The Star to the Left

Bright morning sunlight cut budding rays through the glacial morning air that lit Grizzy’s brown skin, giving a youthful glow to his face that ended at his inky, oiled beard. His black boots crunched the unstable rubble underfoot while trudging through the waste of the northern plates. On one shoulder was his rifle, and tucked secretly in a holster hidden by his dusty, black trench coat was his hand cannon. Grizzy pulled the straps on his backpack tighter around his broad shoulders after stumbling over an unsteady hunk of concrete.

Trudging beside him was Celt, clad in the same black, dusty trench coat, and her chalky white face was set in expressionless vigilance, pale pink lips a thin line. Grizzy imagined his face looked equally grim because there was nothing to be happy about on Earth satellite Marxx. Around them was what remained after years of decay, weathering, and neglect since the interplanetary war. Few people wanted to live there—Grizzy wasn’t one of them. He focused on his footing, but his mind was years in the past. It was sprinting amongst the ear-shattering bombs, shouting the names of squadmates. It breathed the dust-soaked air, the chemicals. It held the weight of a friend as he breathed his last.

Grizzy knew Celt was living the same memories, only in vivid, high definition detail. As Grizzy stepped over a fallen pillar, he distracted himself. “Do you remember where it is?”

“I think so,” Celt replied, her soprano voice indicating no particular emotion.

It was a very human response, but there was no doubt that she remembered.

“Great. Are we at least close? Everything looks the damn same, and we’ve been walking for an eternity. Someone’s going to steal our bikes, I swear,” he added, his voice falling to a tenor grumble.

“It shouldn’t be too much further. Whether it’s still there is another story completely,” Celt admitted.

After another eternity of boot crunching, Celt stopped and looked this way and that while surveying. Grizzy did the same, his less accurate memory searching for the exact spot burned into the annals of his brain. He took a few tentative steps forward and felt guttural dread. His pulse quickened, and he fought instinct, taking a few more steps. “It’s this way,” he said finally, face contorted in grim effort.

Celt frowned and replied, “I don’t recognize this. It’s...”

She stopped, crystalline eyes scanning the steel spines and concrete skin of once-glorious buildings. “It’s beyond recognition. I can’t make sense of my internal overlays.”

Grizzy shook his head. “This is the place. I don’t really remember, so much… but I can…”

Grizzy paused, searching for a phrase that Celt would understand. She was very much alive, thinking, and feeling, but it was as if those were still in their infancy. He’d grown the habit of choosing less evanescent words over the years. He was certainly one of few who went so far. Still, his words came up short.

“I can just sense it,” he resigned.

When Celt didn’t question him, his shoulders relaxed a touch. She had simply accepted that humans knew things they didn’t, or shouldn’t. This made taking the lead easy for Grizzy, and they moved into the city. Occasionally, Grizzy’s mind would conjure up the phantoms of allies, enemies, the things that haunted his mind. He would stop and remind himself it was just memories, and a soothing touch from Celt asserted this.

Eventually, they reached a tattered building on something that was likely a street at one point. The bomb holes ruined any resemblance to what once was, but Grizzy looked at the remains with a heavy heart. The sight brought back more memories, ones he could no longer run from, or maybe didn’t want to. “How did you know it was here?” Celt asked, calling him back to the present.

How did you forget, he wanted to ask, but didn’t. “I’m not sure I could ever forget. Even if I die, I’d bet my spirit would still be able to find this place,” Grizzy said, another concept that seemed to elude Celt’s understanding.

They traced the perimeter of the building to what had been a garden, and Grizzy whistled in astonishment. The plant life had overtaken the area and gone on a reclamation warpath. The way the plants fought against the weathering of time and made chaos their order reminded him the world was more than the ravages of war. It was awe-inspiring. Grizzy marveled as he methodically picked his way through the foliage. Occasionally, he reached out to caress the leaves, astounded that anything could survive the cold north. Celt spoke up. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten where we buried him. I’m just taking it slow. We have to enjoy the little things in life…sometimes.”

Eventually, regretfully, they came across the remnants of expensive sculptures. Grizzy picked his way over and around until Grizzy and Celt reached an angel statue busted and crumpled onto its side, the single remaining wing reaching for the sky. At the foot of the statue were closely packed gravestones, what was left, anyway. Grizzy hesitated, and Celt stepped forward and whipped out a knife. It took Grizzy a moment longer before he collected himself and silently did the same. They beautified the area together, clearing rubble and branches. Grizzy painstakingly trimmed the grass as well to display what was left of the crude metal tombstones. Many had been scorched or laced with bullet holes and shrapnel. Some were now nameless plates to be invariably forgotten to time.

One, however, Grizzy would know regardless of the era. The name Izack Fareed was carved into it, with Headed to the star to the left scribed just below. As if a nod to the epitaph, a bullet had found its way through the top left of the tombstone, a ragged and weathered hole left in its wake.

Grizzy read it aloud.

“Fitting words,” Celt remarked.

