by Becky Black
"And yet somehow you manage to struggle on with your life."
"Barely." The two of them went into the cockpit and started the pre-flight checks. Outside a ruby red sky cast a pink glow over the huge marketplace and the buildings around it that spread out across a plain. The airfield covered a huge area, filled with ships of various sizes. More buzzed around the sky above, taking off, or landing. With no air traffic control here, they'd have to rely on the sensors to make sure nothing else strayed too close to them.
"And you know," Wixa went on, not giving up on the cows yet. "Jasini says Cloud turns her nose up at anything but fresh cream."
"So much tragedy in life. How do I stand to see it continue?"
"I can't imagine. Secured for takeoff here."
The Friss lifted off. As it rose, a small rainbow coloured ball rolled off the top of the console. Maiga heard it bouncing around, as she urged the ship up, into the red sky.
"Oops," Wixa said. "Forgot that was there. Sorry."
"I suppose it's a gift for your cat."
They were pressed back in their chairs as the ship reached escape velocity.
"Actually no. It's for Mrs Kymin's little boy. He should be able to drive his parents especially crazy bouncing that thing around their quarters."
The ship burst through into darkness as it left the planet's atmosphere. The force fields to generate an artificial gravity field kicked in and the ball bounced again. Maiga put out her left hand and caught it as it bounced up between their seats.
"Nice catch." Wixa un-strapped her seatbelt. "I'll get some food started."
"Okay."
She left the cockpit, leaving the door open, while Maiga started laying in the course back to Hollow Jimmy. She set the sensors at their maximum gain, the communications too. Nothing would sneak up on them. Then she dimmed the lights and watched the stars. After a while she picked up the ball and tossed it from hand to hand a few times.
Mrs Kymin's little boy. Maiga tried to picture him, but couldn't recall which one he was. Still she imagined him bouncing this ball around his family's home. Imagined him laughing, them being annoyed sometimes, but… What? Indulging him? Happy to see him playing? She found it hard to picture the dynamic of a family.
So strange to think that child, and the others on the station, didn't have their future already set. They would not be in the military. They would become anything they wanted to be. And they'd stay with their parents until they were ready to go and become whatever they became.
"Sit in here, eh? Wixa said, coming back in, with a tray of food. "Nice view."
"I wonder what it's like," Maiga said, putting the ball on the console and picking up a sandwich and coffee. "To raise a child. To stay with a man and raise a child together."
"I like my independence too much," Wixa said.
Maiga liked hers too. Yet Wixa had stayed with her child for his short life. How long would she have stayed if Tam had lived longer? Closing her eyes, Maiga tried to remember the few short years with her mother. So little remained now. Only vague memories of her face, that she felt sure came more from pictures than the real thing.
"How long did your mother stay with you?" Maiga asked. And almost regretted it. It felt like more of an intrusion than asking her about her child. Some people got sensitive about it, she knew.
"She didn't. Went right back into service after the birth according to my records."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"She never existed to me, I suppose. Maybe that was easier than losing her when I'd got older." She laughed. "I remember I used to imagine she was a highly trained specialist, the only one who could do some top secret job for High Command. But she was probably just a bitch who wanted the maximum baby bonus."
"Maybe," Maiga said. "Or maybe she thought it would be too painful to leave you later? Better to get it done straight away."
A few women had told her that. Despite the conditioning to make them think it quite normal to give your child up to the military, nothing could condition away the pain. However normal they were brought up to think it was, to give your child to High Command at no later than age five, that didn't stop it hurting. The military had been full of women, probably men too, with broken hearts. With voids in their lives where the children they'd left behind belonged. High Command had committed many crimes, but Maiga began to wonder if this might be their worst.
"What's that?" Wixa leaned forward, looking at the communications console. Maiga pushed away hard thoughts about High Command and bent over the console too.
"A signal, right on the edge of our range. Repeating. Hang on, computer is analysing."
"Look at the probable origin point," Wixa said, putting down her coffee cup now. "That's un-chartered space."
"Getting the analysis. It's human."
"Someone's way off course."
"It's a distress call." Maiga started working on the console. "Changing course."
"Wait a second," Wixa protested. "That's a long way off. It will take us over a day to get there, at top speed."
"Then we'd better get moving."
"We do have customers waiting for our cargo."
"It's a distress call," Maiga said. There really wasn't anything else to say.
"I know, and we can report it when we get back. Someone can come check it out. Someone other than us."
Maiga glared at her. "And why not us?"
"Because we're a couple of women in a small unarmed ship," Wixa pointed out. "And, by the way, pirates have been known to lure people with false distress calls."
"Regulations demand all distress calls be checked out."
"Regulations?" Wixa raised her eyebrows.
Okay, well, that was a good point. They weren't under any legal obligation to investigate, not any more. But what about a moral one? The rule was old, going back to the days ships were on the sea, not in space.
You had to respond to a distress call, whatever that did to your own schedule. Lives trumped cargo. And there was another thing, and for a moment she thought she sounded like Bara when she said it.
"They're humans. It's our duty."
