurts, too. None of this is easy. But there’s going to be another woman coming into our lives at some point. I think. Missing an arm makes things a little harder, but they’ll grow me a new one in the Trojans. Anyway, I don’t mean to hurt you or Mom’s memory. I don’t. I’m just trying to keep going. We all got to keep going, and hopefully the ride on this damn ship is the last of the worst.”

He nodded. I could tell he wasn’t convinced.

Message from Zosime: They have the other artist. Supposedly. He’s beat up pretty bad. The other one is Althea.

I groaned, then sent: Why Althea? I disguised her cheat code.

Zosime: Someone told me that they know about the cheat pass and that she had the old one covered up, not the new.

Me: That’s bullshit. Are they going to kill them?

Zosime: Maybe. I’m going try to stop it.

Ever since Melia died, I tried to blend in with the scenery. Until just minutes ago when I lost my shit and locked up Drago. There was no going back. I thought I had saved Althea, but now she was at the whims of a murderous mob.

But I had my son back. I should take my gains and stay the hell away. I hardly knew Althea, but I couldn’t deal with another ghost.

I grabbed Philo’s arm, “If something happens, stick by Zosime, okay?”

“Dad, no! You promised!”

“Stay by Zosime!” I shouted.

Philo shrank from my intensity. “Okay.”

“Don’t open this hatch for anyone but her.” I pushed from the habicube, raced down the nearly empty corridor. Everyone intending to show for the drama was already there. Mad hurrahs floated back to me, echoing. How quickly we reduce ourselves from civilized to cheering blood. I rounded from corridor 4 to 5, racing toward the end that was choked with people. All these bodies clung to one another in a pattern radiating toward the center of the corridor, leaving a small traffic hole. At its edge I grabbed a shoulder for a look.

No one noticed the one-armed guy; the spectacle lay ahead, at the bulkhead below the freight door just a meter from the trash cyclone. The tattoo artist already had a piss bag over his head, taped to his neck, his arms bound behind. He twisted and kicked above Althea and the executioners.

I scanned around for Zosime, not finding her.

Althea was flanked by two men holding her bound arms. Her tears lifted from her eyes in globules and drifted into the cyclone. Children screamed high-pitched wails above the shouts of the mob. Why would children be here? My horror compounded: they might be Althea’s.

She had no fight left in her, and the bag was slipped over her head with no resistance and taped roughly about her neck.

I couldn’t just watch. Not anymore. Laying low didn’t work. It just added guilt to my own survival, but never ensured that I or Philo would live.

I launched from the crowd toward Althea as she drifted toward the cyclone, the bag pulsing with her breath. The shouting reached a crescendo as I closed in on Althea. I pulled my sharpened palette knife, flipped over mid-course and caught Althea with my legs and sliced open the bag. She sucked at the foul air that at least had more oxygen.

The collision changed our direction and we drifted toward the freight door, draped with clinging, shouting mob.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

A metal drum. Were more being brought in?

The cluster of the mob we coasted to shouted with anger and waved fists. A few cheered. Perhaps I had only given Althea a few more minutes of life and gave up my own.

“Listen! Everyone quiet down!” Zosime’s voice cut through chaff of noise. BANG! BANG! BANG! “Leave them alone! Hear me out!”

I became entangled with scores of grabbing and clutching hands — my pallet knife ripped from me, my throat in the crook of a tightening elbow. I wheezed for air. There was scuffling all around us. Those out for our skins won the debate with fists and I was secure like a fly in a spider’s web. My futile struggles waned to nothing.

Zosime with her metal drum floated through the cyclone, catching up with the other damned soul. She managed to pull the tape from his neck and I could hear his desperate, ragged breaths. She came through the other side and those on the far wall clutched at the bound man. Zosime was treated with more gentleness. After exchanged words she pushed away with just enough force so she could alight on the bulkhead below, by the two ringleaders and executioners. One had long dreads and the other a recently stitched wound from his right ear to his nose. Zosime hooked her feet in the holds and debated.

I shifted my head to open my constricted airway a bit. I caught sight of the other artist-he looked to be in a similar web of limbs. Two people clutched his long hair, pulling his head back.

“Neither one of them hurt anyone,” Zosime told the crowd. “They didn’t mean to. Althea was only trying to get more food for her children. Can’t you understand that? She nixed the cheat pass as soon as she could.”

