Sing Down the Stars Read online

  Tafelberg

  This book was awarded

  a Sanlam Prize for

  Youth Literature 2019

  This one goes out to all my fellow Skolion mense. You lot are the best – Cat, Tallulah, Masha, Amy, Suzanne, Cristy, Yolandie, Carrie, Toby, Icy, Laurie. Without your support my path as author would be a whole lot lonelier. Thank you for dreaming with me.

  1

  “You have ten minutes; fifteen minutes tops.”

  Trembling, G’ren’s tentacled limb spread across the white paint. His skin had become so dark he was nearly invisible in the gloom but for the red input port at his temple that was flashing in time with the connection in the wall.

  Nuri swallowed back her fear. What her partner was doing couldn’t be easy, and she didn’t envy the J’veth drone this evening. Despite this being their fifth job as a pair, she was still a bundle of nerves.

  “Got it,” she whispered, scanning the garden below.

  Her pack-mate would keep the property’s AI busy with whatever programme he was inputting, but it was up to Nuri to watch for any patrolling bots or bio-sentries.

  All was peaceful, with only the quiet hiss of sprinklers deep in the tangle of vegetation.

  What a huge garden.

  This Fadhil Tien guy was loaded if he could afford all this real estate so close to the Calan City urban zones. Those were real plants and trees, not clever synth-copies. The air smelt green with life. Ancestors, this was far enough from the city centre and all its lights and billboards that Nuri could even see faint stars through the haze. Tiny pinpricks, to be fair, and the vaguest suggestion of the galaxy’s arm, but real stars – not just a projection in a public area.

  “Focus, Nuri,” she murmured to herself as she dropped from the roof onto the bone-white faux-marble tiles of the floor below. This was the top terrace of the residence, and thanks to G’ren all the cameras would be looping. The security bot was on the other side of the structure two floors down, and only due back up here in fifteen minutes.

  Large blackened-glass walls reflected her shape as she crept along. According to the plans, this was the master bedroom. Fadhil would only return from his function at approximately 1am, and there were no other bio-life forms inside the property. Any staff had gone home hours ago. Around the corner she sneaked, to the sliding door.

  “C’mon, G’ren,” she mouthed.

  On cue, the door sighed open on its tracks, just wide enough for her to slip in before it hissed shut behind her.

  She was in a lounge area, decked out in warm creams and featuring enormous rectangular couches. The plush carpeting beneath the soles of her grip-boots was a thick, shaggy pile like the pelt of the snow-wylde she’d seen in the botanical gardens. Even better, it muffled her steps beautifully.

  She breathed deeply. The warm air smelt sweet and clean, like vanilla.

  What must it be like to live here?

  A screen took up an entire wall. This Fadhil guy could lie here and watch through this window into other worlds. Nuri couldn’t help but feel a stab of envy. The current image was of a ringed gas giant with many moons – most certainly not anywhere within Nuri’s native Aread system. Cerulean and violet clouds swirled on its surface, but that wasn’t what caught her attention.

  A star-jumper hove into view from the right-hand side of the screen. Although Nuri had seen footage of the giant sentients many times, she’d never seen one seemingly so close and on such a crisp screen.

  The thing cruised slowly, a leviathan of the stars. This one’s head boasted a lance that stretched nearly half again its length, like the swordfish at the aquarium, except that its eyes were blacker than black – even viewed on the screen, they absorbed every trace of light. Silent and mesmerising, its fins spread wide, the being moved until it vanished on the left of the screen, trailing faint coruscations of green light in its wake.

  Nuri’s heart twisted. What must it be like to travel between stars at the speed of thought?

  “How’re you doing?” G’ren’s voice buzzed in her comm unit.

  Nuri jerked, mentally cursing herself for getting distracted.

  “I’m in the … lounge?” She kept her voice low.

  “Shake your twigs. This AI doesn’t have the dumbs, and I’m not sure how long I can keep it distracted with buffer attacks.”

  Nuri moved along. According to the plans, the doorway to her left opened into a library. An actual, ancestors-blessed library.

