Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection (The Lunar Chronicles) (25 page)

Mech6.0 rolled up to the table that blocked the entrance. A girl was standing near the back of the booth, wearing thick work gloves and cargo pants, scanning something with a portscreen. She paused and tapped her fingers against the screen, then reshuffled some items on the shelf before scanning another item.

“Pardon … me,” said Mech6.0, her senses crackling at the effort. She did not have many opportunities to speak at the shipyard, and the long trek had already drained her power source.

The girl glanced toward her. “Oh—sorry! I’ll be with you in just a minute.” She finished entering whatever data she was working on and clipped the portscreen to her belt. “How can I help you?”

“Looking for … Linh Cinder.”

“You found her.” The girl tilted her head to one side, furrowing her brow. “Is your voice box on the fritz?”

“Whole … body,” said Mech6.0. “Purchase … new?”

It took a moment, but then Linh Cinder nodded. “Oh, sure. I can do that. Is your owner around?”

Mech6.0 felt a sudden drop in power, but was relieved when it was only a temporary loss. Now that she’d found the mechanic, she shut off her net database in order to conserve what energy she could. “No owner.”

Linh Cinder’s brow furrowed. Her eyes darted to the android dealer across the way. “Oh. I see.” She reached for her portscreen again and set it on the table between them, before typing in a few commands. “Well. All right, so I can order up a replacement mech body today, but it usually takes about a week to get here, unless the warehouse downtown has some in stock. You’re a 6.0, right? It doesn’t look like they have any. Do you mind waiting a week?”

“Can I … wait here?”

“Uh…” Hesitating, Cinder glanced over her shoulder at the booth, cluttered with machines and toolboxes. Then she shrugged. “Sure, I can probably clear a space for you.” Tightening her ponytail, she sat down in the chair that had been pushed beneath the table. “But if you don’t have an owner … how do you plan on paying for this?”

Paying.

Money. Currency. Univs. To give compensation for goods or services.

Androids did not get paid.

“Trade,” said Mech6.0.

“Trade?” Cinder dipped her gaze over Mech6.0’s battered form. “For what?”

Mech6.0 opened the compartment in her abdomen. Her prongs found the metal locket on its chain first and wrapped around it.

Her fan slowed—almost stopped.

Releasing the locket, she searched again, and her grippers emerged with the small holographic card instead. She placed it on the table.

Removing the glove from her right hand, Cinder picked up the card and flipped it over, reading the words on the back before turning it so that the holograph projected from the flat surface.

“A Prince Kai holographic trading card,” she muttered, rubbing her brow with her gloved hand. “Because that’s all I need.” Sighing, she peered at Mech6.0 again. “I’m sorry, but this is only worth about twenty micro-univs. It would barely buy you a screw.” She looked truly regretful as she handed the card back. Mech6.0 pinched it gently between her prongs.

“Do you have anything else?”

Her processor pulsed.
The locket.

But it was not hers. It belonged to Dataran, and she was going to return it to him. When she had her new body. When she saw him again.

Her power source dropped low again. The colors of the world dimmed beyond her sensor’s eye.

“Nothing … else.”

Linh Cinder frowned sympathetically. “Then I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

Mech6.0 analyzed the situation again, calculating the potential worth of the locket and the importance that she received a new body, and soon. But despite her logical reasoning telling her that the locket might be valued high enough to complete the trade, there was a new factor involved in the calculation. The value of her one possession—something that had been Dataran’s. The value of his smile when she returned it to him.

She knew that the decision was illogical, that she would be returning nothing at all if she didn’t get a new body, and yet she still found herself tucking the holographic card against her torso and turning away. Which was when she realized that she had nowhere to go, and besides, she wouldn’t make it very far. She spotted the used android dealer down the way, and a darkness settled in her vision, washing all the color away entirely.

Her treads clattered as she started back through the crowd.

“Wait.”

Pausing, she spun back to face the mechanic, who was rubbing her fingers against her temple again, leaving a dark smudge on her skin.

