by R L Dean
Her commlink beeped, it was Mat. She answered it and his dark face and ready smile popped up on her HUD.
"Hi, Mat," she said.
"Hey. You coming to eat?" He asked.
"Hai," she replied. "On my way in now." She wasn't hungry, but it would be impolite to say no to him. He was the captain ... and, of course, there was everything else.
"Okay, hurry before Haydon takes the spaghetti and meatballs."
His face disappeared, replaced by those far away speckles of lantern light.
God, that was a life time ago.
She shook her head and walked back to the maintenance hatch.
* * *
Mat had a way of sucking you in. There were flashes of memory, just bits, of his face as he looked at her through the face shield of a vac-suit helmet. She remembered being cold and the interior of what she thought was a vestibule, the kind you extend between two ships. It seemed to make sense, they got her to the Sadie's Medical cabin somehow. The scene was fleeting in her mind, but the expression on his face remained. Mat was worried about her, someone he didn't even know. It was that rare human kindness that made Misaki feel ashamed that she could not ... share, with him. She could not form an attachment. And sitting at the table in the galley beside him she felt a slight waver in her heart, because Mat's idea of a dinner from shipboard MREs was not food but family. Mat wasn't eating bean paste with soy strips that tasted like cheese, no, he was eating with people he cared for. Even the drunk Russian pilot enjoyed that unconditional love. She wasn't particularly fond of Yuri herself and thought of him more as a danger than a benefit to Mat's family. A family that Mat had somehow made her a part of without her consent or knowledge. One day she was on the tug, a broken toy for evil men to play with, and then she woke up as an engineer on Mat's ship being treated like a respectable human being. They treated her like she belonged. Well ... Yuri didn't go out of his way to avoid her, but he didn't go out of his way to be in the same space as her either. Misaki suspected he picked up on her dislike somehow.
Mat made jokes, talked with her and Haydon about maintenance items, even said a few lines from a show he recently watched that he thought were funny. For his sake she smiled from time to time ... well, a part of her wasn't smiling merely for his sake.
When Yuri was so drunk that he couldn't hold his head up Mat grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the galley.
Haydon gathered up the leftover mealboxes and put them in the disposal. Misaki started to stand but the mechanic suddenly said, "Mat collects broken things ... and people."
She looked at him.
"You were wondering why he keeps Yuri around."
Mat collects broken things ... she rolled it around in her head. Well, that explained why she felt at home.
26 - Mat
The Sadie was rising at just over 40,000 kpm on a slight oblique approach to the Belt, that giant asteroid field that separated in-system from out-system. There were thousands of miners, like Mat and his crew, out there amongst the rocks and dust. It was a huge place, if you wanted to you never had to see another ship— but there was some primal instinct in the back of the brain that said there was safety in numbers. And so, many of those thousands of ships were clumped together, either because they worked for the same employer or because the next field of rocks was tens of thousands of klicks away. UNSEC ships patrolled throughout the Belt, but they were few and far between. It was too massive an area to cover effectively.
Pirates were a problem as far back as his father's day, but Mat could not remember a time that it was this bad. The Sadie, and the Pendleton— the ship Misaki was serving board— both attacked at Saturn, haulers refusing to leave drop-off stations, the UN stretched so thin that they couldn't catch even a single pirate ship. And now this.
"What am I looking at here?" He asked Yuri.
He was on the Flight deck, holding on to Yuri's seat and looking at the cockpit terminal screen, having been woken in his rack by Yuri's repeated calls.
"He is right there," Yuri was saying, fiddling with the scope controls. In the center of the screen was a small dust field and collection of rocks the size of skyscrapers in New York City— and a twinkle of light against one of the rocks.
Mat bent closer to the screen, trying to see what set Yuri off. The Russian was that kind of excited that was really nervousness, or paranoia. Twitchy, Mat recalled the word. Yuri was twitchy ... and hung over. He was only sober because of planned course corrections.
The computer was doing its best to enhance and update the image the closer they came to the object, but to Mat it simply looked like a twinkle among the reddish and brown rocks.
"Yuri, I don't see a pirate. I see a piece of ice ... maybe. I don't know."
The access tube hatch opened and Haydon floated onto the deck. Misaki was behind him. They picked up a couple of pair of female one-size-fits-all jumpsuits before they left Butte, the kind engineers liked to wear with pockets and loops for tools, but she still wore Peterson's shapeless gray coveralls.
"What is it? We were hip deep in leaking tubes and rust."
They looked like it, their coveralls were damp and covered in dark smudges.
Mat nodded to the screen and replied, "Yuri thinks there's a ship about to ambush us."
"I am telling you it is there, I have seen this before. He will move out to ... probably here." Yuri pointed to another large rock at the edge of the field. It was impossible to tell distances with the naked eye but the computer said it was about twenty thousand klicks from the twinkling light Yuri was insisting was a pirate ship. "Then he will line up and head for us at high burn. We need to brake and change course now."
Haydon moved in, pulling himself in the microgravity until he was over Yuri's shoulder. Mat glanced at Misaki as she came closer. She regarded him for a moment with the inscrutable flat expression before turning her eyes to look at the screen.