  The room didn’t disappoint either, and it was difficult for her not to pause to take it in, despite the crawly fear that she was wasting time. It was like the Mir’Abelan Museum, but on a much smaller scale. Not just books, but artefacts too. Little statues on plinths. Masks. Pictures. So many pictures. The tall, dark-skinned human with the shaved head who featured prominently must be Fadhil. He had a serious-eyed girl with him in many of the images, her skin tone slightly lighter than his – he must be her father. The same tilt to the eyebrows …

  Here they were on a boat. Blue sky, azure water. There, riding astride a strange beast with grey fur. The little girl’s eyes were wide, and her laugh was captured in that instant. The screens in their heavy wooden frames cycled through more visuals – sometimes a gold-skinned woman with a heart-shaped face was with them. She wasn’t any kind of human Nuri had seen before. The little girl must be their daughter, her facial features somewhere between the mother and the father, and her dark-brown hair hanging in tight curls on her shoulders. Sometimes she wore a bright bandana. Other times, elaborate braids.

  Nuri swallowed back a feeling that hadn’t surfaced in a long, long time – envy.

  This girl in the pictures, always laughing, with both parents. She looked about Nuri’s age. Twelve, maybe thirteen.

  “Nuri.” G’Ren sounded tense.

  “On it.” Nuri hurried to the desk. This evening wasn’t going exactly according to plan.

  Fadhil’s workspace featured a massive desk carved from what must once have been an entire tree trunk. The wood was stained dark, and the surface gleamed slick beneath the dim spotlights.

  The safe was, as she’d been briefed, hidden in a side panel – the door snicked open when she depressed a knot in the wood in the top right-hand corner. It wasn’t the largest safe she’d ever broken into, but the items of interest were small. And rare.

  Thank you, G’Ren, for your hacking smarts.

  Five velvet-covered boxes with rounded lids. Plush blue velvet she ached to stroke and hold up against her skin. Nuri checked the contents, ignoring the fire opal and the two uncut rubies the size of qalu eggs, until she opened the case that contained the dragon pin.

  It was a priceless treasure from before the days of human space travel, her boss Vadith had said. The silver pin had been shaped to look like a creature from the old Terran myths, a dragon with a wedge-shaped head, and a sinuous body curling around the pin. It had garnets for eyes, and they glinted back at her.

  “Nuri!” G’Ren’s voice cracked.

  Nuri started and shoved the pin deep into her jacket pocket. Then she padded back out the way she’d come. Running was bad. Running meant she might not see danger because she was busy making too much noise herself.

  Her pulse was racing, though, and all the small hairs on her nape and her arms prickled. Danger. The interior of the house felt different. Alert. Awake.

  Stars above, the door!

  Nuri leapt forward and dragged at the sliding door. Already the mechanism was resisting her, and it took all her strength to shove it open enough to slip through. As soon as she did, brilliant spotlights snapped on all around, accompanied by the screech of sirens.

  For a moment she stood like a stuck roach, blinded and deafened.

  Don’t panic. Think.<
br />
  Above, to her right, G’Ren barely made a sound as he used a railing as leverage to swing down and across so that he landed on the terrace below.

  Nuri followed, beginning that dance between gravity and inertia.

  C’mon, you love it, don’t you, her inner voice teased. The thrill of the chase.

  Her entire existence narrowed towards the lightning-fast calculations she needed to make. A handhold there, landing the right toe just there with enough twist to roll forward and distribute the force of the impact – within three leaps she’d hit the paved walkway that meandered into the garden.

  Behind her, the skitter of metallic claws on stone meant they had a runner bot, most likely designed to resemble a dog, complete with fangs. As if in answer to her suspicion, a terrible, blood-curdling howling started up, in counterpoint to the siren.

  Security no doubt hoped she’d curl into a little ball, paralysed by fright.

  The muscles on her right back calf tingled with a remembered bite.

  Not today.

  Nuri grabbed the low-lying limbs of a spreading tree and skittered up to run tree to tree. Like one of those long-tailed skarris she’d seen in a nature documentary, which moved so fast they could run along branches that were in actuality too weak to bear their full weight.

