Found Family: A Science Fiction Story

The girl had no one and nothing.

No one but Cormorant.

What a poor excuse for a father he was. Core had never shown the slightest affection toward the girl. Norah was his apprentice, nothing more.

An apprentice… and now an orphan twice over.

Core heaved a sigh. I ain’t cut out for this father shit, he thought. Still, he was human, and seeing her pain made his heart ache. He reached out and placed a thick, callused machinist’s hand on her trembling back.

She flinched at his touch. Core pulled away, but that only made her cry all the harder.

News of her uncle’s death had come in through the ansible relays less than thirty minutes ago. A surprise attack on Taj Su. The Fleet never saw it coming.

How quickly a girl’s entire world could be thrown out of orbit.

Growling, Core wrapped his arms around Norah’s shoulders and pulled her roughly against him. She fought him at first, but he held on, firmly yet gently. His bare biceps and muscular forearms, dirty with grease and sweat, held the shaking, wire-thin girl to his chest.

She gave up fighting and buried her face in his shirt. Her body shuddered with a fresh round of anguished sobs.

Only fourteen, and already she’d experienced more tragedy than most people see in a lifetime. First her parents, and now her uncle.

The poor girl.

She had no one left. What would happen to her now?

* * *

“And how long have you been caring for Norah?” the lady from Child Protective Services asked. It had been three weeks since the girl lost her uncle, and the woman had only shown up today.

“She’s my apprentice,” Core said, annoyed that she was asking him the same questions she’d asked on the first call, as if she were trying to catch him in a lie. “Started on with me about two weeks before we left Taj Su. We’ve been here ever since.”

“When was that again?” The woman—Bernadette—glanced up, her tattooed eyebrows arching menacingly. Like many who lived on space stations, she buzzed her hair close to the scalp, a style originally adopted to conserve water in resource-constrained habitats. The fuzz that remained was dyed bright pink, contrasting with her painted black nails. Despite her appearance, Bernadette was about as fun as a wet towel.

“About six months ago,” Core said.

“Why’d you come to Solaran’s Bridge in the first place?”

“I already done told you, I’m a bot machinist, and I needed the work. After the Kryl invaded Yuzosix, I knew a lot of folks would be moving through here. Seemed like a place my skill set would be sorely needed. Besides, I like helping people.”

Bernadette frowned and tapped a few notes into her tab. A privacy filter concealed the holoscreen’s contents by blurring it from every other angle. “Bot machinist is an unusual job for a teenage girl, don’t you think?”

“So what?” Core stared at her. Was she trying to antagonize him?

“It’s an honest question, Mr. Carter. You know as well as I do that more than 90% of bot machinists are men.”

“Seem like a good reason to train more women in the trade. Norah here’s as talented as they come. She’s got clever fingers and a memory like an aluminite vice.”

The blonde girl had been close-lipped and suspicious since Bernadette’s arrival. She sulked on a stool by the door. As Core’s eyes shifted to her—to see how she was responding to his compliments and Bernadette’s thinly veiled accusations—he caught her clever fingers wrist-deep in the caseworker’s purse.