Spookies – short for space cookies - are the legacy of those who filled the holds or slept on the floors of their boss’s travel suites, who weren’t deemed important enough to merit a share of real food and were expected to subsist on the nutrient sludge produced by the Kithari matter converters.

Traditionally made by combining nutrient paste with ground grains or seeds, then formed into patties and baked, Spookies have a dense consistency resembling a protein bar. They remain popular among the ex-Earthen working class but have diversified in flavor, and the only rules seems to be that ingredients are cheap and nutritious.

Every station has its own version, and regional Spookies packed into collectible tins printed with scenic local images are a coveted souvenir. This version from Octavia’s Point highlights the satellite’s reliance on potatoes as a subsistence crop as well as their healthy trade relationship with the locals of nearby Rrrlia. Rrrlian pinberries are similar in taste to the Earthen cranberry, which can be substituted with good results.

-the Interstellar Love of Cooking, Volume One

* * *

The airlock hissed as Dove and I waited to leave the exit bay. I was so ready to escape the mining ship’s sour unhappy smells, its too-bright lights and dirty metal surfaces that it took all my willpower not to run forward when the door finally slid open. But we had to settle our accounts, so I forced myself to wait and watch the steady stream of people who were giddy with excitement at having a day at Octavia’s Point to shop, eat, and attend to personal business.

The crew filed past, followed by the aliens who gave us cheerful goodbyes. Last came the debtors, wearing tracker anklets and chained together with a flexible cable attached to belts at their waists. I’d heard them talking about what they planned to buy on Octavia with their small allowances, and they seemed as eager as any of the paid employees to get off the ship for an afternoon.

Amur gave me an intense look as he walked past, then dropped his gaze to his feet when he saw the look on my face, which was probably a disgusted sort of horror since I’d just realized the company restrained them like a chain gang. I cringed inwardly, ashamed that I’d let that be his last sight of me, and the guilt weighed more than my pack.

Dove tugged at my sleeve and I turned to see the ship’s manager standing with a datapad in one hand. He was short and wiry, with a thick crop of curly blond hair and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that bit into his nose. “Ms. Wright,” he murmured, “I need your signature on the bill.”

I frowned as I looked at the total. “We barely ate anything the last few days,” I informed him. “And we never took showers. Why’s it so much more than the initial quote?”

He shrugged. “Processing fees, grav-drive maintenance costs went up, and you used the computer to send messages. Everyone has to pay their share, you know.”

I could feel my frown deepening, my face sinking with the memory of Amur’s hunched shoulders as he’d filed away down the corridor. If this was how they treated temporary passengers, how could a debtor ever hope to get away?

I stared at the little man as rage churned in my stomach, thinking how it must feel to know you were chained to this ship for life. The manager sighed as he waited and Dove fidgeted uneasily next to me, dropping one hand to her weapons belt in a gesture that stopped just short of threatening.

I met her eyes and shook my head, thinning my lips in warning. “It’s fine,” I said as I reached for my wallet. I held out the burgundy club card and tried to look nonchalant as he scanned it. The blood drained from his face as he looked at his screen, then at me, and immediately apologized for the extra fees and asked how he could help.

“I’m in the market for a debtor,” I told him coolly, and felt bile rising in my throat as he stammered that as a Rossi, I could have anyone I liked.

“No,” I answered regretfully. It was tempting to free every debtor on the ship, but I didn’t feel ready to rack up that kind of debt. “I’ll use my personal funds, I just wanted you to understand who you’re working with. Can you show me your contracts?”

He led me to his office, then let me scroll through a set of files. Name, face, origin, age, amount of original debt and amount of current debt – it was all there, as organized as a real estate listing.

Dove moved next to me to look over my shoulder, and I was grateful for the comfort of her closeness as I paged past people and the immense amounts of money they owed. And just as I’d suspected, the math was all wrong. Their debts should decrease with time worked, but most of the files showed an exponential increase correlated to seniority. Maybe management charged high interest rates for unpaid balances, or fees for medical care or food?

