During a rare public appearance, both sat in the galley eating a mushy mess of reconstituted meal replacement powders. Kira’s had an orange flavor that was supposed to be reminiscent of an ancient Terran Chinese dish. It amazed Kira that after expanding to live on worlds hundreds of light years apart, humanity’s diet still consisted almost exclusively of dishes that originated on Earth. The lack of successful terraforming and crop migration was the main cause of the limited diet. Earth plants only wanted to live on Earth it seemed.
“Captain Sharp said he’d keep me on so long as I didn’t do anything stupid,” Kira said to him. She leaned a little closer and added in a hushed voice, “He was worried if he cut me loose he’d lose his engineer, too.”
Eric snorted, and then coughed up some of the paste he’d been shoveling into his mouth. “Figures he’d know. I bet the others suspect, especially my guys, but Tarn’s pretty stupid. Jon doesn’t miss much, though.”
Kira started at the name, and then remembered Captain Sharp’s first name was Jonathon. She smirked at how easily she’d forgotten that and put him on a pedestal. “So, would he?”
“Would he have lost his engineer? Depends on whether you wanted me to come along or not.” Eric pushed some of his mush around on his plate. “Would you?”
Kira took a deep breath and smiled. “Yes. I’d be scared, but yes.”
“Why scared?”
“What if I had another blackout and when I came out of it you were gone? Or worse, hurt? I don’t know what happens during those times. I’d be scared for you, too. What if I left you and never came back? Promise me, Eric, if that ever happens, just let me go and move on with your life, okay? I couldn’t bear the thought of you trying to find me. I get around…trust me; it’s upsetting some of the places I find myself in.”
“So you have done some cold sleeps before?”
Kira shrugged. “I must have. Like you said, I look almost half my age. That only happens with hibernation.”
“Did you ever look back on what you had been doing to see if something happened?”
She stared at her plate, silent and embarrassed. She felt herself growing distant, almost as though she was trying to pull away. She jerked her head up, a gasp escaping her throat. “Oh my…Eric! No, no, I never did. I was just never interested in it. But that’s not it. I think I just beat it!”
“Beat what? I don’t understand.”
She shook her head, her bright red mane flying. “No, you wouldn’t. I’m sorry, I’m not making sense. Just now, I thought about your question and I felt shameful for never questioning myself. Never looking back, I mean. I just went with it because that’s what I felt I was supposed to do. There was always a feeling of fear of what I might find. But sitting here I started to retreat, to back away. It doesn’t make sense, I know, but I felt like I was retreating.”
Eric reached across the table and took her hand. She stared at it and smiled. Her vision blurred until she blinked it away. “Thank you,” she whispered, and squeezed his hand for emphasis. She swallowed and tried again. “Okay, so here I am feeling like I’m falling away and suddenly I realized I was about to have another blackout. I don’t know if it always happens like that or not, but I think I stopped it. I got scared! Really, really scared! I mean stranded-in-a-chunk-of-steel-floating-through-space-without-eyes-and-ears scared.” She paused to share a chuckle with him. “Anyhow, I fought back. I pulled myself out of it and came back…I came back to you. For you, I mean. Or for me because of you…whatever—you’re the key here.”
He had a ruddy color to his cheeks that she found irresistible. She wanted to kiss him, but a sudden noise from the passage outside made her jerk her hand back quickly. Just in time, Tarn walked in. He stopped, seeing them together, and then grumbled something about them eating all the good food before he turned to make himself a meal.
“I need to speak with Captain Sharp,” Eric said, nodding his head.
“Have you got an idea?” Kira asked, confused by the abrupt change of topics. She knew better than to discuss anything personal in front of the ex-Marine, but beyond that she was as lost as she claimed to be.
“Something like that. Come on, I might need some help with astrogation.”
Kira grabbed her plate and scraped it into the recycler, and then she stashed it in the dishwasher while Eric followed suit. He led the way out and up to the bridge, moving too quickly for her to ask him what he was going on about.
