by J. N. Chaney
“I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” he added as something sparked above his face. But Victor seemed unfazed. “I’d had a rough go of it for a while there.”
“And now?”
Victor slid back out. “And now you advanced me more credits than I’ve seen in two years’ worth of jobs.”
“Did I?” I turned to speak into my shoulder. “Lars?”
“As per your agreement with Mr. Pelmatier, I advanced him half of his payment for this mission with the balance to be paid upon completion.”
“Which was?”
“One hundred thousand credits, sir.”
I made to speak but choked. Then I started coughing.
“Mr. Hammer, sir?” Victor asked. “Are you okay?”
But I waved him off, eventually clearing my throat. “I’m fine. Just fine.”
“Well, anyway. All I can say is thanks for this job, sir. I really look forward to thanking the boss too when I see her.”
“The boss?” I asked in surprise. Wasn’t I the boss? Then I remembered.
Rachel.
“Sure. Miss Mason, was it?” Victor asked, then gave a low whistle. “I might not remember much from that day, but boy oh boy, I won’t ever forget her.”
“Yeah, she has a way of leaving impressions.” And a wake of bodies, I wanted to add. But I’d let Victor discover that for himself in time. He’d left the bar before the fighting had begun or he would have had a sneak peek into Miss Mason’s expertise.
“So, Deloris here is going to be okay with all these passengers?” I asked.
“She sure is. Your boss’s personal assistant gave me a head’s up about this mission and I was able to get the necessary equipment to secure everyone.”
“Hold up,” I said, raising a hand. “Personal Assistant?”
“Yeah, Mr. Larsanders the Third.”
Turning again to address Lars, I asked, “The Third?”
“It seemed distinguished,” Lars said.
“Since when have you been interested in social standings?”
“Since I learned that the human psyche naturally responds to subtle social cues almost as easily as neurolinguistics programming. Therefore, in an effort to secure Mr. Palmetier’s trust, and to expedite his sobriety and ship readiness, I felt a more formal title was appropriate.”
“Sounds like he knows a thing or two,” Victor went on. “And he was pretty strict about your whole no drinking on the job policy.” Victor looked around as if what he was about to say might be overheard by someone else on the bridge, even though we were the only two here. “But if you ask me, the guy has one too many sticks shoved up his ass.”
I let out a generous laugh. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, Vic.”
When I finally regained my composure, wiping a tear from my eye, I asked, “Do you mind if our ship rides your back through slip space?”
“For the price you’re paying me, you can ride me as hard and as long as you damn well please.”
Now there’s a horrible mental image I won’t be able to unsee. “Just until we get to Vega Station. That’ll be fine.”
“Can do, Mr. Hammer. And once we’ve unloaded the passengers?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet, Vic. We’ll have to wait and see what the boss and Mr. Larsanders the Third want to do.”
After we’d entered the first slip gap point, Lars insisted that I get to sickbay. Considering that I’d wrapped my hands in rags, and knowing that the exosuit could only stop my hip from bleeding for only so long, I complied. But reluctantly. Lars was seriously crimping my style.
The whole reason I’d been waiting to go to sickbay was so that Rachel and I could go together. The way I saw it, post-op recovery could be fun. But Lars insisted that bleeding out was a worse fate than missing a little private R&R time with Rachel.
Rachel and Monty still weren’t back from attending to the miners when Lars finally ordered me to a medical suite. I stripped down and placed myself on one of the tables.
“Gods, can’t you warm these things up?” I asked, mindful of how the cold surface was affecting my manhood.
“My apologies, sir,” Lars said. “Just give it a second.”
“I’ve heard those words before,” I said, mumbling to myself.
“What was that, sir?”
“Probe me, Lars. Put me under and then probe me because you know how much I hate this.”
“Very well, sir. Commencing alien anal intrusion.”
“What?”
“Good night, sir.”
When Rachel and Monty finally made their way back to the Horizon’s bridge, I’d already spent several hours in a recovery lounge chair, fixed myself two cups of coffee, and returned to the bridge to do some light reading.
“Why the long faces?” I asked.
Rachel looked at me and then indicated Monty. The kid looked positively terrible. He needed a shower, for one thing. But his eyes were red and swollen, and…
“Aww shit, what happened.” I stood and walked toward the kid, placing my data pad on the navigation console.
“Easy, Flint,” Rachel said, raising a hand to slow me.
“My mother…” Monty choked. “She’s…”
I knelt, feeling a tug at the newly patched wound in my hip. But my pain was nothing compared to what this kid was going through. I looked up at Rachel, who squatted too. She shook her head with a grim expression on her face. Damn. “Your mother’s what, kid?”
“She’s gone.”
I’d already guessed the answer and still my heart wrenched in my chest. I lowered my head and breathed out a deep sigh. There was nothing worse than losing a parent when you were a child. I knew. What made it even worse was that Monty was such a good kid. And he’d already been through so much. Why does the universe always have to be such an asshole?
“Listen, kid. I’m sorry.” I shook my head slowly, and then looked into Monty’s eyes. “It shouldn’t have ended like this for you. You’re a good little man, you hear me?”