Chapter 18
Maiga and Wixa flew into the un-chartered region, with the sensors at maximum range, ready to turn and run like hell at any sign of a trap. But they met nothing untoward, and the distress signal led them to a planetary system and a habitable world that looked almost inviting, with lush vegetation and oceans.
"No sign of civilisation down there," Wixa reported, scanning. "Plenty of life but I think it's all animals and plants, no sign of any known intelligent life forms. Breathable atmosphere."
"I'm tracking the signal. I'm sure it's an automated beacon. No response to our hails." Maiga set the ship's course to head towards the source of the signal and a moment later they flew low over a wide river valley. Thick vegetation on the valley floor thinned out as the land rose into mountains on either side.
"Kind of pretty," Wixa said. "Well, if the grass stuff was a bit less purple."
"Yes and--there! Visual contact." A ship lay crashed on the valley floor, half buried by vegetation.
"Definitely one of ours," Wixa said. "It looks largely intact, so there could be survivors. I'm not detecting any life signs inside though."
They landed the Friss a few hundred meters from the crashed vessel.
"Maybe I should go and check it out alone," Maiga suggested as they left the cockpit.
"Oh, no. You need somebody to watch your back."
"You don't have a weapon."
"Maiga." Wixa ducked down, slid a hand into her boot and straightened up again, holding a small pistol. "Don't be silly."
"Have you had that all along?"
"I sleep with it strapped to my thigh."
"I don't think I wanted to know that. Okay, it's your funeral." She retrieved her pistol from her gear in the bedroom, took a handheld scanner from an equipment locker and they left the ship, stepping out into a warm breeze that carried a spicy scent from the vegetation.<
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"Nice," Wixa said, looking around as Maiga secured the hatch. "I think we should build a resort here. If we want some real money."
"Bit too far off the beaten track. Okay, let's move." But before she did move, Maiga took Wixa's arm, making her stop. "Wixa, no screwing around. We don't know what we're going to find. Right now, I'm in command and you jump when I tell you to."
Wixa nodded, her serious expression at odds with her usual amused one.
"Good, now move out, you blue-haired loon."
~o~
Dav's back room had become Bara's de-facto office on the station. He kept it open for her and supplied food and drink free. So nice to have made such a good friend. Now she stood beside the big round table and looked at the men and women who filled the chairs around it. Her first recruits for the Watch. All former police officers.
"Ladies, gentlemen. This is an opportunity for you to show the station management what the humans are made of. They think the new arrivals are scum. And criminal scum at that. You are going to prove them wrong."
She started to walk around the table. "You are going to show them we can police the human sector ourselves. Think of it as you would a base, or a garrison town. Reduce crime, but involve station security as little as possible."
She rested a hand on the shoulders of a man and a woman. A smart pair. Though in civilian clothes they carried themselves as if wearing dress uniform. "You two are the liaison to station security."
They were both as smooth talking and polite as they were smart and professional looking. Bara wished she could get access to a personnel database to check the records of all of these people. But she trusted her instincts and these two officers were the best public face for the Watch.
"If you need to, start to place guards on the doors of bars and similar establishments," she ordered. "Keep the undesirables out."
"Is that only in the human sector?"
"That's anywhere the establishment is human owned. We have the right to protect our own people." She moved again, circling the table, as they turned to follow her when she stood behind them. "That is our primary purpose here. The humans need protection. From criminals among them, some of them organised, well established. And from threats from without. Exploitation of any kind. It's a noble job to do, my friends."
Bara stopped, after making a full circuit of the table.
"Of course, I will ensure that all of you receive fair reward for it. And I've rented a unit on level four, where you can set up a base of operations. I'll have it furnished with what you need. You can start recruiting at once. Now…"
She sat down and brought out her Snapper. They all produced theirs and she sent them a transmission.
"Security Chief Neex and I have negotiated the rules on how you will operate, what you are and are not allowed to do." She smiled at them, smirked in fact, couldn't deny that. "So let's go through and see how we get around those rules and do the job, shall we?"
~o~
They approached the ship that rose high above their heads, an incongruous thing on the ground, like a whale, beached and helpless. Plants had started growing up against the hull, as if the ship was just another rocky outcrop.
"This has been here for a while," Wixa said. Maiga nodded in agreement. They carried on around the ship and on the other side they found what they were looking for.
A gangway, makeshift, made from welded deck plates with wooden supports, led up to a hatch high in the side of the ship. Near the bottom of the ramp stood a small lean-to shelter, made of a combination of scavenged things from the ship and natural materials. Glancing inside, Maiga found tools and animal skins hung up.
"Look here," Wixa called. She stood by a dead campfire. A couple of cooking pots lay around and a blackened tripod stood over it. A pit full of ashes nearby told them many fires had been lit here.
"I wonder how many survivors?" Wixa said, as Maiga joined her by the fire. "If they're still alive."
Maiga bent down and held her hand over the ashes of the camp fire and the circle of rocks that enclosed it. Still warm. A blackened stick lay nearby and she used it to poke the ashes. A glow came from underneath, as she disturbed the wood under the ashes. Even a couple of small flames licked up. This fire had gone out only a couple of hours ago.
"They're still alive." She stood up again. "I'm going to check inside. You'll stand guard at the bottom of the gangway."