“Captain!” Eric burst into the bridge, making the man jump in his chair. “Sir, I— we, I guess, need to talk to you.”
Sharp scowled at them. “This better be about fixing my ship. We’ve been floating another week and nobody’s got a clue what’s going on. It’s Tarn’s shift on the hull, watching for the asteroid belt but still nothing.”
Kira looked at Eric and saw him looking back at her. “Uh, sir,” she said, “Tarn’s in the mess hall.”
“It’s a galley; this isn’t an army barracks,” Sharp snapped.
“Right, galley. Sorry, sir.”
“Might make a space monkey out of you yet…or not. Is that what this is about?”
“No, or not unless you decide it is,” Eric said.
Sharp stared at him, and then finally motioned for him to go on when Eric didn’t say any more.
“Sorry, just trying to figure out how to say this,” Eric said. He took a deep breath before plunging in. “Captain, when you hired me I wasn’t entirely truthful about my past.”
Sharp chuckled. “You think anybody on this boat is?”
Eric nodded the point. “All right, fair enough, but I think you really need to know this. There’s a bounty on my head. A big one.”
Sharp leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands in his lap. “What’d you do?”
“Does it matter?” Kira interrupted. “You’ve got Tarn on here—ethics and morality can’t be too high on your priority list.”
Sharp turned an icy glare on her. “Loyalty is my top priority, young lady. I care about morality to a point, but with a proper sense of loyalty it doesn’t matter, so long as you’re not breaking any laws on my ship.” He turned back to Eric. “So, what’d you do? Kill somebody? Steal from somebody?”
“Nothing that impressive. I just slept with the wrong people.”
“People?”
He nodded.
“This sounds like a good story. Go on.”
Eric sighed. Kira interrupted again, “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Captain.”
“It’s my ship; it’s my business. I’m judge, jury, and executioner here.” Sharp’s tone was exactly what his name implied.
“I spent time with both the wife and daughter of the governor of Plentiful. When—”
“Wait! Both? Together? Like, at the same time?”
Kira rolled her eyes while Eric laughed. “No!” he burst out. “No, that would have been…awkward.”
“I bet,” Kira added drily.
“Awkward, hmm…”
“Anyhow,” Eric continued in an exasperated tone. “The governor found out and I was banished, legally. Off the record he put a contract on my head. Five million in Core Script.”
“Five million?” Sharp echoed. “You must have really pulled one over on him!”
Kira smirked. If Sharp only knew just how ruined any woman who’d been with Eric would be for another man, he’d think five million was a pittance.
“There were some medical issues,” Eric muttered. “But I decided you should know. I’ve been with you a few years now and it’s been smooth sailing, by and large. Sooner or later somebody’s going to find me. Doesn’t seem right me putting you all at risk because of something I done when I was a stupid kid.”
Sharp nodded. “No, it’s not right, and you should feel downright ashamed of yourself for hiding it from me. Matter of fact, if you’d have told me that when we first met there’s no way you’d be on the Mule right now.”
Kira saw the muscles tense in Eric’s jaw. She r
eached over and took his hand in hers, trying to coax some of the tension out of him.
“That’s a port we won’t go back to, though,” Sharp added. “You been a damn fine engineer for me and I don’t take that service lightly. You want to leave, I won’t stop you, but you’ve been taking care of the Mule for me and I take care of my own. Same reason I haven’t spaced Tarn for the dumb shit he’s done lately.”
Eric relaxed, and then glanced at Kira. “You know about us?”
Sharp smirked. “Walls of this old bird don’t block as much sound as they used to.”
Kira wanted to die. She grabbed Eric’s hand and that alone kept her from running out the hatch and leaping into the airlock herself, especially now that it was fixed.
“If Tarn’s in the galley, doesn’t that make it your shift up on the hull, Mr. Sackman?”
Eric nodded and gave Kira’s hand a squeeze. They started to leave but were stopped by the Captain calling Kira back. With a nervous flutter in her stomach, she waved goodbye to Eric and turned to face the Captain.