Monty nodded, but I knew nothing I would say could ease the pain of losing his mother. Because nothing had eased mine. So I did the only thing that I could think to do. I reached out and pulled him to my chest, wrapping my arms around him. That was what my father had done with me.
Despite all the things he’d done wrong—all the things to mess me up as a kid—the hug my father had given me after my mother’s funeral meant more to me than anything else. In fact, it was the only real memory I had of him being affectionate with me. Somehow, with that hug, I knew I was going to be okay. I knew that, despite the pain of the present, my life would move on and the pain wouldn’t last forever. But damn if the memory of losing my mother didn’t still sting.
Maybe Monty felt a little of that same comfort too—I had no way of knowing. But I did know he was in agony, just as I had been. Suddenly, like someone had opened a dam’s flood gates, Monty burst into tears. His sinewy body shook against me in great heaves as he sobbed. He wrapped his arms tighter around me, burying his face in my neck. Words tried to form on his lips, but they bent into crooked wails, filling the bridge with the fragile sounds of grief.
I let him continue for several minutes, his body trembling against mine, wracked with sorrow. I’d rarely felt so helpless. All I wanted to do was bring Monty’s mother back, whoever she’d been. I hadn’t even met the woman despite my promises to save her life. Feelings of guilt and frustration panged in my chest. Then, in an odd shift of emotions, I thought of Ozzie and the syndicates that had confined him to Meldorn. I thought of all the overseers who’d made Monty’s life a living hell. Then I thought of their ends—of shooting evil men in the mines, of Rachel ending Ino with a sword, and of Ozzie falling to his death inside the maw of a massive worm.
“Listen to me, kid,” I said, wiping tears from my own eyes. “I know your mother is proud of you. She knows what you did back there, to help your people. Hells, I’m proud of you and you’re not even my kid. So I can only imagine ho
w she feels looking down on you right now.”
“Thanks, Mr. Flint.” Monty pulled away from me, wiping his eyes.
“And she must have been a remarkable woman,” I added. Monty nodded as if to affirm my statement. “Because she raised an amazing young man like you.” I tapped him on the chest to make my point.
Monty smiled, wiping his cheeks and nose with his forearms. “Thanks, Mr. Flint. I really appreciate you.”
I gave him a little chuckle. “And I appreciate you right back.”
“Why don’t you go get cleaned up, Monty,” Rachel said, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Lars will guide you to the crew showers.”
“Thanks, Miss Rachel.” The kid gave me one more hug, then reached over and threw an arm around Rachel too, pulling us together.
“We can’t send him back,” Rachel said, protesting for the second time in the last minute.
“What do you mean we can’t send him back?” I asked. “Those are his people down there.”
“Yeah, but he’s got no one.”
“No one? Come on. They’re all orphans and widows in there,” I said. “They’re one big extended family of people who’ve lost loved ones.”
But Rachel shook her head. “Listen, Flint. They may have been through a lot together, those people. But they’re no more family than anyone else who hates each other.”
“Hates each other?” I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t see anyone—”
“They left her on the walkway,” Rachel said, her face dark with anger. When I gave her a confused look, she added, “When everyone was loading the ships and those guards appeared? Monty’s mom was one of the passengers who was shot. I got the story from several people who watched it happen. No one made an effort to help her, Flint. They were too caught up in saving their own asses. Sure, shared experiences, I get that. But at the end of the day, people only care about themselves.”
“Rachel, that’s pretty dark,” I said, thinking that maybe the miners just didn’t have time to haul a dead body off a precarious gantry while being shot at. The truth was, I would have left her too.
“It’s true,” Rachel said.
“Well it’s not true of us,” I replied, thinking of all we’d just done to save five hundred miners together.
“Then prove it,” she said. “Let him stay on with us.”
“Rachel, I don’t need to prove we want to help people by letting some random kid ride around the quadrant with us. Plus, who’s gonna take care of him?”
“I will,” she said with a raised chin.
“You’re gonna watch after him,” I stated, my sarcasm bordering on disbelief.
“He needs a mother.”
“And you’re the best option?” Suddenly, my conscience shot me a warning. Tread carefully, Flint. “I mean, above and beyond all the other good options among his people?”
“Quit calling them his people,” she blurted out. “We’re his people now. And plus, we need him.”
I knew what Rachel was thinking before she even said it. “The artifacts,” I said.
“Yeah, the artifacts. Not even Lars knows how to read those, and we’re just going to let that kind of talent walk into a Union refugee camp?”
Despite the fact that I didn’t want some kid riding around with us on the Horizon, I couldn’t exactly argue with Rachel’s logic. Monty was bordering on being a bona fide genius. And anyone who could give Lars a run for his money was someone I wanted to know.
“We’ll need to run it by Oragga,” I said.
“Of course.” Rachel was nodding expectantly.
“And if it turns out he can’t read them, then we’ll need to reconsider this.”
“Totally. Well get him started right away to test him before we arrive at Vega Station.”
“Still…” I said, letting my voice trail off, just to annoy her.
