The Battle of Hollow Jimmy

by Becky Black

"Yes, they… But…" Then Bara shook her head and her voice took on its captain's snap again. "No. They were fools about the prophecy of course, but that doesn't mean they were wrong about everything."

  Maiga sighed. Too well programmed. She picked up her half-empty tea cup, to find the tea had gone cold. Bara stirred in her seat, like someone waking from a dream.

  "Here, let me freshen that up for you." She picked up the teapot, and poured hot tea into Maiga's cup and then her own. "Now, will you tell me about when you heard the Prophet speak? Where were you? What was he like?" She laughed. "People always seem to say that great men are shorter than they expect! Was he short?"

  "No."

  Could she talk about him like this? Pretend to have been no more than an audience member? Perhaps. Perhaps she could try to make Bara understand his real message and turn her away from this destructive path of revenge.

  If he was here, Maiga felt sure Ilyan would be telling people to join the Committee fleet, to find their new home. And if he'd thought differently, would she have opposed him? She hadn't followed him only because she fell in love with him. They had argued many times about his ideas. Would she have stood in opposition to him if she'd disagreed? She'd never faced that choice. What would she have put first? Her love? Or what she considered the truth?

  Truth had been so important to him. And now to keep on circulating that truth she would have to sit here and lie. Of course, she did that every day.

  I do not know the man.

  ~o~

  Since the boys had stopped giving her anything useful, Wixa stood up from the cold deck, with a groan. Too old now to sit on the floor. One of the nice comfortable chairs in front of the console was more the thing. She settled into one and ran her hands almost idly over the console.

  Did she dare try to probe the Trebuchet's computer systems from here? It would let her find out handy things, like when the dead captain last made a log entry. And did that last entry sign off with "she's coming"? That thought made her roll her eyes at her sometimes overdeveloped sense of drama.

  But if her intrusion was detected while they were still aboard, who knows what Bara would do to her and Maiga. The woman was several sticks short of a bundle and Wixa couldn't risk provoking her wrath. Maiga was too important to endanger.

  But perhaps she didn't need to probe the computer at all. Those two engineers wanted to tell her something. They wouldn't tell her today, they weren't quite ready yet. But she'd see them again. Wixa didn't believe the Trebuchet just ‘happened to be in the area' when the Friss needed help. It had tracked them just as Qacian ship had. And eventually, it would follow them all the way to Hollow Jimmy.

  Why? What did Bara want from them? Well, she'd said it in that bar; she wanted Maiga, to lead her company of marines. What else though? Did she know who Maiga really was? Did she want the Prophet's closest companion at her side? Or did she just recognise the same qualities in Maiga that Wixa did?

  Whatever the reason, Wixa decided to avoid probing the computer. If--when--she met Alex and Sev again, they'd drop a few more hints, a few more crumbs for her, about the old captain. They couldn't help it. If they wanted to tell her despite themselves, despite orders, they'd find a way. She just had to be patient. She happened to be damn good at patience.

  ~o~

  Maiga declined an offer to dine with the officers and as the engineers reported that repairs were complete and the Friss ready to go, she took her leave of Captain Bara.

  "Well, goodbye," Bara said, standing up from her command chair on the bridge, where she'd taken Maiga, still trying to change her mind about that job offer. Still trying to "sell" the ship to her. She loved the ship, that much Maiga could see. What had it done to her when the Chia's ripped out the guns? Had she heard the ship screaming? Maiga shook herself and collected her wits to say goodbye, to offer thanks again for the help, the tour, and the tea.

  You killed all those lizards to impress me. The thought came into Maiga's mind as she shook Bara's hand. To show off the ship to me. To me.

  Did she know Maiga's identity? Did they sit in that ready room and play act for an hour? Or was it only because Maiga said no to the job offer, presenting a challenge to someone not used to hearing that word?

  All these thoughts lay heavy on Maiga's mind as a crewman led her to the shuttle bay. The two engineering officers and some crewmen were clearing up and Wixa was sitting on the cargo ramp, drinking from a steaming mug. She jerked her thumb behind her as Maiga walked into the bay.

