Flowers for Femke

Flowers for Femke

*This story contains the following topics that may be considered sensitive content: profanity, death (not depicted directly), and implied violence (scars).

On a planet called Scerritch, somewhere in the outer rim, windblown seas crashed against ancient seawalls and offshore breakwaters that had stood for longer than memory.

Rain fell, as it always did, trickling through the same evergreen needles and pattering softly on the leaves of the same great cottonwoods and burlboughs that had managed to cling to the rocky surface through centuries of gales. Jan knelt in a clearing; the same one he had visited every week for the better part of three local years. That’s five Sol years, if anyone’s counting.

After several failed attempts and twice as many curses, the burner of the small brass stove caught with a hiss and a puff of acrid smoke that inevitably ended up in Jan’s face; he coughed, waving his arm to clear the foul-smelling haze that he knew would cling to his clothes for days. Wiping his stinging eyes, he emptied his canteen into the small pot atop the stove. He sat upon the same flat tree stump he always did, too busy coughing and sneezing to notice the moisture that seeped through the fabric of his pants.

For a good while, the only noises to be heard were the soft trickle of rain and the gentle hiss of the burning lance oil, but he knew it would only last so long. The trade ships were due in just two days, and the weather had only temporarily grounded the few off-worlders wealthy enough to afford their own landers. He could stand the window-rattling arrival of the former, but the roar of those pompous transport shuttles was enough to irritate him on a good day. As if they actually cared for places like this. Places they treated like the dirt under their fingernails. Assholes.

He moved to toss a handful of his prepared ingredients into the boiling water, but they never made it into the pot. His hand spasmed and he cursed, trying and failing to recover the bits of dried leaves and herbs that had been scattered to the forest floor.

Never should have taken that job. Six weeks, my ass. If they hadn’t decided to take their sweet fucking time…

He clenched the misbehaving hand into a fist, the pistons and levers beneath the dull and dented casing of his left forearm creaking and whining under the stress. Sure, it was “just as good” as the real thing, if that meant five fingers and an elbow. The High Company wasn’t known for their occupational hazard perks. He had known that going in, but it did little to dull his anger. It wouldn’t end up being the first time he wondered why he was allowed to live.

Snuffing the flame, Jan carefully dropped a new handful of ingredients- with his good hand- into the boiling pot of water. Scents quickly began to rise with gentle wisps of steam that brought with them all manner of bittersweet memories.

Tea leaves. A dew-laden hillside in late spring. They had just met, a chance encounter at an inland market, him shopping for new candlesticks, her seeking to mend her favorite kettle. A few timid smiles between the two of them, a few jests at the smith for his fear of water, and lunch in the shaded gardens.

Ground luckroot and ginger. The dusty spicehouses in the heat of summer on Karkura. Laughter amidst the cacophony of merchants selling their crops and traders haggling for payment. She had made her excuses, and he his, but they both knew the reason for going offworld on a whim, though neither was ready to admit it.

Licorice and brineberry. The salty air of the northern coasts. They were wed, now, some years past. They weren’t quite the same young and boisterous things they once were; his body was showing the wear and tear of his labored years, and the stresses of her life left her quiet and distant. The life she wanted, the family she craved to build, forever out of reach. He blamed the inner-world highborns. She blamed herself.

For several long minutes he sat, gazing into the steaming pot as if it might finally bring him the peace he sought. It never had, and it refused to do so now. He knew it never would. The tea was filtered and poured into its usual porcelain cup set atop the upright slab of stone. He ran a hand across the face of the stone, brushing his fingers across the numbers and letters that summed up the decades of her living years.

Femke

3-632-12-7

To the Seas, her blood;

To the Winds, her legacy;

To the Stars, her spirit.

Countless experiences, thoughts, and emotions, contained entirely within a few dozen characters carved into a stone on a backwater world. For a long while he stood, raindrops making tracks across his weathered cheeks and falling to join the countless others in the wet soil. Perhaps the rain sought to share in his silence. Perhaps the trees felt the same ache he felt. Perhaps Scerritch itself mourned as he did.

***

Wiping the mud and rain off his boots by the door, Jan stepped into the dark commonroom of the modest home he once shared. It was a squat structure, a single story made of dense wood and slate as most old buildings in Prospect were. Low ceilings and heavy beamed supports made for a home that resembled a cave more than a humble living space. Anything less, though, and it wouldn’t hold up for long against Scerritch’s frequent storms.

