Chapter Text
“You can even stay with my cousin, ok? Well, for a month or two maybe - they got 6 people in that hole - but maybe you be smart with your wages, get some scrip on the side, and then find another place to live, ok?” Georgio seemed earnest, maybe he was even genuine, but Naomi couldn’t help feeling a stab of betrayal as the crew of The Anemone bustled around the dock, refueling for another trip past Kieper.
“Can’t get scrip with only wits and bad belter stories, mija. Put in a year of school, study hard, make some friends, and then we see where you are, sa sa?” He placed a rough hand on her neck and gave her a firm shake, meant to be reassuring, perhaps fatherly. It didn't work.
Naomi knew the truth behind this so-called compassionate dismissal - her time on The Anemone was a trial, and she had failed. Too small to do the big jobs, too inexperienced to do the complicated ones. She was a drag on the crew, and they were offloading her like so much spent reactor mass. The sharp pain of betrayal vanished with time, but she would not realize until much later that it had only changed; burrowing deeper and fermenting into an acidic spite that would fundamentally change the course of her life.
She hitched her bag across her back, accepted the captain's cousin’s address, and turned without a word.
****
After so much time on the float, where circadian rhythms were a distant memory, Pallas was unsettling. Low ceilings, the cacophony of ads and announcements, constantly shifting gravity between levels and sometimes even within the same hallway, the stark disparity between the inner and outer neighborhoods. It was bustling and crowded and altogether too big. Until it wasn't.
Georgio was true to his word, and his cousin was expecting her. However, this cousin was also expecting rent and only offered a bed shared with two other people. Naomi's choice was not difficult; she forwarded her school documentation to the address, but that was it. From then on, she took to couch surfing - squeezing a night or three out of every friend of a friend of a friend she could find, and squatting in the numerous abandoned apartments the rest of the time. She waited in limbo until the next school cycle started, a whole month after her dismissal. Her funds were depleting quickly and she knew that the only way to eat would be through the school.
****
On her first day, she found the classroom to be as dingy and vaguely disorienting as the rest of the station, more so because the Coriolis were so high, this deep inside the rock. She wore her mag boots, even though she knew she would lose face with some of her classmates. Each click of her boots on the heavily sodered surface of the classroom floor seemed to ring out like a gunshot. She queued up for her school-provided terminal and sized up the classroom in a quick sweep.
There was a surprising number of Inner kids - little more than tourists, really. They were here trying to prevent gaps in their education, or as was more often the case, as a stunt pretending that Belter education really was comparable to Inner education. They would study for a few months while their parents (military or perhaps high-ranking politicians) took temporary assignments in the Belt and would then return to their well-funded prestigious schools. Belter schools were a vacation, an interesting story, perhaps a college essay about equality or humanity. This batch were clearly ridiculously rich, and their only goal of this education sojourn was to make fun of the Belter kids it seemed. They were certain they had nothing to learn and from that mixture of boredom and entitlement bloomed a unique cruelty.
Then there were the rock hoppers - also tourists but in a different, more depressing way. School was a way to keep these children busy, and fulfill their bare minimum education credits so families could get more aid while ships were repaired and goods traded. These kids would be there one day, gone the next. Maybe here for a month, a week. Perhaps they really did go back to their ships, or perhaps they got caught up in the growing OPA recruitment efforts. But it didn’t matter so much. Rock hoppers didn’t matter so much at all.
Lastly, the natives - the station kids, destined to live out their lives on these rocks and moons, little more than anonymous ants, scurrying to keep the station working. The complicated task of keeping a station running smoothly was not work for temps, floaters, or tourists. This wasn't work that could be handed off. The station natives were trained to know the big and small picture, to protect the way things were done, and to complete their siloed tasks with ruthless efficiency. There was no indenture here, but station formans did not like to lose good workers. These kids would be molded into nameless, faceless cogs in the machine that kept Pallas running like clockwork. The rest of the solar system passed in and out, no one noticing that in ports like these, some faces really did stay the same.
****
In a room full of children all fighting to be in the back of the classroom, Naomi found herself in the front. She took notes, minded her business, and tried her best to stay out of the radar of the others. Well, tried to, until she couldn’t anymore.
“Nagata, hang back after class, ok?”