“You remind me of a friend of mine. Iko, also an android,” she said. Then she added, gesturing to the card, “Plus, my little sister really loves that guy. So … here, I think I might have something. Hang on.”

Pulling herself from the chair, she headed toward the back of the booth. Mech6.0 waited as Linh Cinder shuffled miscellaneous bits of machinery.

“Well, she’s not a huge improvement,” she said, “but I do have this.” She emerged from behind a towering shelf with the body of a girl draped over one arm. Shouldering aside a toolbox, she dropped the girl on the table with a thud. A limp arm splayed out toward Mech6.0 and her scanner picked up on precisely trimmed fingernails, the natural curve of her fingers, the faint blue veining beneath her skin.

And then she spotted the near-invisible imprint across the girl’s wrist. A barcode.

She was an escort-droid.

“She’s almost thirty years old,” said Cinder, “and in pretty bad shape. I was really just keeping her around for spare parts.” She adjusted the head so Mech6.0 could see her face, which was beautiful and convincingly lifelike, with dark irises and sleek black hair. With her empty gaze and a rosy flush to her cheeks, she looked like she was dead, but only recently so.

“If I remember right, something was wrong with her voice box. I think she’d gone mute and the last owner didn’t want to bother with replacing it. She was also prone to occasional power surges, so you might want to look into replacing her wiring and getting a new battery as soon as you can.” Cinder brushed some dust off the escort-droid’s brow. “And on top of that, with her being so old, I don’t really know how compatible she’s going to be with your personality chip. You might find that you experience some weird glitches. But … if you want her…”

In response, Mech6.0 held out the holographic card.

*   *   *

“So … you’re an electrician?” said Tam Sovann, scanning her profile on his portscreen.

Mech6.0 nodded, smiling as she had seen humans do. It had taken her nearly two weeks to set up a net profile and manage to steal some proper work clothes that fit her, even though it went against everything her android code told her. Still, she had done it and she had made her way back to the shipyard and she was here, with a humanoid body and a convincing identity and Dataran’s locket snapped snugly in her pocket.

“And you specialize in classic podships and cruisers, particularly the luxury lines … impressive.” He glanced up again, as if trying to decide if the profile could be believed.

She kept smiling.

“And you’re … mute.”

She nodded.

He squinted suspiciously for a moment before going over her profile again. “Well, we certainly do work on a lot of luxury lines like these…”

Which she knew.

“… and I have been faced with a high turnover of electricians lately.”

Which she also knew.

“I’d have to start you at a base salary, until you prove you can do the work. You understand that.”

She nodded. Having never received a salary before, she did not even know what she would do with that measly base pay.

“All right. Well. Let’s give it a shot,” he said, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was saying it. Mech6.0 wasn’t sure if it was her muteness that had him unconvinced about her, or the fact that her escort body was startlingly attractive, even in her drab work clothing. “And what was your name again?” he said, before flinching at her patient smile. “Right, sorry, uh—” He scanned through her profile again. “Hoshi … Star.”

Mech6.0—no,
Hoshi Star
nodded.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but then he shrugged. “If you say so. Well then. Welcome aboard, Hoshi-mèi. I have a project that I think will be perfect for you. This way.”

She braced herself before rising off the chair. Her personality chip hadn’t synced quite right with the outdated escort body, and Linh Cinder was right—it had caused a peculiar glitch that manifested itself whenever she walked. The effort caused pain to shoot through the wires from her legs to her chest, burning into her synapses. The first time it had happened, she had gasped and collapsed onto the sidewalk and sat trembling on the ground for close to an hour while blinding light flooded her senses.

Pain.

She had never known pain before—androids should not have been able to experience it at all. But she had no doubt that’s what it was. Just as the human brain used pain to recognize when something was horribly wrong, her processor was warning her that this body was not hers. That this combination could not last.

The third time it had happened, she had considered going back to the market and pleading with Linh Cinder to take the body away, but she had ultimately refused to do that, not before she saw Dataran again. With time, the pain was becoming more bearable, even if only because she was learning to compartmentalize it away from the rest of her sensory input.