The home had felt strange since Femke died. The chair by the window that she used to sit in with her morning tea still sat where she had left it, patiently awaiting an occupant that would never come. Her leather boots still stood on the cold brick of the hearth, trying in vain to warm themselves by a fire that would never return. There was a pervasive nothing that inhabited the space now, lurking amongst the shadows and undisturbed dust.

He set the folded brass stove in its usual place on a table by the door and crossed the unseen threshold that prompted his automated assistant to wake. A faint flicker and a hum accompanied the arrival of a humanoid shape behind the bar in the kitchen.

“Greetings, sir,” its vaguely shimmering pale blue form said, or seemed to say. Its mouth never moved.

“I hope your excursion was most pleasant. As requested, I have withheld- have withheld cleaning activities in favor of home security.” The shape flickered as it spoke, seeming to stumble over its own hollow words. The thing was decades old.

“I am pleased to inform you that you have received ze- zero visitors. Might I be of further assistance?”

“As you were,” Jan said.

“Certainly, sir. I will also remind sir that he is due at the docks in fifty-two minutes if he is to-”

“Yeah, I know,” he mumbled, waving vaguely in the direction of the pale blue humanoid that hadn’t moved from its position behind the bar.

The High Company had told him the use of an autonomous synaptic theory module- a synth, as they liked to call them- would be just the assistance a widower would need. He had witnessed some of the latest models in his brief employment aboard a wealthy Lord’s ship, complete with language adaptation, personality modules, and loads more unnecessary bullshit. His module, which he had nicknamed Otto, was less refined and more rudimentary than those models, competent at only basic tasks and following simple instructions. That suited Jan just fine, though. It talked less.

In under an hour he was to be at the docks for his shift. Massive sealances– the hundred-meter spearheaded monsters reminiscent of Terran whales– would be brought in for harvest, every bit of them taken and refined and packaged for a million different purposes and destinations. It was about the only way to make money here, now.

He hadn’t always been relegated to the dirtiest dregs of employment, though. He had been someone, once. A man with purpose and conviction. He had been a leader, and a damn good one at that; one who commanded the respect of his peers and his enemies. Nobody here knew that, though, and Jan was rather keen on keeping it that way. As far as anyone was concerned, he was a poor and struggling off-worlder trying to keep food in his belly, which wasn’t far off from the truth anyway.

Stepping into the restroom, he leaned on the molded composite sink mounted to the wall and regarded himself in the mirror. The bags under his eyes seemed darker, and his crows feet seemed sharper. She used to get on me for a little stubble, he thought, stroking an unkempt beard that had started to gain some gray. When he did, his eyes fell on the brand on the back of his hand. The seven-pointed star of the High Company. Five Sol years he had been living with their mark. Five years of bitter reminders of his failures. Five years since they had taken her from him.

Jostled out of another bitter spiral, Jan’s eyes narrowed as his reflection began to shimmer almost imperceptibly, growing rapidly in intensity until the tiles on the roof overhead began to rattle, and he felt a deep rumble in his chest. The rumble died back down, and he rolled his eyes and huffed. An unscheduled landing usually meant an offworld Lord “gracing the citizens with their presence.” With any luck, they would have landed their shuttle well away from the docks, and Jan wouldn’t even have to see them. He had forty-odd minutes until he had to be there, and it was a good ten minute walk away, so he elected to at least get clean before his shift.

“Otto,” he called. “How many hot water credits do I have left?”

The artificial butler’s voice came through a speaker nearby.

“Sir has one hot water energy credit remaining,” he said, and Jan sighed. He’d receive one after this shift as part of his “benefits” package, but then not another for three more shifts. Reluctantly, he undressed and pressed the button beside his small shower door, and water began spraying out the faucet.

Jan stood in the shower for the full fifteen minute duration, eternally unimpressed by the High Company’s definition of “hot.” Still, there was a touch of condensation on the mirror when he got out, and he got to work on the scraggly mess on his chin. Ten minutes, three cuts, and many curses later, his face was passably smooth. He looked at himself in the mirror once more, reminded morosely of the days when he had shaved daily. That brought with it more bleak memories that he tamped down, brushing his fingers through his hair and pulling on a dry pair of clothes.

By the front door, he donned a pair of long boots and a thick jacket; over it went a slick hooded cloak of once-premium construction. Rustling through a large black duffle bag, he confirmed that all of his equipment was present and in working order. The only thing missing from the bag was something to eat. That probably meant dried fish from the docks’ cafeteria for lunch today. Again. With effort, he hoisted the bag, the contents and accoutrements settling noisily over his shoulder. A seven-pointed star was emblazoned across the bag’s surface.

