Soundless Conflicts

by S. Walker

  Emilia's jaw dropped. "That's... absolutely evil. I love it. Sorry for, you know, doubting."

  Jamet grinned, then swiveled to face an amused Captain Siers. "But we're going to need to put some pressure on her. Make her too worried about other things to really notice or think it through-- not to mention take away any ideas about getting rid of eyewitnesses."

  "Am I going to like this idea, lieutenant?" He stroked one hand across his mustache, eyes hooded.

  "Ehh... maybe not." She considered the last few days and winced apologetically. "Actually, I can almost guarantee you won't. It's very Corporate. Not in a good way, either."

  "Let's hear it."

  "Well first we need to make contact with Independent Thompson again-- he'll need to know about copying the access logs on the way back through. Emilia, can you maybe...?"

  "Actually, our engineer might be better for that." She pointed at a surprised Janson.

  "Me? Why's that?"

  "He seems a lot more comfortable talking in technical terms. It got a little... weird for a bit, with me." Emilia scrunched her nose, making the visor briefly ride up high enough to show a line of white skin underneath. "I think you two would get along better. Come over here, I'll help you on what to say."

  Bemused, Janson cross the bridge and took a knee next to the Comms workstation. Jamet listened until it seemed like Emilia had it under control, then looked up at the captain again. "Okay, your part is going to be a little rough."

  Siers steepled both hands under his chin, looking slightly down at her. "That's not encouraging. Rough in what way, exactly?"

  "How much experience do you have talking with Upper Executives?" This wasn't a question she normally asked, but then again this was entirely untested space. Typically everyone knew Executive priorities and goals, specifically how to avoid getting in the way of them or taking advantage. Running into someone completely outside the system had her questioning everything.

  "Quite a lot." Siers seemed comfortable. She breathed a sigh of relief. "Although they typically know who I am ahead of time." Jamet facepalmed.

  "Right. Right. Of course." No one with an ounce of career instinct would get trapped into taking a meeting with a random. Everyone always looked into who the competition was prior to interacting at any level. Even a cursory bit of research on Siers would have any Executive on their best behavior, if not outright superciliously terrified. If she hadn't been half a second away from indebted worker status Jamet would have done the same: Only sheer terror and complete lack of options put her aboard the Kipper without several hours of background checks. "Okay, problems. We're going to need you to treat this Executive like an afterthought."

  He frowned, head tilted. "An afterthought?"

  "Yes, sir. If you do not mind, lieutenant," Paul joined them, leaning an elbow on the Captain's console. He was so tall the elevated console literally gave him a perfect resting place. "I have a bit of a history with this and I think I know where you are going."

  "Oh, yes. Please." Then Jamet remembered what exactly Paul's history with Executives was. "I mean... sorry." He avoided her sympathetic eyes, but eventually nodded. "Alright Captain, here's probably going to be our best play: Buy the system."

  He blinked. "I'm going to need an explanation for that."

  "You don't have to buy it for real-- although is that a possibility? Dead stars, please don't say yes-- just treat this entire conversation as if you already own the station and everyone on it. Dammit, I'm botching this." Jamet growled, frustrated. How do you even distill a lifetime of sneering objectification into a single lesson? "Okay, let's start with not caring. These aren't survivors we are pulling up to rescue; it's an asset check. We want to know what the mobile value is for personnel."

  Paul winced. "That was extremely Corporate, lieutenant. Not inaccurate, though." He addressed Siers. "It is pretty common Executive mentality to see everyone and everything in their section as little more than a dollar value. Things to be used, or leveraged for personal advantage."

  "Right." Jamet pointed at Paul. "Exactly that. Sorry, but that's how the Executive is going to see it-- right now everyone with her is an asset, something with a value and a use. Her value and her use, to be specific. We need to redefine that pretty fast or she might write them off as liabilities." Jamet knew she would have pulled that same move in a heartbeat less than a year ago. Those weren't just workers, they were literal walking testimony at a sanction hearing. It would take a hell of a lot to overcome a liability status like that.

  "And we get around that by, what? Claiming to own everyone already?" Sier said it with a flat tone of extreme displeasure. "This is edging into territory I personally have issues with."

  "Sorry, sir. But yes! That's it exactly! If everyone here already belongs to you, then damaging or disposing of assets is an attack on your personal bottom line and holy shit I know exactly how bad that sounds." She facepalmed again, blowing a breath into both cupped palms. "Okay. It's awful. But it works, mentally-- it puts everyone into your asset list and not hers, and since we're the only rescue ship around she'll be extremely leery of doing anything to get on your bad side."