  "The cargo is mostly undamaged. I've re-secured everything ready for the journey."

  "Okay, good. Thanks, Wixa." She turned to thank the engineers, but they were already leaving the bay, carrying their tool boxes.

  "Friendly bunch."

  Wixa smirked. "You can talk." She got up and jumped off the ramp, pressed the button to lift it up to close over the hatch. "So, how was the tour?"

  "Enlightening."

  With the cargo hatch secured, they boarded and sealed the crew hatch.

  "She offered me that job again," Maiga said. She looked carefully at Wixa as she said it. Did her shoulders stiffen? She kept any reaction off her face though.

  "If you do accept, can I keep this ship?"

  "I'm not accepting."

  "It sounds like a good offer," Wixa said, her face still controlled. "It's what you were trained for."

  "No, I wasn't trained to be a pirate."

  "Just a mercenary."

  Maiga stopped in the open doorway to the cockpit. "I never liked that word." Even though it was accurate. Because it was accurate. Then she sighed and slid into the pilot's chair, shaking her head. "What you said before about Bara being crazy. I don't think you're entirely wrong. At the very least she's obsessive. I know about obsessed people. They don't make rational choices and I have no intention of working for one. Now let's go. Contact the bridge."

  A few minutes later the bay finished depressurising and the doors cracked, then widened. Blackness, stars, the expanse of space invited them. Maiga manoeuvred the Friss out of the shuttle bay, and exchanged some final words with the bridge. Not with Bara, but she could almost hear her listening.

  Maiga engaged the star drive as soon as possible and it was only when the Trebuchet vanished from sensor range that she felt her breathing and heartbeat slow.

  Escaped.

  Chapter 8

  "I can get this lot distributed, if you want to go talk to your newspaper man," Wixa offered.

  "We just got back five minutes ago," Maiga said, while she completed the post flight check to shut down the Friss's systems. "And there are still more repairs to do. What's the rush?"

  "Because he reports news, not olds. Oh, go on, the repairs can wait."

  Maiga shrugged. Why not? It might be good to take a long walk right through to the human sector. After being cramped in this ship for a couple of days she'd like to stretch her legs. So she gave in to Wixa's persuasion and left her to grab some casual labourers to start distributing the cargo.

  She strolled from the docks, through the busy corridor to the marketplace. Then on to the long corridor that led from the central hub of the station to the human sector.

  Once, long ago, the station had been a military base and the huge oval shape of what was now the human sector had been attached to the hub to serve as accommodation. No wonder the humans had ended up settling together in that area, drawn naturally to accommodation created for soldiers. Of course the barracks rooms were mostly long gone now, split into smaller quarters, for families, couples, and singles.

  Families had been a shock for Maiga when she first arrived. Back home on Earth all children belonged to the military, who raised them in school barracks. The longest a mother could stay with her child was five years. As for fathers, most never even met their children. But here on Hollow Jimmy, people raised families. Not all of the humans were retired veterans. Some were invalided out of the service because of disabling injuries, while still young enough to have children.
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br />   A child ran past her, a small boy, and a woman called after him from behind Maiga. Maiga saw what he had run to, a cat trotting along, beside the wall. The boy bent down to pet the cat, which stood patiently for a moment, then dodged around his feet and moved on. Maiga frowned at it. It was a black cat, and wore a blue collar, which she recalled seeing Wixa's cat--Wixa's toy--wearing. But how could Glyph be wandering around here when Wixa hadn't been back to her quarters to let him out?

  She considered going after the cat and picking it up, but it had already moved on quite a distance, moving at a fair clip. She wasn't chasing a robot cat, she had some dignity. The cat looked purposeful, as if knew where it was going. Leave it alone.

  She walked on into the human sector, onto deck three, the middle one of five. That deck held some homes, but also many shops, and services, centred on an open central plaza, where Chullan's coffee shop, stood. Only its counter and kitchen were undercover. All the tables spread around in an area in front of it, with a small fence marking the boundary. A person could sit at one of those so-called outdoor tables and watch people going back and forth on the plaza all day. Chullan's did close eventually, usually around one in the morning, but Maiga had seen people sitting at the tables long after that, still talking.