Cries of both approval and opposition echoed from the masses.

“The tattoo guy only tried to help,” Zosime added.

Someone shouted, “He’s Drago’s guy!”

“I know, and he’s already been beaten within an inch of his life for it,” replied Zosime. “Let the poor bastard go. You have Drago and his closest men locked up. Let ‘em rot in there! Give his other guys a chance to not fuck up the remainder of the trip.”

There’s something about a respected gray-haired woman that can calm a crowd. Well, maybe half of the crowd. Too many had come for blood and still wanted it.

All I could do was wait. They had me because I disrupted a lynching, right? I kept repeating this to myself.

Althea was called down, released, and made her way across the gathered masses. The representatives inspected her tatts. One with the dreads announced to everyone, “She had the new one covered. It’s obvious. Should we let her go?”

Zosime frowned at the simple appeal to the mob for judgement. There were far more yeas than otherwise, and Althea was freed. She sobbed as her children, maybe aged six and eight, drifted in and hugged her.

The dreads man waved for me to approach. The numerous arms pushed me away. I breathed freely and crawled across the wall of bodies, the hands now helping me move along toward the kangaroo court by the cyclone. Another crawler approach from a different direction: Junia. I stopped in surprise and she was on me, her hand behind my neck pulling me close. She kissed me briefly, eliciting a few cheers. It was nothing but some sleight of hand, a cover. Close to my ear she whispered, “Promise me a new ration code or I’ll expose you right now.”

I froze. Her face with the faux smile just millimeters from mine, awaiting an answer. There was no choice. I nodded. We parted and I descended to await my fate from the capricious crowd.

The mob ringleaders looked me up and down.

“More than half the crowd wasn’t on board with lynching Althea, anyway,” said Zosime in my defense.

“Execution,” corrected the man with the scar.

“A one-armed man would have to be pretty goddamned vile to get a death sentence,” said the one with dreads as he laughed.

He waved me away.

The other tattoo artist was not so lucky.

I didn’t stay to watch. I went back to my son. He hadn’t seen me cry since the death of his mother.

*–***–*-*-

A month later Junia’s hand lay palm up on the tiny plastic table in our reacquired habicube. I guided the tattwand carefully for the last bits. There was no need to strap down, we had half a G of deceleration now for the final months. I turned off the ‘wand. “That’s it.”

She inspected it, as if she could tell at a glance if it would work. “Looks good. Now help me with the bandages.”

I re-wrapped her injured arm with bandages made from Drago’s striped shirt. He didn’t need it anymore after suffocating in the airlock. She thought no one would look under a woman’s bandages, so she would be perfectly safe. She patted me on the shoulder as a goodbye and left.

Her new pass was a different version of a single-ration. No extras for her. Fuck her.

It came time for me and Philo’s ration slot. I packed the ink and tattwand into the case and headed out into the corridor and climbed down to the walkway, crowded and stinking of body odor and piss and rotting food. I first made my way to a trash chute and dumped the tattoo kit. I chucked the magnispeks, too.

I headed to Zosime’s to get Philo where I reveled in his two-armed hug for a glorious two seconds. Without talking we made our way together to the common area and queued for the day’s food.

The CA was different with gravity, everyone stuck to the floor instead of floating freely. Fresh video lit the screen, displaying a smiling bot wrangler controlling several six-legged ore miners from a terminal in a spacious, antiseptic control room. “We’re about to quadruple our operations with help from you!” she beamed.

“Will it really be like that?” Philo asked.

Probably not, I thought. “Sure,” I told him.

We all needed a little hope to get by.

My phantom arm hadn’t bothered me in weeks.

Protect Philo, whispered Melia.

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Brian D. Hinson abandoned an unfulfilling career in 1999 to take up part-time work and visit 40-some countries in the backpacker fashion. He slowed life even further to settle in rural New Mexico, USA with his wife and three pitbulls to write science fiction. Short story “Disposable Gabriel,” in December 2023 Cast of Wonders, made Nerds of a Feather’s recommendation list for the 2024 Hugo. Other stories in Pseudopod, Andromeda Spaceways, Cossmass Infinities, On Spec Magazine, Shoreline of Infinity, and more. https://www.briandhinson.com

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