  The wall wasn’t far now.

  Her night vision kicked in, and though the garden was dark, she could see well enough as long as she avoided looking directly into any of the torchlight eyes that flashed below.

  Metal claws scratched on paving. Her pursuers were much closer than she’d estimated.

  Damn. Damn. Damn.

  Her foot slipped and she made the leap a bit sooner than she wanted to, with a little less momentum to carry her over the gap. Nuri’s fingers grazed the branch, but she fell and only just managed to grasp another limb before she crashed into the trunk of a tree. The muscles in her left arm screamed in protest as her full weight came down on it, and her new handhold dipped alarmingly. No time to do anything but gasp at the shock. Below her came a high-pitched whine as an electronic sentry powered up a stunner.

  “Balls!” Nuri bit the word out and swung, desperately propelling herself a few metres as the stunner exploded into the branch a mere whisper after she’d let go. Her lungs and side cramped, but she powered on.

  Arms straining, she dragged herself onto a lateral branch that created a narrow causeway to the next tree, and dashed along, keeping her attention on the point in the wall where she knew the pod was waiting. Air singed her lungs with every breath.

  A bot crashed through the vegetation to her left, keeping pace, but there was no time to worry about that now. Only idiots got distracted from their objective. There were no obstacles ahead of her, and the only potential setbacks were parallel or behind her.

  Focus.

  A foothold, that branch. Lift. Jump. Pull up. Use that vertical surface to change direction.

  Nuri cleared the gap between the last tree and the wall, and for a few heart-stopping seconds she flew, the wind slapping her burning skin as she pushed out into the nothingness. Then: bunch and leap, into the waiting pod.

  The hatch whispered closed. She barely had a moment before arms had pulled her aside and another body slammed into hers, the familiar mushroomy smell of J’Veth, as they rocketed along the wall.

  The force of their acceleration flattened Nuri and G’Ren into the back of the pod, a tangle of limbs half crushed against one of the crates.

  “Hold on, you lot!” yelled Shiv, their pilot.

  Nuri braced her legs against the back seat. One of G’Ren’s arms was pressed over her chest, and his bulk cushioned her on her left. His slit pupils were so wide they almost filled out the orange of his eyes.

  The pod tilted sharply to the right and dipped, then righted itself.

  “Wooo!” yelled Shiv. “The boosters are working.”

  “We know,” groused G’Ren. “And if Nuri hadn’t dragged her feet, we’d not have to use the damned boosters. What were you doing in there?”

  The pod tilted again, doing barrel rolls around a series of tight bends, and all Nuri could do was shut her eyes and pray they wouldn’t make a sickening impact with a wall or another craft.

  “I got the pin,” Nuri said once they’d evened out.

  “For all that hassle, I should damn well hope so.” G’Ren twisted into an upright position. His skin was an inky blotch against the dark interior.

  Shiv’s overly large eyes gleamed in her bulbous silver-grey face as she peered at Nuri. “Can we see it?”

  “Let’s just get back to the Den, right?” Nuri gritted her teeth.

  The pod lurched sharply again.

  “Preferably in one piece.”

  2

  The Den was on the outskirts of the Western Calan City barrens, near the fens, which meant that the air was always full of biting insects. The barrens was a no-man’s land, where old wrecks and rubble created a haven for those who weren’t Citizens. Every year as Calan City grew, it pushed its barrens just that little bit further, a spreading canker that blighted the remaining wild lands. Yet to Nuri, this wasteland was home.

  She knew every little side street and alley between the stilt-legged shacks, and could run them blindfolded if need be. Stars above, she could run all the roofs too. The Den itself had been built from old trams – three, in fact – that leant drunkenly against each other to form an enormous tripod. It nestled between Mama Ria’s Tea Room (constructed out of old shipping containers and trimmed with the outer shell of a Heran ore freighter) and a Khu-Khut hive (four weird, mud-daubed cones nearly as tall as the Den, embedded with bits of broken glass).