  Chervaz had said his office was above the tailor's shop and she used her Snapper to check the address. It was in an out of the way corridor, a couple of blocks back from the plaza. She found the tailor's shop closed when she arrived, but a door beside it carried a sign. "Olojimi Chronicle. Please walk up." The door opened at a push and she climbed a narrow staircase that led straight into an office at the top of it.

  Chervaz sat there at a desk, typing on a panel. Another man, wearing maintenance crew overalls, sat by the desk, feet up on it, holding a mug.

  "Oh!" Chervaz said, seeing Maiga. "Oh, come in, won't you?" He stood up, but the other man didn't, just gave Maiga a narrow look. "Jaff, I don't know for certain, but my guess is that she outranks you."

  Jaff raised his eyebrows, then put down his mug and stood up.

  "There's no need," Maiga said. "If you're already busy, I can come back."

  "Oh no," Chervaz said. "Jaff's just loafing here, drinking my tea."

  "Loafing?" Jaff had been about to sit down again, but then muttered something about "loafing" and went over to a printing machine. He started tinkering with the machine, using tools from holders on his belt.

  "He helps me out with some free maintenance," Chervaz said, waving Maiga to a chair. "We used to serve together on a starship. He's the best engineer I know."

  "Flattery will get you nowhere," Jaff said, not looking around.

  Kind of a come down for a starship engineer, Maiga thought, working maintenance on this place. But a man had to put food on the table. For a second Maiga wondered about Chervaz's income. The tiny amount he sold the paper for probably barely covered his production costs. Maybe his friend helped him out with more than just free maintenance.

  "Did you just get back to the station?" Chervaz asked. "Oh, will you have some tea?" He jumped up again to pour her a cup. "You're overdue, aren't you? I'm sure Wixa mentioned you'd be back yesterday."

  "Are you and Wixa friends?" Maiga asked, taking the cup from him.

  "Oh, Wixa is friends with everybody." Chervaz sat down again. "Certainly everyone that ever goes into Chullan's. Anyway, she's very good at finding out information, and I'm in the information business." He gestured as he spoke, to some stacks of the printed newspaper and knocked over a pot of pens on the desk. Wincing, he righted the pot, and then put his hands under the desk.

  He tries to make himself smaller, Wixa thought. He's a big man and clumsy with it. If he'd been a marine, or infantryman, he'd have learnt to use his size to his advantage, but on a starship he must have felt like a lumbering ox. Always taking up too much space. Knocking things over just by turning around.

  He wore an expression of anticipation, waiting for what she'd come here to tell him about. Perhaps that's why he ran a newspaper, so he got to hear everything first.

  "We were late back," Maiga confirmed, answering his earlier question. "We ran into a little trouble, with the Muaan Qacia." She stood up and took off her jacket; the room quite warm enough for shirt sleeves. Sitting down again, she smiled at him. "Oh, and then, we met Bara."

  His face lit up like a child's and Maiga wanted to laugh at his delight. Now he had a story for page one.

  ~o~

  Chervaz stood when Maiga did, her story told, and all the details he could think to ask about shaken out of it. Almost an hour and a half had passed. They'd drunk two more cups of tea, and Jaff seemed to be finding things to repair that were fine before he looked at them. Chervaz smiled. He'd make Jaff wish he'd gone sooner instead of waiting around to eavesdrop.

  "Maiga, thank you so much for bringing me this information," Chervaz said.

  "You're welcome." She put on her jacket.

  "You said you still need some repairs to your ship, perhaps Jaff can help you with that."

  Jaff gave him the "you're stitching me up!" look, he usually got when Chervaz offered someone his services.

  "I'd be happy for him to look at the repairs," Maiga said. "I can pay you for your time of course, Mr Jaff."

  "Just Jaff."

  He didn't like the ‘Mr' thing much, Chervaz knew, unlike Chervaz himself. Their ranks, both lieutenants, had been left behind along with so much of their previous lives. But they found their way here and were inventing new lives now.