“It’s been itching at me for a while and I just can’t figure it out. That’s unusual. Most things I can’t figure I don’t let get to me,” he began and then paused to look at her.
Kira felt a weight press on her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Was the Captain making a pass at her? Or worse, was he going to extort her into doing something?
“I was contacted by somebody with no name and no face, you see. Someone that offered me a tidy sum to take you on. Quarter of it was just to agree to meet you; the remainder is released when we check in at the mining station.” Captain Sharp studied her, his eyes trying to pierce the skin from her face. Kira stood steady. She had no idea what he was talking about. She had no relatives or mysterious benefactors out there. Her parents had died when she was a child, innocent bystanders killed in an uprising over food.
“I thought maybe that somebody was you. Computer disguises the voice, darkens and blurs the image, you know how it is. Looking at you now though, I see you’ve got no idea.”
“No, sir,” Kira said. “I’m about the loneliest person the universe has ever seen.”
“I see; just you and whoever you’re shacking up with, and they’re just the flavor of the week?”
“No!” She fell silent after blurting out her answer. It pissed her off; what she felt was real! She’d never trusted herself to have a boyfriend or more than an occasional lover. She gave up trying until Eric. Or at least she thought she gave up. Her blackouts lasted months sometimes; maybe she was shacking up with any flavor of the week.
“None of my business,” Captain Sharp said softly. “What you do on your time is your business, not mine. Long as it don’t bring trouble to my ship or crew, you can screw whoever you want and I’ll just sit back and be envious.”
“Envious?” Kira asked, disrupted from her depressing thoughts by his choice of words.
“Yeah, you’re getting some action and I’m stuck doing Captain-y things.”
Kira smirked. The last thing she wanted to do was smile, especially with the things Captain Sharp was saying, but she couldn’t help it.
“You’re a good navigator. A little inexperienced sometimes, but you’ve also come up with some things I wouldn’t have expected. I did a little checking into you, but everything checks out fine, even if you like to move around a lot. I wasn’t supposed to — that mysterious benefactor of yours wanted me to take you on sight unseen. I can’t operate like that. I tell you what though, I’ll split this signing bonus with you fifty – fifty if you keep your head on your shoulders, you keep Eric in line, you don’t go disrupting my ship, and if you can come up with some way of keeping us from smashing the Mule to pieces when it comes docking time.”
Kira stared at him until her eyes started to hurt from the strain. She nodded and looked away, her eyes going to her station. “Yes, sir,” she said softly. “But sir, if Eric leaves, I have to go with him. He’s all I’ve got.”
“I understand, Kira. Trust me, I understand.”
She looked up at him sharply. “Was there someone…”
Sharp’s eyes focused and he looked at her. He chuckled and shook his head. “A girl? Naw, they just hold a good man back. Look around you—the Mule. She’s my pride and joy. She might not be much but she means I’m a free man in charge of my own life. You don’t turn your back on that sort of thing, not if you got two working grey cells between your ears.”
Kira thought his sentimentality over the transport they were on was silly, but aside from a raised eyebrow she tried to keep it off her face. Sharp chuckled. “That’s all right. I’ve got your secrets; you can keep mine, too.”
Kira smiled. It wasn’t much, but it was something. She nodded and went to her station, sitting down and plugging herself into the data port to try and think outside of the box. No sooner had she sat down than her stomach felt funny, as though it had moved without her body going with it. It wasn’t an emotional lurch, nor was it a reaction to a bad lunch. She frowned and started working on her station, losing herself as she input data into it.
“Sir!” Kira gasped a few minutes later. She stood up and turned to face him. “We’ve just been damaged!”
“What? By another ship? We’re under fire?”
“No…well, I don’t think so. Passive sensors aren’t picking up anything. There was an explosion aft.”
“Internal?”
“External. Our engines are fine but the pushers have readings all over the place!”