***

Massive thirty-foot fences enclosed the High Company’s dockyards. The contrast across the fence was stark; on one side were dirty single-story slate-and-wood homes, while across it were massive plasteel and plastiglass structures, floodlights, humming machines, and guard posts. Jan stood in a queue before the main gate, lined up with a hundred other similarly-dressed dockhands and trawlers clocking in for their shifts. Massive trucks crawled in and out through the open gates, six-foot tires and loud combustion engines drowning out most other noise.

“Hey, Jan!” a voice said from behind him, and he turned to see Teach, one of the other harvesters. He was younger, perhaps in his thirties, and far too naive for Jan’s liking. The kind of naive that still believed he could make good money working for the High Company.

“You see that shuttle fly over earlier?” he said, having to shout to make himself heard. “They’re saying some high-up board member is coming down to take a look at the little ants in her colony. Make sure they’re working away like good little soldiers. You think I’ve got a chance? There’s no way she’ll be able to resist some old-fashioned charm.” Teach grinned and combed his hands through his hair, gesturing to himself. Jan gave him a blank look, then rolled his eyes.

“Dumbass,” he said. “Don’t even look at ‘em. Especially don’t say anything unless they say something first. So keep your head down and don’t do anything stupid, especially if it might dock pay from the rest of us. You’ll have a lot worse to worry about than a pretty little investor if you do.”

The dockyards were unforgiving, and while he didn’t particularly consider Teach a friend, exactly, he knew what would happen if grizzled men wielding dangerous machinery were notified that someone had made them lose pay. Jan turned back around, having nearly reached the guard station. Teach seemed to have forgotten about their conversation, and was already busy bantering with some other guys further back in line.

Ten minutes later, Jan was in one of the prep halls, hoisting his heavy black bag onto a metal tabletop, the contents clanging and rattling. He had begun to unzip it and prepare his equipment for the day when he heard shouting, and a dockhand came running around the corner.

“Lady incoming! Look bright!” he yelled, then quickly stepped to the side, clasped his hands before him, and cast his gaze downward towards the floor. Jan quickly did the same, forgetting his equipment. He stood up straight, facing away from the table, his flesh and plasteel fingers clasped together and his eyes downcast. The room had gone quiet. The arrival of a Lady was not an insignificant event, and as much as he despised them, even a jaded cynic like him knew better than to ignore their pompous pleasantries.

A minute later, Jan heard the thumps of several sets of heavy boots accented by the muted padding of soft shoes on bare plasteel, and knew immediately that they were dealing with not a board member or an investor, but an actual highborn. A pampered inner-world princess whose wealthy father had probably bought her the entire planet for her birthday. Jan clenched his jaw, but didn’t allow his anger to reach his expression.

At the edge of his vision he saw two dark figures enter the room, and Jan knew instinctively that the armored men were Highguard: the elite combat personnel assigned to the safekeeping of inner-world nobility. Without seeing the emblem on their armor, though, Jan wasn’t sure which family they served. Traitors.. he thought, gritting his teeth.

The men clomped through the room, strolling just past Jan, and stopped. Their feet turned towards him. His heart skipped a beat, but he forced himself to remain neutral.

A soft padding of feet followed them, and into Jan’s view came the bottom of a deep red pleated dress that had the telltale stains of dockyard mud along its hem. Like her guards, the woman stopped and faced him. He felt a small twinge of amusement at the pompous offworlder that thought it was appropriate to wear a dress on Scerritch. Mud on her skirt wasn’t anywhere close to what she deserved, but he took victories where he could. His amusement died when the woman spoke.

“Hello, my love,” she said, nearly in a whisper. A shiver ran through Jan’s body and his skin erupted in goosebumps. Years of conditioning did nothing to stop his head from snapping up to look into her eyes. When he did, a torrent of emotion ran through him, from disbelief to joy to sorrow and everything in between. Elation quickly turned to horror when his eyes drifted above her brow. In the center of her forehead, shining softly like polished ivory atop her honey skin, was the symbol of Jan’s hatred: a brand in the shape of a seven-pointed star. Hot tears flooded his vision and spilled down his cheeks unbidden, and his lungs felt like they had stopped working. He was only able to croak out a single word.

“Femke?”