Clenching her teeth, she pushed herself to her feet and followed Tam-shìfu out into the shipyard.

She began searching for him the moment she stepped into the massive hangar. Her eyes darted from human to human, searching for a graceful frame and an easy smile. She’d been worried ever since she’d left, terrified that he hadn’t fully recovered from the fall into the oil, terrified that she hadn’t gotten to him in time.

Though her gaze darted from one corner of the yard to the other as they walked, there was no sign of the young engineer.

“Here we are,” said Tam, gesturing to the space yacht, the Orion Classic. Over the past two weeks, the exterior had been nearly completed, but Star could guess that the interior still had plenty of work to be done. “This is for one of our premium clients, and he doesn’t want to spare a single expense. But of course, he’s on a tight schedule, as they always are. I’ll track down some electrical blueprints for you. And—ah! You’ll be reporting directly to Wing-jūn here. Dataran, come meet our newest electrician.”

He came around from the front of the ship, a portscreen in his hand and a stylus tucked behind one ear, and a surge of electricity coursed so fast through Star’s body she thought for a moment she would experience an actual meltdown. But she didn’t, and when he politely bowed his head, she remembered to politely bow hers as well.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “You’ll be working on the Orion Classic with us?”

She smiled, but Tam was already waving his hand. “That’s right, she says she’s an expert with the classics. Keep her busy. Let’s see what she can do, all right?” He glanced at the port. “I have to check on the racer. Dataran, do you mind showing her the ropes?”

“Not at all, sir.”

Tam was gone almost before he’d finished talking, and Dataran was chuckling after him. “Don’t take it personally. He’s like that toward everyone.”

His kind smile made the pain of standing recede almost fully from her thoughts, and Star beamed hopefully back.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

Lashes fluttering, she opened her lips, but of course there was nothing. Flinching, she patted a hand against her throat. Dataran frowned. “Did you lose your voice?”

She shrugged. Close enough.

“Oh. Then, um. Should I call you…” He frowned, not able to come up with anything appropriate on the spot.

Perking up, she grabbed his sleeve and dragged him back toward the front of the ship, where she gestured up at the name that had been freshly painted on its side.
Child of the Stars.

“Uh—Stars? Star?”

When she beamed again, he laughed. “That wasn’t so hard. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Star.”

She tried her best to speak through her eyes, her stretched lips, her trembling fingers, which had released his sleeve and were too afraid to reach for him again.
It’s me
, she thought, willing him to understand.
I’m the one who rescued you. I’m the one who found your locket. It’s me, it’s me, it’s me.

But Dataran just jerked his head toward the landing gear. “Come on, I’ll show you the engine room and how far we’ve gotten in the wiring so far—which isn’t much. We could definitely use your help.”

Before he turned away, he glanced up toward the cockpit windows one level up, and his mouth quirked fast to one side.

Star followed the look.

Ochida Miko and her father were sitting in the cockpit. He appeared to be teaching her something, gesturing at the different controls, but Miko had spotted Dataran outside and didn’t seem to be listening.

Star had a sense that Miko’s bashful smile had not been intended for her, or Miko’s father, to see.

*   *   *

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” said Miko, sitting on Dataran’s other side.

Star knew that she was talking about the ship that was about to leave the hangar—a sleek, flashy thing that had been commissioned for the annual Space Race to Neptune (which everyone knew was a fallacy—the race officially ended at Jupiter, but the sponsors claimed that didn’t have the same ring to it). It
was
a beautiful ship, with its elongated thrusters and needle-sharp nose. The painters had outdone themselves, creating a very realistic montage of New Beijing’s skyline across its frame.

But Star did not care so much for the ship. Her attention had gone back up to the ceiling as it pulled back to reveal the endless sky. Although her new life as a human had given her the opportunity to gaze up at the night sky as often as she wished, her eyes never tired of it. The sense of vastness and eternity, the yearning to see what else the universe had to offer, even for one as small and unimportant as she was.