Sharp slammed his hand down on the intercom. “All hands report!” He turned back to her. “Get your boyfriend to check the damage out!”
Kira’s cheeks burned even as she felt a small thrill deep in her heart from hearing the words spoken publicly. She picked up a microphone and triggered the suit radio channel. “Eric, do you read? This is Kira on the bridge of the Rented Mule.”
“Hang on, Kira, something just happened. Damn near ripped my tether off and snapped my spine. I’m checking it out now,” Eric said.
Kira sucked in a breath, worried for him. “Be careful,” she whispered into the radio. “Check the pushers.”
Tarn was the last to report to the bridge, as usual. Jeff and Kevin stood by, looking uncomfortable even though Kevin was trying to overcompensate by leaning casually against a bulkhead. Sharp held up his hand and looked at Kira, waiting for Eric to report in. His timing was impeccable.
“Kira, something blew up. I don’t know if we were hit or what but all four main pushers are damaged. One and three are out completely, two is operating at about twenty percent, and four is close to eighty percent, but its orientation has been shifted. We’re drifting off course. I recommend we shut them down to fix or we’ll have to burn fuel with the thrusters to compensate.”
Kira turned to Sharp while Jeff and Kevin both gasped. Tarn spat out something vile but offered nothing more. “Captain, the pushers maintain thrust; losing them won’t slow us down. It just prevents us from accelerating further. Our intent was to use them until we found the mining belt and then rotate to slow down and dock. Shutting them down won’t hurt us, other than making us take longer.”
“Longer? We’re already overdue!” Sharp spat out. He gripped the arm of his chair tightly and then snapped, “Turn them off. We fix them and figure out where the hell we’re at!”
“Sir, we don’t—“
“You find a fucking way to do it! There are stars out there, right? Figure out how far they are and triangulate our position. They did it five hundred years ago, sailing on water on Earth. I think we’re a little bit more educated than they were!”
Kira paled and went to answer him, but Sharp was already up and headed out the door. “Tarn, stand ready in case this was an attack. Jeff, Kevin—get out there and help Eric conduct repairs.”
They dispersed quickly, asking no questions and offering no problems. Even Tarn moved efficiently, something Kira had never seen before. She bit her lip, trying to figure out what was both
ering her, and then turned back to her station. The ship was dying. Every event took another chunk of it from them, leaving them more and more stranded.
A ship in the Core systems had a chance of recovery. For them, stranded somewhere near the rim, there was little hope unless they could make it happen. Even if they could generate a distress beacon it would take weeks, months, or years for it to be heard, and then twice as long for help to come. Twice as long at best. She fought down a rising wave of panic in her, blinking back sudden tears, and focused instead on trying to figure out ways to locate the needle in the haystack that the Rented Mule was.
Chapter 8
“So what happened?” Sharp demanded once Eric was back on the bridge. He was limping, Kira noticed, and seemed thoroughly exhausted.
“The pushers are ionic, slow but powerful thrust over time,” he said. The Captain scowled at him. “Right, you know that, sorry. Well, the point is they wouldn’t explode on their own. The damage wasn’t internal.”
“So we were attacked?” Kira interrupted with a squeak in her voice.
“I can’t say for certain,” Eric said. “I mean, if we were, why haven’t they followed it up? We’re floating in space with nothing but thrusters right now and not enough fuel for them to make a difference, outside of dodging some rocks. And that’s if we could see to use them!”
“Captain, I had an idea about that,” Kira interrupted again.
“That’s why I never had a woman on my ship before; they can’t keep their damn mouths shut!”
Kira’s head jerked back in surprise at the rebuke. She recovered quickly. Her idea had merit, damn it. She glared back at him and took the risk of sticking her tongue out. The Captain’s eyes widened and a laugh burst from his lips. “All right,” he said, “out with it.”
“Eric can reroute the nav controls to the hull. I can patch myself in from there, in a suit, and visually steer the ship when we get to the asteroid belt.”
Vitalis Omnibus Page 4