"But--"
"What did I say about jumping?"
Wixa sighed. "Yes, ma'am." The voice had both sarcasm and resignation in it.
Wixa got into position, they tested the walkie-talkies, and then Maiga started to climb the gangway. She went slow and careful, but it felt solid enough, though scuffed and scratched from boots and what looked like drag marks. The hatch wasn't locked and opened as soon as she pressed the button beside it. Made sense. Why slow yourself down, especially if the weather was bad or some local wildlife was after you?
Inside, she took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dark interior. An airlock first of course, the floor on a slant, but only a few degrees from horizontal. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the inner airlock door stood open, a dark corridor beyond there. Enough light came from outside to see something hanging down against the airlock wall on a cable. A jury rigged switch, the wire leading to an emergency lantern hanging from the ceiling, then out of the inner airlock door into the corridor and a string of more lanterns. Maiga flicked the switch and the lanterns came on. Power then. Probably carefully preserved. Well they didn't need to preserve it any longer. Rescue had come.
She moved inside to check the ship. It had extensive damage, but in several rooms the debris had been cleared up. The ship was obviously someone's home. A galley and dining area held food, some that must be local, some from the ship's rations. Beyond that she found the sleeping quarters, six double bunk rooms. Only one appeared to be used and only one bunk of the two. One survivor out of a possible twelve.
She explored the rest of the ship, finding the engine room a mess of cobbled together systems, devoted to only one thing now. Power for the electricity and for the distress beacon. The communications array was smashed beyond repair, so no wonder there'd been no answer to the hails they'd started to send as they approached. But the beacon not only had its own battery pack and two backup battery packs, it had been wired in to main power too. That beacon would not stop. Not until today.
Forward of almost everything else lay a passenger compartment, with rows of seats for ten people. When she opened the door into it, the air smelled stale. No lights had been rigged. The survivor didn't come in here. She used her flashlight to explore it and found the seats covered in dark stains. The seatbelts had been sliced open.
She guessed the survivor didn't go onto the bridge either. Not much they could do up there anyway, she found the systems all destroyed by the crash. And the dark stains on the carpets and seats, just like in the passenger compartment, told her another reason why.
"Maiga!" Wixa's voice came over the radio. "Get out here! Come see!"
"Trouble?"
"Just come and see."
"Okay."
She didn't sound alarmed, just rather excited and Maiga was less worried and more annoyed with her for not using proper radio protocol. She strode through the ship, easily found her way back to the hatch and stood at the top of the gangway.
"What is it?"
Wixa just pointed, and Maiga followed her finger to see a moving figure, coming fast down the valley side. Too far away to make out details, but certainly human. And running. Running like mad. Now and again when the breeze shifted, Maiga thought she heard a sound, a yell. She smiled and imagined the castaway's feelings. Relief, rescue at last, mixed with a terror that the rescuers would find nobody at the ship and leave again.
"I'll bet you ten credits he falls over at least twice before he reaches us," Wixa called up.
"How do you know it's a man?" Maiga asked.
"I'm feeling lucky."
Maig
a laughed. Wixa probably wasn't the only one. She holstered her gun and waved her arms back at the running figure. Perhaps they could see her. We see you too, the gesture said. Don't run and break your neck, we'll wait. She walked down the gangway to stand beside Wixa, waiting.
A few minutes later the running human was close enough to see that it was indeed a man. He did stumble and fall once, but got right back up and ran on, closer and closer. Now they could hear his yells clearly, incoherent, no words. At last he ran right into the camp and fell. Not tripping, but dropping exhausted, to his hands and knees. The yells died in his throat, replaced by sobbing breaths.
They ran to him and crouched down. He was about thirty, Maiga thought, a black man, dressed partly in the tattered remains of a starship officer's uniform and partly in garments made of animal skins, a surreal combination. His hair had grown well beyond regulation length and was held back in a band. He carried the standard issue marine rifle, slung on his back.
For a while he couldn't speak, still gasping for breath after his run. He appeared in excellent shape, lean and strong, but that had been a long run, and yelling as he went couldn't have helped. Wixa spoke instead, sounding reassuring, patting his back as she talked.
"It's okay. You're safe now. We picked up your beacon; we'll get you out of here. I'm Wixa by the way, this is Maiga. What's your name?"
"Max," he gasped out, his voice, hoarse not only from the yelling, but from lack of use. "Thought… dreaming… saw your ship…"
"We're real," Wixa assured him, rubbing his arm, probably quite enjoying herself, Maiga thought, getting to pet the handsome young man.
"Are you the only one?" Maiga asked. "The only survivor?"
He turned to look at her, still panting and nodded. "Others died in crash." He hung his head and then looked up and pointed to an area ahead of the ship's nose. "Over there."
Maiga rose and walked to where he pointed. She found nine cairns of stones, marking areas of disturbed earth. Looking back, she saw Wixa had helped Max to his feet now. The sight of those cut open seatbelts in the seats in the passenger compartment came back to her. He buried them all. Brought them out of there, one by one, and buried them. She didn't like to imagine the horror of the hours and days it must have taken him to do that. Perhaps still injured himself. Certainly traumatised.