  Jamet kept going, getting more animated. "Alright, if you can keep that in mind it'll do a lot to keep anyone from being written off. That's great, covers our biggest goal. But you also need to keep in mind that we need to treat the Executive like a problem and not an asset." She chopped a hand in a hard 'no'. "Absolutely nobody just lets an Upper with an unknown agenda onto the team, that's just asking for a takeover. Usually we feel out the Management working around them, find someone unhappy with a position that can provide dirt. Maybe set them up for a compromising-"

  Siers exchanged a long, slow look with Paul. The taller man shrugged in response, then tilted his head slightly toward Jamet with a raised eyebrow. Siers winced, then sighed. "Lieutenant?"

  She broke off halfway through explaining honeypot entrapment, hands making hourglass figures in midair. "Sir?"

  "I hope you understand I have a lot of trust in you." Siers waited as Jamet sputtered in surprise. "So please take this in the best light possible."

  "Sir...?"

  "I think we're going to need you to be our soulless Corporate mouthpiece."

  Chapter 25

  Burning Down The House

  Emilia stood outside the Storage hatch with a flamethrower.

  Well she called it a flamethrower, but over the helmet camera Jamet thought it looked more like a plasma welder taped to a pressurized aerosol bottle. Every now and then the camera would turn sideways and upward, focusing on the clearly worried expression of Paul, then face forward again. "Uhh, how long are we going to wait here?" Emilia managed to sound worried and irritated in equal amounts.

  "I second that, lieutenant." Paul sounded just as nervous, although his tone made it harder to tell. She had his camera input on the left side of the screen away from Emilia's to avoid accidentally giving herself nausea. Every now and then the taller man's feed would turn downward to check on Emilia's tiny suited form, then check the heavy pry bar in his gloved hands. "The longer I stand here the less I like the idea."

  Jamet tapped a console key. "I get it, sorry. But I don't think it'll be much longer. Janson, can you hear us? What's your status?"

  The big man's baritone voice sounded smaller over an audio link. "Captain's authorizing the systems right now, ah can cut local gravity after that. You sure this will work?"

  "Will it put our friends in storage to sleep? Actually, no. I'm not sure."

  "Ma'am?"

  "Engineer?"

  "That would have been a great time to lie to me. Jus' saying." Something clicked over the line, then beeped. "That's got it. Everyone ready? Gravity cutting off in five, four..."

  She checked the redundant buckles on her workstation, then gripped the edge of the console as the engineer finished his countdown. Right after 'one' it suddenly felt like the entire ship took a nosedive off a cliff, tossing her heart and stomach straight upwards
in a horrible feeling of falling. Jamet closed both eyes and took deep breaths, focusing hard on squashing her body's automatic panic reflex. At least she wasn't alone: On screen both cameras twitched wildly as Paul and Emilia fought the sudden urge to freak out under weightlessness.

  "Gah! Hate that feeling! Makes me want to throw up every time." A small gloved hand gripped the edge of the hatch like a lifeline. "Paul, hanging in there?" Low gagging sounds floated over suit speakers. "Guess not. Alright, moment of truth here." Emilia's feed slowly floated upwards until her helmet pressed to the inset hatch window.

  Inside main storage was a brightly lit, chaotic mess. With gravity off everything knocked loose from the bins floated through the air in long streamers, bouncing off each other and the racks in whirling displays. The back wall was especially bad, spare parts and pieces of random tools nearly obscuring everything from view. But after a few moments of watching Emilia tapped the plexi. "There, I see it. Them? It? They?"

  Jamet enlarged the display and squinted, eyes tracking warily across the image. Moving pieces slowly resolved into a large series of hexagons, stuck haphazardly to the walls and upper parts of the storage racks. There were four of them she could see, each as big as her outstretched arms and fuzzy with attached triangular drones. Limp cables drifted through the air, slowly revolving around inert metallic figures that spun and tumbled with leftover momentum. A small river of drones trailed upward, caught in the middle of pulling materials towards the overhead Environmental vents.

  After nearly a minute without any movement, Jamet keyed the channel open. "I think they're asleep. Or unpowered. Do you think it's safe to open the hatch?"

  "Not really," Paul sounded like a man trying to swallow and talk at the same time. "I doubt any of this is safe. Emilia?" His camera alternated between laser-focus through the window to pointed at the top of her white-colored skinsuit helmet.

  "No idea. But I'm willing to give it a try." Her view floated downward, then centered on the hatch controls. "Popping it now."

  It felt like the entire comm link held their breath as the hatch whooshed out of view. Emilia held the cobbled-together flamethrower at arms-length, pointed in the general direction of the hexagons.

  Nothing moved. Actually, everything moved. But not intentionally.

  "Alright, going in. Gonna see how they react to getting flamed." Her POV pushed off, gliding forward gracefully from handhold to handhold as she crossed the room.

  Janson popped onto the link, sounding worried. "You remember about the fire, right?"