  "I've got to go to work in a couple of hours," Jaff went on, "but I can take a look tomorrow."

  "That would be fine, thank you." Maiga moved towards the stairs.

  "Let me walk you out," Chervaz said.

  Since the staircase was so narrow that amounted to just following her down them. But outside the door, she turned and offered her hand to say goodbye. He couldn't let the moment pass, he decided. Because sitting there upstairs with her, listening to her talk, he had started to feel something beyond the curiosity.

  When she stood up to remove her jacket, her tanned shoulders and arms, lithe and graceful, had caught his attention and held it for while. The grace came from total bodily discipline he knew, from total control. She didn't knock things over, or bump into anything. No, she owned the space she moved in, controlled it. Shaking her hand like this, connecting with that zone of control, felt cool and yet made his cheeks flush with heat.

  "I wondered if we might have dinner sometime."

  He had to ask it down here, not back up in the office. Childish as it seemed, he couldn't ask her in front of Jaff, because he'd get an eye roll for his troubles. The "here we go again" look. Well Jaff could shut up. Admittedly in the past, Chervaz made some poor choices, where women were concerned. But Maiga wasn't like those other women.

  "Dinner? Oh… Yes, that would be nice." She sounded a little taken aback, but the important word had been there. Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Chervaz smiled, and should have gone on and ‘closed the deal' as he knew Jaff would say. But he hesitated for a moment, and was lost.

  "Well, I'll call you sometime," Maiga said. "We'll arrange something."

  Damn. Sometime. And now if he pressed she might back off. She was cautious, for some reason. He'd seen that on the day he met her. Oh well, patience. Neither of them was going anywhere.

  "I look forward to hearing from you."

  She left, and he watched her walk down the street and turn the corner, before he went back inside. Movement at the top of the stairs caught his eye as he entered, making him smile. When he got into the office, Jaff was sitting with a copy of the Chronicle in his hands, apparently reading intently. What he found so fascinating about the advertisements on the back page, Chervaz couldn't imagine.

  "Hmm, buy three coffees get a fourth one free at Chullan's, that's an excellent offer," Jaff said. "Say, that reminds me of that girl on Luugul, who took you for about three-quarters of your savings."

  Chervaz glared at him. Mu
ch as he appreciated Jaff looking out for him, he could do without the digs.

  "She needed help," Chervaz insisted.

  "She was a con artist," Jaff reminded him.

  "She was in trouble."

  "Of course she was in trouble, she was a con artist! She conned money out of you to get away from some other people she had conned money out of!"

  "I got most of it back, didn't I?"

  "Yes, after the police arrested her."

  "Maiga is not remotely interested in my money," Chervaz said.

  Jaff sighed and dropped the newspaper back onto the stack. "I'm just saying be careful, Vaz. You know your own record. Go slow."

  That wasn't going to be a problem, because she'd set the pace here, for sure. She still hadn't told him what her rank had been, but he guessed it was higher than his own. He was an ageing lieutenant, never interested in climbing towards command. And Jaff was a good engineer, but also someone one who wouldn't play the politics needed to rise to chief engineer. He just liked to fix things--with minimal paperwork.

  Maiga wasn't like that; she'd been at least heading towards a command position. He guessed that she wouldn't get over the habit of being in charge any time soon.

  Chapter 9

  Maiga walked into her quarters, carrying a bag of groceries.

  "Computer, lights on."

  Only half of the lights obeyed her. The ones over the kitchen area flickered a bit, and then went off. Oh great.

  A moment later she discovered that all the power in that part of the room was dead. A job for maintenance, and who knows when they'd get to it? Turning on a terminal in a part of the room that still had power, Maiga tapped in a maintenance request and went to put away her groceries in the semi-darkness.

  After she'd done that she was wondering about what she had to eat, with no power to her kitchen when the comms system buzzed and Wixa's voice came over the line.

  "Hey, you want to come to a party? Right now?"

  "Not really," Maiga said.

  "It's not a rowdy one or fancy. Just tea and cakes and civilised chat. Suit you down to the ground."

  Tea and cakes? So free food and presumably working lights. Oh, why not?