"I think he's right, boss," Haydon said. "It could be a miner, but he's right in the path of our trajectory from Butte to in-system." He frowned, then shrugged. "I don't like coincidences."
Like it's an ambush. Inside Mat sighed and watched the screen for a moment— it was still just a point of light— then he turned to Misaki. "What do you think?"
She blinked, one fine eyebrow rising, then she said slowly, "It could be a coincidence, but coincidence and fate seem to meet often."
Well, that cinched it. All three of his crew thought that they were about to be attacked, and he had no wish to experience that again ... but ...
"Yuri, how long do we have until we need to brake and change course to avoid him?"
"We should do it now."
"How long?"
Yuri took a heavy breath and squinted his eyes shut, when he opened them he started tapping on his terminal ... course, speed, fuel ... "If his reactor is anything like ours, fifty-eight minutes. Any longer and he can intercept us." He sent the numbers and course projections to the plot terminal and Mat went to it.
The Sadie's course was shown in blue and a red line for the pirate. After fifty-eight minutes the lines intersected at various points of time.
"How long until we get a better picture?"
Yuri held his hands up and Misaki suddenly moved to a terminal and began tapping.
"We should have another sixty percent magnification in about twenty minutes."
Not a lot of time. He nodded, then tuned to Yuri and said, "Alright, maintain course and speed until I make a decision."
Yuri's eyes widened. "What? What decision is there to make, we should flip now."
"Yuri ... I'll make a decision. Stay on course."
Mat turned to leave and Yuri unbuckled from his seat, his magboots clicking on the deck as he stood. "Mat ..." A rare occasion where he used his name. "What are you thinking? We have already lost one can because you made us go to Saturn."
Mat felt his temper rising. "This is not a debate! Now stay on course until I say otherwise."
Haydon was leaning
over the plot terminal, but his eyes were not on it. Misaki was sitting with her hands in her lap, her head bent slightly down. Mat felt like something was going to break inside. He shouldn't have yelled, not with her on the same deck.
Yuri, his expression somewhere between anger and fear, watched him as he opened the hatch and hopped into the access tube. The Russian's face stuck in the forefront of his mind as he opened the hatch to the Crew deck and took the corridor to his quarters.
When the hatch closed behind him he rubbed his face and let himself float. "Lord," he said, his eyes roaming the cabin. "People do bad things because people are bad."
Haydon's words, the marks on Misaki's body he saw in Medical on the day he carried her from the tug, and his aunt— an Old Testament prayer warrior— all met in his head. If bad people were out there he knew a way to stop them. It would be dangerous, but he could do it.
"What happens if I tell Yuri to change course?" Mat asked ... himself ... God ... he wasn't sure. But the only answer that came was, "Nothing." Nothing would happen. They would avoid the problem, this time. What about next time? What about other miners out there, like the Pendletons who were murdered trying to protect their ore? There were others mentioned in the newsfeeds and on the advisory boards. A growing list of violence that no one could seem to stop.
Mat didn't believe he could stop all the pirates, but he could stop one.
27 - Haydon
Haydon wasn't sure what to think. Mat was acting ... not like Mat. When the hatch closed behind Mat he sighed and looked at Yuri. The pilot was standing beside the cockpit seat, looking at the closed hatch and frowning. His eyes seemed a little wild.
"Yuri," he began. "The pirates were not Mat's fault."
Yuri turned to him, his brows knitting. "You were against going to Saturn. You told him that we should stay in the Belt."
"Yeah, about that. Things have changed."
They stared at each other.
"There is no safe place out here," Misaki suddenly said in the silence. "Not any longer." She was still sitting at the terminal, looking at her lap. Haydon thought she looked uncomfortable or sad, sometimes she was hard to read because of that flat expression she constantly wore.
Haydon nodded to her. "She's right." She was smart, so he started calling her mam.
"But what decision needs to be made here?" Yuri asked. His voice rising. "We flip, I plot a new course. Kaput, no more decision."
Haydon shrugged. There were really only two options here, Mat clearly didn't want to do the first, and Yuri didn't want to recognize the second. "The boss may not want to do that. In fact I would say that's what he's mulling over now."
"And do what instead? Attack them?"
You could tell he didn't want to say it, like some people believe when you say something you give it power. It would be dangerous, maybe even senseless. This ship wasn't a UNSEC cruiser, and it would be completely out of character for Mat to go on the offensive.
"It's moving," Misaki said. Her eyes were intent on the screen now. She sent the scope feed to the plot terminal and they gathered around.
Just as Yuri predicted, the object— no longer a pinpoint of light hiding beside a rock, but a small brown blur attached to an orange and red drive tail— was boosting out of the inner part of the rock field toward its edge. From the moment that he saw it he knew it was a ship, just like Yuri. Space was just too vast for coincidences. Watching it now on the screen was merely confirmation.
Yuri bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.
The access tube hatch opened and Mat pushed his way out. When he saw them he asked, "What's happening?"