  The camera bobbed once, up and down. "Yeah, I got it. Paul, you're right behind me? Don't leave me if this gets bad. I'm about to light it up." One hand came into the camera angle, grabbing hard onto an upright storage pole to anchor. The other aimed the fat aerosol container at the nearest hexagon cluster, then firmly jammed the button on top. A thick stream of gel shot from the nozzle, tacky chemicals keeping the stream together until it struck the hexagons as a thick goo. Emilia carefully hosed the entire surface down, taking a moment to make sure a lot got into the interior. "Alright, here goes."

  Making sure no part of the hanging gel stream was near her hand, Emilia held the plasma welder out and triggered it. Instantly the entire mass caught fire with a hissing blast of flame that blossomed into a spherical explosion, yellow and red globes reaching in every direction. Emilia's camera flinched away as she shouted. "Damn, you weren't joking!"

  "Were you too close?" Janson sounded worried. "Fire in zero-G is dangerous, goes in every direction."

  The POV kicked back farther, putting a storage rack between the flames and her suit. "Nah, I'm okay. But it was close, had me scared for a bit. Paul, you see anything moving?"

  Jamet switched to watching Paul's feed. He was higher up, near the ceiling looking down. "No, nothing moving." He swung the pry bar around one-handed, using the long metal pole to poke at the burning remains. Broken and melted drones slowly spun off, revealing an interior hot enough to spit little balls of cooling metal into the air. Melting strands of electronic slag drifted on thermal expansion. "Can you get the other pods, then switch to the ducts?"

  She watched from the console as Paul got to work breaking up the flaming hexagon, using his bar to smash anything that looked like it might still be functional. Emilia tagged off with him, drifting forward to apply more gel accelerant when it looked like the flames might die out. Occasionally she used the plasma tip more directly, slicing off tightly-coupled drones wherever he couldn't get the bar between their cables.

  Everything seemed to be going well. Suspiciously well, actually. Jamet pulled up an overlay of the Kipper's Environmental ducts near the storage area. "Paul, quick check of the Enviro lockouts? I don't see any alerts."

  His camera stopped moving for a couple seconds, then got back to work. "Nothing setting off alerts here. Reactor vents are at zero tamper notices as well. If everything goes well we will move there next."

  "Alright. I'm going to stop looking over your shoulder, but if absolutely anything happens..."

  "You will be the first to know." Paul sounded amused. Nauseous, but definitely amused.

  Emilia's POV lit up orange and red again. "We'll beat it so fast you won't believe it. We're fine, Impossible, go smack down your Corpo."

  Jamet snorted, which was an unusual experience without gravity because everything stuck in her sinuses. With a grimace of distaste she killed the visual feeds, minimizing them off the workspace to avoid the distraction. "Janson, I'm cutting comms with you to focus on this. Are you going to be okay?"

  "Ah'm fine, but thanks. Just going to stay here for a bit an' listen to them work, just in case they need help."

  "Alright." Tap, click. "Captain, I'm about to call our friend on the habitation ring. Any last minute changes?" She frowned at her gloved hands, wondering why they seemed so jittery. Zero-G, probably.

  "Go ahead, lieutenant. Do you want me to listen in or stay off the channel entirely?"

  "Oh." That was... quite an offer. And a hell of a show of trust. "Would you be okay not listening in, sir? I didn't want you to think I was cutting deals or anything. I can record the whole thing if-"

  She could almost see the sardonic grin as he cut in. "It's fine. Actually, change that-- record the conversation, if you please. It might be useful evidence later on. But I'm not worried about you backdoor dealing." Something whirred in the background, then clanged. "I trust you."

  Which stirred up something bitter in her recent memory. A voice, low and husky, deep with personal confidence and enjoyable physical afterglow: Trust me, J. She could hear the gentle music in the background, taste sweet wine and the excitement of the moment. It felt so real, so possible. We can do this. Together. Come with me to Upper. And then that final nail in the coffin, the secret hope too good to be true: Be my partner.

  Her hands hurt from gripping the console in rage. She blinked away the memory, deliberately letting go and brushing away traitorous tears. They held in the air like glittering diamonds, evidence of pointless anger that took a careful swipe to knock away. But it still took several long, deep breaths before her heartbeat stopped pounding hard enough to blur her vision.

  Jamet tapped the comms key, proud of how level her voice was through a closed up throat. "I appreciate that, Captain. Signing off now, I need a moment to put myself together for this talk."

  "Take your time. Janson tells me we still have half a day of deceleration ahead; assuming we can clear Storage I'm going to order everyone down for a rest cycle as well. Make sure we're not tired and making mistakes."

  "Good idea. Alright, sir-- signing off."

  Click, tap.

  Alone on the bridge, Jamet carefully unbuckled the harness and drifted away from the co-CEO console. A soft kick against the seat sent her upwards, rebounding off the overheads with a practiced push that angled her back downward into the CEO area. Snagging the straps, she pulled herself into the seat and buckled in, settling back on the chair with a sigh and closed eyes.
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