NOMAD Episode 4: “Inheritance”

Editor’s note: If you missed the first three episodes of “Nomad” - a futuristic serial exclusively written for Coeur Voice, you can catch up at Cdapress.com.

Story by KAYE THORNBRUGH

Illustrated by KAMI THORNBRUGH

When Delphine landed on NOMAD Station four Izar-standard years ago, she had nothing but a change of clothes—crumpled in the bottom of her pack—and a pocket full of paper credits. She’d been bouncing between systems for more than a year, earning just enough from odd jobs to pay for her passage to the next world. She was so far from home that she’d almost forgotten the sound of rain.

That day, Delphine might’ve wandered into any shop on the station. But she picked a little cafe called Moonrise, because she liked the lights above the entrance.

There was no one inside except for Hakem, the wizened alien shopkeeper.

Delphine had peeled a precious note off her stack of credits and used it to buy a can of protein formula and a package of dried fruit. Then she sat in a booth for a long time, slowly sipping, mentally recounting her money. No matter how many ways she tallied it up, she couldn’t devise a way to stretch them into a ticket on a passenger vessel or a hammock on a freighter.

She needed work. If she wasn’t careful, she’d run out of money and get stranded here, like a ship out of fuel.

A shadow loomed over her. It was the shopkeeper, whose name she didn’t yet know, watching her with an unreadable expression. “You need something else?” he asked, and she heard the implication that if not, she should clear out.

“What I need is a job,” Delphine muttered to herself, scooping up her things and sliding out of the booth. She’d rather leave under her own power than get tossed out; it had happened before.

She was almost to the door when the old alien surprised her, calling, “You know how to work a brewer?”

“Yeah.” It was a lie, and Hakem probably knew it. But he needed someone to cover the day shifts, and Delphine needed work.

It was only meant to last a little while—until she had enough money to buy passage off this station, and maybe a little cushion to make the next stop easier, less desperate. But here she was, four years later.

Over time, Delphine stopped mapping routes that would take her away from the Izar system. Drifting between worlds was exhausting. She’d come to like knowing where she’d wake up tomorrow, and where her next meal would come from. She’d also come to like Hakem, the kindly alien who gave her all this.

Now he was gone. Murdered.

Where did that leave her?

Although the investigation into Hakem’s death was ongoing, Delphine had, after much pleading, convinced station management to let her reopen the cafe for business. She argued that it was an important part of the station’s economy, and apparently that was true enough.

Moonrise felt lifeless without Hakem, so Delphine had brought one of her terrariums from the unit she rented and placed it on a shelf behind the counter. The terrarium was an open glass sphere with green and pink succulents growing inside. It was hardy and almost self-sufficient, the way Delphine hoped to be.

Like clockwork, her first customer arrived: Neal, a human mechanic who worked in the spaceport. She had his usual order waiting for him on the counter, like any other day—a bottle of juice and a can of soup.

It was a little comforting to know that, even when her world had turned upside down, Neal would still show up at the regular time to grab breakfast. Seeing him in his coveralls—bleary-eyed, on the way to work—she could almost pretend this was a normal day.

But when she met his gaze, she couldn’t pretend anymore.

“I heard about Hakem,” Neal said awkwardly, picking up the bottle and can. Delphine didn’t charge him; he paid off his balance at the end of each week, when he got paid.

She allowed it, not because he was good for the money—sometimes he wasn’t—but because he was the only friend she had on this station, except for Hakem. He also kept her mechanical arm in good repair, which had to be worth a few credits a week.

Neal washed up on NOMAD about a year after Delphine did, another castaway with nowhere else to go. She remembered when he walked into Moonrise for the first time, full of nervous energy, anxious but eager. Neal had looked like someone expecting good news; it stood out to Delphine then, because she saw that look so rarely.

He’d sat in a booth, ordering a different drink every hour, constantly checking his comm. When Delphine’s shift ended, he was still there.

She found out later that Neal had come to NOMAD to meet someone. He’d sat in Moonrise until closing. The person he was waiting for never showed.

“Word travels fast, huh?” Delphine asked him now, wearily.

“Yeah.” He didn’t say he was sorry for her loss, but he didn’t need to. She could see the tightness around his mouth, the slump of his shoulders. “Should you be here right now?”

“Where else would I be?”

“In your unit, unconscious? If there was ever a good reason to take a day off…”

“Not for me, it’s not.” Delphine would rather have something to do, a focus for her mind. “I had to meet with station management last night—Officer Vehx.”

Neal grimaced. “Do they know who did it?”

“No clue. That’s not what they wanted to talk about.” Delphine had never met Farlon Vehx before last night, though occasionally she glimpsed him on his way into or out of the casino. He was, ostensibly, in charge of NOMAD, although it seemed like the gangs ran the station these days.

“The cafe is leased yearly, and it’s paid in full. Vehx wants to refund the remaining months to Hakem’s next of kin and get someone new in the space as soon as possible.”

“Good luck with that,” Neal muttered, glancing around at the otherwise empty cafe. NOMAD was fading fast. Few legitimate business people wanted to set up shop here.

“The thing is,” Delphine went on. She drummed her mechanical fingers on the countertop. “It turns out I’m Hakem’s next of kin.”

Neal looked up. “What?”

“Hakem doesn’t have family. None that he talked about, anyway. But he did have a will. They found it in his unit. Apparently he left me everything.”

Delphine was still reeling from the news, which came as a shock. Hakem must’ve been more like her than she realized, with no one to call family.

“Vehx was fine with that?” Neal asked.

“Not exactly,” Delphine said with a grimace. “He acted like he didn’t believe I didn’t know about Hakem’s will. But there’s nothing he can do about it right now.”

“So where does that leave you?”

“Running the place, I guess,” she said. “What else can I do?”

The thought scared her. It was hard to look ahead. All this time, she’d been living one day at a time; now, suddenly, she had to plan for the future.

Neal hesitated. “Not to be—you know. Disparaging. But can you run Moonrise by yourself?”

“Of course I can,” she said, bristling despite herself. “Hakem managed by himself for years.”

“Yeah, but Hakem was…” He seemed to search for the word. “You know. Hakem. He’s been here forever.”

Neal winced a little after he said it, as if realizing he’d referred to Hakem in the present tense. Delphine kept catching herself doing the same.

“He was,” Delphine said, deliberately. “But now he’s gone, and someone has to run the place for him.”

She couldn’t allow Moonrise to close. Hakem had trusted her to take care of it, so she would find a way.

“I’m having a thing tonight,” Delphine went on. “Like a wake. So people can come and pay their respects.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to come,” she added.

“I know,” Neal said. “But—I will.”

Delphine managed a weak smile. Just as she opened her mouth to thank him, she caught a glimpse of a human walking past the front window—Mik, the pilot she met a few days ago, her head down and her shoulders hunched.

Delphine had expected Mik to be long gone by now. Apparently she wasn’t the only person caught in this station’s strange orbit.

Would their paths cross again?

kthornbrugh@cdapress.com

Now that Moonrise belongs to Delphine — for now, at least — she’ll have to resist the pressures of the station’s resident gangs. But she won’t be able to do it alone.

Whom can she trust?

Tune in next week for NOMAD: Episode 5.