It turned my stomach, and even worse was the realization that these contracts would use up so much of my money that I might not have enough to make it home.

I scrolled more quickly after that as I looked for the most important one, my eye following the list of names all the way to the end. I paused there, confused, because there hadn’t been anyone named Amur or anything like it, and then I scrolled back up more slowly, taking the time to look at the ID photos as I went. And that was how I found him.

I have many names, he’d told me, but now I knew that – legally at least – he did have one official name, a very different one from what he’d given me.

“William Emiliano Morgan,” I read aloud as I stared at his image, a photo clearly taken many years before since his hair was still a deep black without a trace of silver.

I scanned the file quickly, noting that this wasn’t his first contract – his past was a convoluted web of debtor contracts, with short spans of freedom between each. I forced my eyes away from his personal details, then, feeling that I’d already seen more than I wanted to, and focused on the price I’d have to pay to buy this man his freedom.

The amount he owed now was so much higher than at the start of his contract that I felt a rush of black rage so fierce I wanted to grab Dove’s gun and start shooting. I bit my lip and looked down at Amur’s image, then back at the total. Could I afford it? The problem wasn’t whether I had the money, because I knew I had more than enough left of Rosetta’s funds. It was whether I’d be able to afford tickets back to Earth, plus any surprises along the way.

The club card would be my insurance policy, I decided. Surely it would be enough to get me back to Potluck space, where any Kithari would help me make it safely home. And Dove’s funds and return tickets had already been placed in a temporary holding account, as stipulated by the guild and her contract, so I didn’t have to worry about her.

“This one,” I told him. “But the numbers are wrong. My grandmother’s lawyer will have to check the math.”

He fumbled for the datapad, apologized, and said that he was sure we’d be able to sort it out on our own. If I could just give him a few minutes to check rates and run the numbers?

I nodded graciously, and when he came back with a total that was now significantly less than Amur’s original debt price – rather than over a hundred thousand more as it had been before – I managed to thank him for fixing the issue without spitting in his face. It was good news, because now I could afford to do this.

My grandmother would be grateful for his aid, I assured him, and I approved the credit transfer with a grimace of a smile glued to my face, then waited till I had formal paperwork documenting transfer of Amur’s labor contract to my possession.

They’d deliver him to our hotel later this evening, the manager promised, for all the world like he was a piece of over-sized luggage. I glued my lips together and just kept nodding, then all but ran out of the ship once we were finally free.

Dove led me through customs, then pulled me to one side of the corridor when we were out of sight of the docks and asked if I was okay. I stared at her, still waiting for the recriminations I expected, but all she did was point at a buckle on my pack that I’d left unsnapped.

“You’re not mad?” I asked, and she gave me a confused look.

“Why should I care what you do with your money? It was a kind thing, though I’m not sure it’ll work how you think. How’s he supposed to keep from getting into another contract as soon as his money runs out?”

My face flushed hot and I looked at the ground, feeling incredibly stupid. “Octavia’s a nice place,” I said slowly, grasping for solid ground. “Can’t he find a job here? Maybe we can help.”

Dove was silent, and when I looked up I saw that I’d finally gotten a reaction closer to what I’d expected, though she looked more sad than angry. “Stations have limited resources, even a dome city like Octavia. They only allow a certain amount of visitors, and becoming a resident? It’s sort of like winning the lottery. You need a sponsor, housing, and either a permanent or temporary visa approved by station administration – you can’t just show up with a resume and expect everything to work out. Plus, there’s the… cult.”

“What about it?” I asked, and she shrugged uncomfortably.

“They’re not exactly popular. They usually don’t get married or have kids, and I’ve never met anyone who’s actually friends with a Repentant. It’s almost like they want to be ostracized. He might even be angry that you tried to help him.”

I would have thought my face was already as hot and flushed as it could possibly be, but at her words I felt my whole body go up like a candle.