Grizzy thudded onto the cold grass beside the grave, and Celt settled herself on the other side. “Of course. He’s the one that picked them. I just wrote them here,” Grizzy noted, rubbing the cold from his nose, ears, and cheeks, “Didn’t matter where the bastard was; he was always headed towards the star to the left.”

“I’m sure he’d be complaining about how cold it is, too,” Celt added.

“No doubt about that. ‘It’s so cold I’m freezin’ my tits off’ or something like that,” Grizzy tried.

Despite the bygone years, they felt as if Izack was with them, sitting between the pair with his crooked, snaggle-toothed smile. Grizzy pulled his pack between his legs and pulled out a fist-sized—his own fists for measure—glass bottle filled with brilliant amber liquid. Grizzy cracked the seal and pulled the cork out slowly. It gave a satisfying pop, and the sharp smell reached out to wake anyone who caught a whiff.

“Smell that Izack? That’s Pilferati’s right there. The good stuff. Won’t find whiskey like this back at Timbar’s bar,” he said, trying to sound haughty.

“I’ll be taking the first sip if you don’t mind. It’s on my dime, after all,” he said and took a swig.

The sharp, rustic flavor washed through Grizzy’s mouth and warmed him. He let out a deeply satisfied breath while passing the bottle to Celt. She sniffed it too, then took her first drink. “Yeah, that’s the good stuff, all right. You’d better be grateful we came back for your ass, Izack,” she added with a smile on her lips.

They both shared the drink for a while, bantering back and forth as if Izack were present. When the bottle was half full, Grizzy looked at it, and a string of tears sprang from his eyes, his face a sorrowed smile. “You were one hell of a man, Izack. You deserved a better end. No one should have such an inglorious end. I’m glad I gave you a bit of glory before it was too late,” he said, patting the gravestone as he remembered his friend’s final bloodstained smile.

He then ceremoniously poured the rest of the liquor for Izack. “Family is family. Even if I had no father. Even if we only knew each other as orphans. Even if…Well, you were family—you, Celt, Ramis, Clayton, Desi, Tristan, Testo, Zo. Family until the end…and then a little longer,” Grizzy said, a deep breath shaking him as the words came unbidden.

Celt listened, staring up into the sky, possibly searching for the star to the left that Izack had taken off for. When Grizzy finished, so did the tears. The moment passed, and he began digging into the soft, loamy dirt. “Do you think he’d be mad that I’m digging up his grave?” Grizzy asked, voice pinched but recovering with each passing moment.

“Hardly. His body isn’t even here. Besides, he was basically a graverobber when we found him. I don’t think he gets to complain,” Celt replied.

Grizzy chuckled, a tenor rumble in the chest. “Poetic irony, don’t you think?”

For a moment, Grizzy thought Celt might miss the meaning, but she gave a rare snort of laughter. “I suppose it is. Couldn’t ask for a more fitting finale.”

Grizzy hit something hard, buried exactly where it should be. He tore up the ground around the object until he could grab it. “Got it,” he claimed, digging his fingers down and hoisting out a small metal box, thick with rust.

He scraped away the dirt and got his fingers under the lid. Celt crouched down to join the reunion, eyes flashing when she saw the bag inside. Grizzy pulled the bag open and dumped the contents into his palm: a small, heart-shaped locket that Izack treasured more than his life and a two by two-inch square device that had once been Izack’s. It matched the ones on Celt and Grizzy’s wrists now. Grizzy tapped the screen; it sprang to life as if it had only taken a short nap, and pinged for the vital signature of its owner. Grizzy used a passcode to bypass the scan, and his rigid fingers hovered over the last recorded file. Celt placed a hand on his thick forearm and gave a single nod to bolster him. He took a shuddering breath and played it. From an unseen speaker came a ragged voice made weaker by the device’s limitations. “You see that Grizzy? Celt? That’s where I’m headed. The star to the left. I’ll be back in time for drinks, though.”

“It’s time for drinks, buddy,” Grizzy choked out.

He tucked the device and locket back in the pouch and stowed that in his pack. He rose, seeming to stand taller than before. “That’s another down,” Celt said with a forlorn smile.

“Next is Desi.”

“Yeah.”

Grizzy looked down at the gravestone one last time. “Hope you don’t mind if we make a detour along the way, Izack. We promised to pick up the others before buying our way to paradise.”

“He won’t mind. ‘The more, the merrier,’ remember?” Celt quoted.

“Right.”

*****

Celt paused for a long time. She stared out the windows, past the docking spacecraft, and into the starry expanse of space while idly caressing her hand cannon with a G engraved on the barrel.

“What happened after that?” one of the eager young men listening asked.

Celt yawned and turned back to her listeners. “I’ll tell you later. I’m a bit tired after remembering it all,” Celt admitted, a nostalgic smile touching her still young and thin lips.

She stood with a long stretch. “I’ll tell you this much, though. Grizzy and I made it to paradise, but life isn’t much good without a star to chase. So, Grizzy and I are headed to the star to the right now,” she said, flourishing her outdated and prized weapon before holstering it.

“We launch at 0800,” She announced and left her latest crew to find her ship’s engineer.