Haydon recognized a man on a mission when he saw one. It was written on his face and in his body language, his mild mannered boss had come to a decision ... one out of character. Yuri's words back at the bar on Butte were coming back to haunt him. He had talked Mat in to going to the tug ... practice with a pistol. And Mat had ended up killing a man. Some people should remain innocent, he said to himself. But by the look on Mat's face it was likely too late to change his mind. Haydon knew what he was going to do, because it's what he would have done himself. He also understood why. She was standing across from him at the terminal.
"It is moving to the edge of the field," Yuri told him. He was tapping his chin with one finger and there was a nerves edge to his voice.
Mat came to the plot terminal, crowding between Haydon and Yuri.
"Just like you said." Mat nodded to him. "Is their transponder on?"
Yuri shook his head and replied, "Just like the tug."
Mat sighed and looked at Misaki. "Do we have better magnification?"
The diminutive engineer worked the controls, it helped that the ship's course was bringing it in their direction. They watched as the scope did its best to solidify the blurry shape in to something recognizable. The course data was moved to one side of the screen, and Haydon noticed Yuri's eyes flicking back and forth from the timer countdown to the growing image of the ship.
It wasn't a mining ship, it was some kind of freighter. The design was old but you could see its empty racks where cargo pods were held in place on the hull, like a mining ship's containers. Where two of those racks would have been there were turrets instead.
The ship slipped behind the rock that Yuri anticipated, at the edge of the field. No transponder, guns, its position ... there could be no doubt what they were and what they intended.
"I told you," Yuri said. "They are pirates." He moved to the cockpit seat and mirrored the plot terminal.
Mat sucked in air, drawing himself up to his full height, and Haydon thought here it comes. "Alright, let's do something about it."
"I already have a course plotted, get seated and we can flip," Yuri said.
"I meant, let's do something about them."
Haydon felt a certain annoyance with Yuri, the look on the pilot's face was pure surprise. This wasn't a surprise.
"Kep," Yuri started, but Haydon butted in. "Boss, you sure you want to do this? I mean, we're not exactly a military ship, and that thing has some pretty big guns."
"I know," Mat said. "But I think I know a way to take them out without ..."
Yuri's head snapped around, his face incredulous. "Take them out? Since when did we become UN Security? Taking them out is not our problem, our problem is that we need to brake and get on a new course."
Haydon didn't think it would help but he said, "We could broadcast their location, a patrol has to be out here somewhere."
"No. By the time they get here that ship could be long gone. We're doing something about it now. Here's what ..."
"I am not going to do this," Yuri said, unstrapping from his seat. Mat held out his hand but that didn't stop him.
"Yuri, I'll fly the Sadie myself."
Haydon spent twelve years as a combat soldier for UNSEC. He had seen things he would never speak of, and did his best to never picture them in his head. But when Mat suggested he would fly the ship, he felt his face turn cold. Yuri stopped, looking at Mat.
"What?" Mat asked. "I can fly the ship, you know that."
Yes, Mat could fly the ship. It was a course in his training before he was allowed to captain a ship ... a basic course.
Yuri closed his eyes, then strapped back in. "You are going to do this, I know."
"I think I have to, it's the right thing to do."
Haydon sighed inside. Of course Mat thought that ridding the universe of bad guys was the right thing to do. He probably felt that way since he was a kid. It was just that now, after his experience on the tug, he thought he could do something about it.
Mat continued, "If we don't, then they'll just hurt someone else. Take someone else's ore ..." He looked at Misaki, who stood at the terminal plot staring at the screen, silent. "... take some other crew. Murder some."
Alright, Haydon told himself. One more try. "Boss, our cameras and data will show we are the aggressors in this. If we do something to them, there will be n
o denying that we attacked them. It could come back to haunt us one day."
Misaki, silent throughout the entire argument, suddenly and quietly said, "I can fix the logs and cameras."
Haydon half expected her to say what she just did, but still, he felt a little surprised. One would think, considering her personal experience, that the idea of attacking pirates would be a little scary for her.
"Of course she can," Yuri piped up, throwing his arms out to his sides.
Haydon, for his own conscious sake, felt he needed to finish his attempt at dissuading Mat from attacking the freighter, so he said, "What about their cameras and system data? They will tell the tale just as well as ours."
Mat, his expression as flat as Misaki's ever was, replied, "There won't be anything left of that freighter."
Yuri, who was putting his attention on this screens turned his head slightly and shifted his eyes to look directly at Haydon. I know, Haydon said to him inside his head. This is my fault.
* * *
From his screen on the Flight deck terminal Haydon could see Mat walking slowly across the hull, coming from the maintenance hatch to the forward section of the ship. He was holding the last rock-cracker under one arm. Haydon hadn't been aware that he knew about it, but apparently Mat checked before coming up with his plan. Otherwise, there would not have been a plan ... or one that was far more complicated. Mat was determined to make this happen.
The meter long missile was shaped like an oversized bullet. On the terminal opposite him, Misaki worked furiously, rewriting code and sending new instructions to its guidance systems. Mat was banking on her abilities, and it looked like he was right on. Haydon knew that her skill with computers was not the norm, this was military stuff. And he had an idea where she learned it, but kept that to himself. It really made no difference to him, everyone had a past. What mattered was what they did now. And what Misaki was doing now was helping to kill bad guys.