“Yeah,” I hissed. “I’m sure he loved being punished by those assholes on the ‘Kiss. He probably likes being tortured and mocked while he’s trying to pray.” I stepped back, putting distance between us. “You know what? I probably wanted to get beaten up as a kid, why else would I have been so stupid? I was a nasty little pervert and I deserved it.”

Dove was shaking her head now, her hands weaving about as though she didn’t know what to do with them. “Rose, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” she stammered, and the misery on her face was like a wet blanket on the fire of my indignation, considering how rarely she let her emotions show.

I took a deep breath. “Then you won’t mind if he comes with us,” I said, because the answer to the situation had come clear to me in that moment of anger. The thought of traveling further with Amur made me uneasy, but offering him the choice was the right thing to do.

“I told you I’d help with whatever you need,” Dove answered, and this time when she stepped closer I didn’t move away. “But why does everything about him get you so worked up?”

The real question, I thought with a feeling as of drowning, was how did Dove always manage to see right through me?

“His smile,” I told her shortly. “He smiles at me just like Michael did, like there’s some joke he’s dying to tell me and he can barely hold it in. Nobody else gets to do that, you know? I don’t have the room.”

I didn’t think my words made any kind of sense, but Dove only nodded and reached out as though she wanted to touch me, then dropped her hands at the last moment to the unbuckled waist strap of my pack instead.

I blinked furiously, willing the tears away as she snapped the buckle closed, then adjusted the strap over my hips so the weight from my pack was settled more comfortably. She looked up with a smile when she was done.

“I love when you call me out on my shit,” she finally said. “Just… try not to be too disappointed if things don’t work out how you want.”

I nodded, tongue-tied from the compliment and the force of her unexpected smile. I wasn’t on a date, I reminded myself sternly, or on a trip with a crush. Dove was a professional providing a service, and no matter how nice she might be it was unlikely to ever be more than that. Hoping for anything else was somewhere between desperate and creepy.

Then she held out a hand and lifted one perfect eyebrow in a silent question, and her smile widened when I slipped my hand into hers. I felt shaky, faint, and exhilarated, all my being distilled into where our hands touched.

Don’t get any ideas, I told myself, just as her thumb stroked softly against my palm and gave me all the ideas.

“Welcome to Octavia’s Point,” she said, and led me to a window on one side of the tunnel.

I gasped at the sight of a mushrooming complex of buildings, domes, and enclosed walkways, brightly lit against a backdrop of dark rocky cliffs and starry black sky beyond. Built into an asteroid held in stable orbit by the gravitational forces of a nearby planet and its sun, Octavia was special for more reasons than just its ambitious design.

I’d longed to visit ever since reading about how it was crowd-funded by universities, research groups, and regular people who wanted to live in space for the pure joy of it instead of as some grandiose repudiation of scaly alien socialists. Almost every other ex-Earthen settlement had its roots in power and wealth of one sort or another, be it wealthy families like my own, trades like the mining and ship-building syndicates, or the kinds of major corporations who controlled everything back on pre-war Earth and then moved to space to keep doing what they knew best. Octavia was a rarity, and I was excited to see as much as I could while we waited for our next transport.

I beamed at Dove and she pulled me eagerly onward. We stopped at a window on the other side of the tunnel next, huddling together so she could point out the blue curve of a planet just barely visible around the edge of the asteroid’s rocky surface.

“Rrrlia,” she breathed. It looked like images I’d seen of Earth taken in the earliest days of space exploration, a lovely blue with swirls of creamy white. She continued, her tone reverent. “It’s a beautiful planet. It’s mostly water, and Rrrlians see the land as sacred – they’re allowed to visit, but not to live there full time. They live in strings of boats and move about to fish and harvest the swamps and islands. They come together once a year and connect the boats in a group so large it’s like a continent. You can see it from space,” she said, a fond smile curving her lips.

“You’ve been there,” I said with wonder. “When?”