“You know,” Rachel interjected, her tone growing soft, “he held it together all the way to the bridge. It wasn’t until you hugged him that he lost it.”
A lump formed in my throat. “You’re a real asshole, Rach. You know that?”
Monty had been lost in his work for the last three days. He’d taken over the Horizon’s war room, covering the table with the artifacts, several data pads, and documents—both those on the table’s display and several floating in holos around the room. Monty had also littered the space with the previous day’s used clothes and several meals’ worth of dishes. Since he’d refused to eat in the mess hall, Rachel had brought him food instead. I decided to check in on the kid with her, as she brought an empty duffle bag to pick up his laundry.
“Monty, you really should take a break,” Rachel said. “Come relax with Flint and me.”
“I told you, I can’t,” Monty replied, his face buried in lines of code generated from a handheld scanner that he moved across one of the artifacts.
“Yes,” she insisted, “you can. And you should. I know all this fascinates you, but—”
“I don’t have the time.” Monty looked up in exasperation. “We’re almost to Vega and I don’t even know if I’m going to be done as it is. I can’t leave you with a job half-done, not after all you’ve done for me.”
“What if you don’t have to leave?” I asked.
Monty’s eyes locked on mine. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if you stayed on with us?”
Monty looked at Rachel. “Are you… are you both serious right now?”
“The way we see it,” Rachel said, “you don’t have any real reason to keep on with the miners, do you?”
He shook his head. A look of sorrow haunted his expression. But he blinked it away. “No. All my family is…”
“Right here,” Lars said over the conference room’s speakers. The sudden awareness of his voice startled me.
“Yeah,” Monty said, looking between Rachel and me. “Right here.”
The sentimentality was killing me. I cleared my throat, then added, “That way, you can take your time deciphering the artifacts, including all those we have yet to find.”
“Yet to find?” His eyes went wide.
“Did you think all we do is go around rescuing miners on back-world planets?” I asked.
Monty shrugged and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Kinda.”
Rachel stepped to the table and touched the closest artifact. “We’re on a mission to find more just like these. And we need someone who knows how to read the language. Plus who knows what else they might lead to that needs reading.”
“You mean the weapon,” Monty said calmly.
Rachel and I looked at each other. No one knew about what Oragga had told us, which meant Monty here had clearly passed our little test. That was Oragga’s only stipulation too. “If you think you can care for the child, then my only concern is whether or not he lives up to his claims,” Min had said during a call from the Horizon’s bridge. “As much as I admire your desire to care for this boy, the Union has channels for such orphans, and I will personally see to it that he receives the very best placement.”
“But if he proves himself?” Rachel asked.
“If he proves himself, who am I to stop a viable asset for helping us achieve our goals?” The billionaire smirked. “Figures it would be a child.”
“A child, sir?” I asked.
But Oragga waved me off. “I’m just mumbling to myself, Mr. Reed. In any event, see what he can do, and let me know what direction you take from there.”
When the call had ended, Rachel threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on the cheek. Damn, if I wasn’t careful, I’d have the galaxy’s first floating orphanage.
“Those things are talking about a weapon?” I asked Monty, careful not to jump to any conclusions too quickly.
The kid nodded. “As far as I can tell, it refers to a weapon of immense power, able to destroy entire worlds.”
“Entire worlds? Yeah right, kid.” I was playing dumb, of course. But I wanted to see how confident he was.
>
“Yes, Mr. Flint. It says so right here.” Monty placed three of the five artifacts together, and then positioned the other two in seemingly random places apart from the cluster of three. “I don’t know how these two fit into the puzzle, but I do know these three over here are a trio.”
“They link together?” I asked. Perhaps this was the beginning of the map that Oragga had told us about.
Monty nodded, then pointed to several places along the artifacts, causing holo lights to illuminate the passages he wanted us to see. “These are instructions on how to assemble these devices. But there’s more than that. A lot of the rest of the text speaks of its activation.”
“Its activation?” Rachel repeated.
“Yes. It appears as if the artifacts are actually components of a key that not only leads to wherever this weapon is, but activates it as well.”
“So, if you had the rest of these devices,” I said, pointing at the open spaces in Monty’s layout, “you think you could figure out where the weapon is?”
“Absolutely, Mr. Flint. But I expect that we could use this collection of devices to turn it on as well.”
Rachel backhanded my bicep. “That work for you?”
“It does.” We needed to tell Oragga about this, and about this kid. He really was a genius.
I sat down across from Monty and looked him square in the face. “What’da say, kid. Want to stay on and help us?”
He didn’t even hesitate. “Absolutely!” Then he seemed to pull back a little. I thought maybe he’d been embarrassed with how emphatically he’d replied. Rachel apparently noticed too.
“What’s wrong, Monty?” she asked.
“Well, it’s just that… I can’t give you a whole lot more information until I see more of the artifacts.”
“We understand that, kid,” I said. “Don’t worry about that. We’ll find them.”
“But…”
“But what, Monty?” Rachel asked, leaning on the table.
“I just don’t want to disappoint you.”