  Shiv slipped their pod into the Den’s entrance without even a whisper of a bump, and they all clambered out, grumbling and grumping. Nuri stretched, feeling all the kinks of the run.

  G’Ren bumped past her, hard enough to make her stagger.

  “Oi! What was that about?” she called after him.

  The J’Veth drone flipped a rude sign over his shoulder and stomped up the stairs to the common area, leaving her alone with Shiv.

  Shiv’s third eyelid slipped slowly over her large black eyes, her tiny mouth pursed in annoyance. “What bug crawled up his cloaca?”

  Nuri shrugged. “I think he’s peeved because I took too long.”

  “You tipped off security,” Shiv said. “That’s not cool. I struggled to shake them.”

  “I know. Sorry about that.” Nuri huffed out a sigh and stretched, then she patted her pocket. The pin was still there.

  “I hope whatever it is, is worth it,” said Shiv. “Can I see?”

  “Um, I’d best go up to see the boss-thing,” Nuri replied.

  “Spoil sport,” Shiv murmured, busying herself with linking up the pod to its power source.

  Nuri hurried up the stairs, unaccountably nervous. G’Ren was most likely already telling Vadith everything Nuri had done wrong.

  Nothing I can do about that now.

  This time of the morning the common room was near deserted, the hammocks dangling from the interior scaffolding empty. Most of the pack were out running, and the few who were in huddled on couches plugged into their VR sets or playing games of Tisk. The little ceramic discs clattered like bones on table tops.

  Vadith’s quarters were on the mezzanine section right at the top, and Nuri clambered up the ladder in double time. As expected, G’Ren was squawking, and her name cropped up twice before she stepped onto her boss’s level.

  Vadith was large for a Heran, which meant he was two heads shorter than Nuri. She liked the fact that she now looked down on him, but that didn’t stop him from reminding her where her place was – at the bottom of the pecking order in his pack.

  His grey skin made him all but blend in with the hide-covered daybed upon which he reclined, blinking at her with his large, liquid-black eyes while he sucked on a gizza pipe. Beneath the dim strip lights, his complexion looked pasty even for a Heran, his short, skeletal limbs
at odds with his pot belly and oversized oval head. G’Ren sat on stool to Vadith’s right, his skin gone peach-coloured in places, which suggested he was well pleased with himself. All six of his facial tentacles quivered in poorly suppressed mirth.

  Nuri sighed, trying to keep her shoulders straight.

  “I’ve got it, boss.” She reached in her pocket, overcome by a sudden reluctance to surrender the trinket.

  Vadith put down the pipe’s mouthpiece, puffed out a plume of smoke and clapped his hands. “Well, bring it. Don’t be tardy.”

  She strode forward and withdrew the pin. Vadith snatched it from her hand before she had a chance to examine it.

  “Yes, yes! This is exactly it,” he crowed, stroking the little dragon with long, grey fingers.

  “If I may ask,” Nuri started, “out of all the items there, why this one? There were rubies –”

  “I can get rubies at the market,” he snapped. “This” – he held up the item to the light fittings – “is irreplaceable. An ancient human tribe called the Celts made this. It’s the real deal.” Vadith smugly pinned the item to his jacket. “And this is where it will stay.” His tiny mouth squinched up with pleasure.

  Realisation hit Nuri. “You made me and G’Ren risk our necks for a trifle?”

  Vadith straightened, his left hand protecting the dragon pin. “There is more to this game than merely profit, child.”

  “That was top-class security you had us breach,” Nuri continued. “We almost got caught.”

  “I told you we didn’t have much time,” G’Ren broke in. “And you had to waste it.”

  Nuri fixed him with a glare. “Not now.”

  “This, Nuri, was a straight in-and-out job, and you had to gawp like a glimmer bug at a light fitting,” Vadith chastised. “Most unprofessional. You could’ve gotten caught, and then what?”

  “But we didn’t,” Nuri said, hot shame burning her face.

  “Not this time.” Vadith cleared his throat. “You’ll be on bathroom duty for two weeks. Perhaps scrubbing the drainage outlets will give you time to reflect on the importance of teamwork.”