“Years ago, my first job in free space. My team chaperoned an Earthen scientist who was running a project at the university.”

Our walk to the hotel district passed pleasantly as Dove told stories about the Rrrlians, and before I knew it we were climbing the steps of a shiny pink building that looked like a barbie dream home in space. A gold and hot pink neon sign blinked Raspberry Castle, est. 2083, and little dollops of fake whipped cream topped with raspberries lined the roof like candyland turrets. I paused and tugged at Dove’s arm.

“This can’t be a hotel,” I said, thinking that it was so different from the chintzy Neptune Inn that we might as well be in an alternate reality.

She shook her head and pulled me forward. “Exies are weird,” she answered, “and sometimes it comes out in the architecture.”

Any uncertainty melted away as we stepped into the lobby. With pale pink walls, shiny gray tile floors, and a mirrored counter hung with travel brochures it could have been any boutique hotel on Earth. The woman behind the desk – black hair in two pert buns on top of her head, bright pink uniform, heavy eyeliner that was almost goth – seemed deeply involved in her book, but she set it aside and asked what we needed in a way that made it clear she hoped we didn’t need anything at all.

“We have a reservation under Wright,” I told her. “What are you reading? Are there any bookshops nearby?”

She stared at me morosely, and I had the opportunity to remember that I hadn’t bathed in a week and surely both looked and smelled like it. I smiled apologetically, and her scowl deepened. “You’re on Octavia,” she said. “Do you realize we have the largest public university in free space? Yeah, you’ll find a few bookshops. Let me check you in.”

The woman bent to her computer and I turned to look at Dove. That was a mistake, since I instantly had to break out into an ominous coughing attack to cover the laugh that burst out when I saw her face. Sometimes the blandness of her expression struck me as unbearably comedic, especially when I could practically hear the judgmental commentary I knew was running through her head.

The woman at the counter made a horrified noise at the sound of my cough and pulled a mask that had been hanging around her neck up over her face, then went back to her computer with even more furious clicking.

“First names?” she asked, and I answered quickly, slipping our ID cards across the counter. She scanned them, then passed them back and grabbed some things from below the desk.

“I’ll show you the room,” she said reluctantly and came out from behind the desk to lead the way. Her heels clacked noisily against the tile floor. “Here’s your keys. This,” and she held up a third card with a magnetic strip on the back and a picture of a pink castle on the front, “gets you into the communal areas. Kitchen, lounge, bath. You have to pay for shower use, but once you’re clean – thoroughly clean – you can soak in the big communal tub for free.”

She gave me a pointed look, which I tried to return with wide-eyed nonchalance. I didn’t think Lady Pink Suit would have been any more eager to use the moldy communal showers on the Kiss than we were. She stopped before a door and nodded at it, then stepped back. “Set your pin, it should be ready,” she added.

Dove flipped open a panel to expose a set of numbered keys with a smooth space in the center. She entered several numbers, then pressed her thumb to the smooth portion and told me to do the same. Then she swiped the card, and the door slid open with a whooshing sound.

“Any special safety protocols?” Dove asked.

The receptionist flashed her an almost respectful glance. “Channel 9 will show you what to do in case of an attack or a breach, and it has samples of the sirens. There’s oxygen masks in the bedside cupboards and a selection of full protective suits in the closet just as you walk in.”

Every ship we’d been on had similar safety measures, but I’d hoped this was a place where I wouldn’t need to lie awake imagining the kind of worst case scenarios that leave you drifting frozen in space.

She smiled faintly at the look on my face, then added almost kindly, “They’re just in case. That’s how we’ve survived this long on Octavia, by expecting the worst. I’ll be up front if you need anything.”

“And I’ll be in the bath if you need anything,” I told Dove as I rifled through my pack for clean clothes and my bathroom kit.

She laughed, and I saw with a start that she’d already pulled her own things out of her pack and was waiting at the door. “Come on then,” she told me. “We can scrub each other’s backs.”