by H. E. Trent
In the cockpit, she propped the flashlight up on the armrest of the captain’s seat, and squinted at the control.
“All right, where’s the receptacle? Don’t make me dig out the bifocals. Ah.”
She found the slot at the top on the left-hand side. Depressing the recode button, she waited for the chirp, and then emptied the contents of the vial into the notch.
She patted the dash and made soothing noises at it as the computer whirred and sputtered. “Poor little Reg, did all that work to hijack his mommy’s ship and here I come along and take it back from him.” She closed the vial, put her fists on her hips, and clucked her tongue. “I bet you’ve been so busy cooking up new schemes to harass the cause of your hate-boner, Courtney McGarry, that you didn’t think to tighten up your shit, dummy.” She grabbed the flashlight and leaned against the back of the seat. “Male ego is a hell of a thing.”
“Recode sequence underway,” the computer said. “Initiate complete restore?”
“Nope. Keep all the flight data and logs. We need that. Just erase the profiles for Reg Devin and whoever his little shit-for-brains navigator or copilot was. Reset profiles to Lil Devin standard. Before locking the user profiles, leave a slot open for Edgar Salehi. Genetic sample to come soon. Also, create a Level 2 access profile for Eileen Conroy. Log my voice as Eileen’s, seeing as how Eileen is me. Access code LD1837 gamma.”
“Accepted. Systems access granted.”
“Super. Good job. I like when shit works. Lock those changes in, please, pending Edgar’s sample.”
“Changes locked.”
“All righty, just hold tight. Need to go do a thing real quick.” She jogged to the foyer, calling out, “Lights on, low,” as she went, and fortunately, the damned things turned on. “Yay! We’re friends now, ain’t we, Beauty?”
“Repeat?” the ship asked.
“Never mind. Just being silly. I’m so damned glad to have something to do for a change. You’ll learn to ignore me talking to myself in time. Unlock all interior doors, please.”
“Unlocked.”
She hummed as she dug through her bag in search of the can of instant paint stripper the commissioner had handed over with smug satisfaction. Like everything Eileen needed to activate before launch, the chemical would take some time to work, and had to be applied before they got the ship into space. The kind of ship was common. Names like “Reg’s Beauty” weren’t, and the last thing they needed was for any of Reg’s friends or foes to think they were Reg.
She glanced around the hanger and, content that the space remained unoccupied except for her, stepped out of the ship, shaking the can. She eyed the big, frilly, black-painted letters. The lettering would need about an hour to fully dissolve, and the chemical reaction required temperatures far warmer than those in the vacuum of space.
She hummed as she sprayed, moving quickly and giving the painted metal panels good coatings. “Just like cleaning graffiti off a barn fence,” she said.
Just when she’d started getting into a groove of spraying and shimmying to the rhythm of some old Dixie Chicks song she sang, a loud thump from inside the ship made her jerk and drop the can.
Heart thrashing, Eileen swallowed hard and then sucked in a bracing breath. “That’d better just be the sound of metal settling.”
Another thump—more like a forceful smack than the sound of ship components spontaneously shifting.
“Fuck. Can’t believe I didn’t check all the compartments.” She snatched her gun out of her waistband and ran back into the ship. As she slowly entered the hall containing crew quarters, she muttered to herself, “Way to go, dipsy-doo. That’s Flight Attendant 101-level shit. Check every space when you board.”
Another thump sounded—one that seemed to Eileen like flesh against metal.
Animal, maybe?
She wasn’t that lucky, and knew it.
“Just so you know,” she called out, gun at the ready, “I’m armed, and I have no qualms about using this thing.”
More thuds. Softer, but in faster succession. In her opinion, that was a sign of intelligence. However, encountering intelligent beings wasn’t always a safe thing—especially in outer space.
Eileen pushed open the door of the compartment at her left. After noting it was a lavatory, she kept moving.
“Not afraid of the sight of blood, either,” she shouted out to the intelligent being. “I grew up slaughtering things.”
Chickens, pigs, and deer, mostly, but whoever was on that ship didn’t need to know that.
She opened the door to her right and quickly scanned the room. Crew quarters. Bunk beds on the left, lockers and dresser on the right.
There was another thump, and not from that room.
“All right,” she whispered. “Where are ya?”
Another thump.
“You hearing me?”
Thump.
“Farther back, huh?”
Thump. Thump.
“Oh, boy.” Eileen’s gut was usually pretty reliable—a trait that ran in the women in her family—and at the moment, it was telling her that anyone trying that hard to get her attention probably wasn’t going to overtake her.
She wouldn’t stop being vigilant, but she could probably talk her heart into beating a little slower.
Thump.
There was one last room before the long cargo compartment began.
She pressed her palm to the door at her left, fixed her grip on her gun, and cleared her throat. “Computer?”
“Go ahead with your inquiry.”
“Is this vessel equipped with ship-wide scanners?”
“Negative.”
“Shit,” Eileen whispered. “No way of knowing how many people are on the vessel, then.”
The front doors certainly had scanners. That feature was standard in all ships. But anything, or anyone, brought in through the cargo gates wouldn’t have been counted. Reg would have known that.
“Fuck. All right. Gotta look anyway, so let’s do it.”
She took a deep breath, leveled her gun, and pushed the door open quickly.
“Don’t move,” she shouted, and three seconds later, the silliness of her command settled into her brain.
She even laughed as she dropped her gun arm.
“Aw, hell. Seriously?”
The emaciated Jekhan woman in the cage in the captain’s quarters banged on the floor with her bowl, once, twice, and then she started to sob.
“Shit. Sorry. Didn’t mean to laugh at you, I was just so relieved. Why, you’re just a little old thing.” Eileen set her weapon on Reg’s fine wood dresser and hurried over to the plastic cage.
There were a few holes drilled near the top for ventilation, but they obviously hadn’t been enough. The walls were nearly covered with condensation from the captive’s breathing. The space wasn’t much bigger than a couple of square meters. Barely enough room for her to lie down, if she wanted, much less put space between her obviously dwindling food supply and her chamber pot.
“Shit.” Eileen felt the cage’s surfaces for a latch or seam she could exploit, but could find no obvious devices with which to open it. “You wouldn’t even put a cat overnight in a space this small.”
The woman dragged her dirty shirtsleeve across her running nose, and then pressed one palm to the front of the cage. With her other hand, she pointed to the dresser.
“What?”
“Has, uh…box, this.”
“Who and what, now?”
The lady shook her head, growled with frustration, and pointed again. “Box. This box.”
“Of course you don’t speak good English. That’d make my life too easy, right?”
“Yes?”
Eileen sputtered.
Most Jekhans Eileen had encountered in Buinet could speak either English or German, but she hadn’t seen a Jekhan in the flesh in months. They’d fled the city, or else been pushed out of it.
“No talk. Understand,” the caged lady said.
&nbs
p; “Okay. Makes sense. You don’t have the vocab, but you understand the words when you hear them, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I can work with that. Hold tight.” Eileen strode to the dresser the woman had pointed at, and then lifted the lid on the wooden container on top she’d thought was a jewelry box. Inside, she found various gears and small ship components, and also a palm-sized remote control. “Ah.”
She pointed it toward the red light in the corner over the cage that she decided had to be the receiver, and pressed the “Open” button.
The door swung outward and the Jekhan woman crawled slowly toward Eileen, noticeably favoring her left arm.
Eileen helped her onto her feet.
“Jeez, you don’t weigh much. Scrawny for a Jekhan, but you’ve probably been starved so long that you missed a growth spurt or two.” Eileen settled her onto the edge of Reg’s bed and picked up the lame wrist she was holding. Eileen didn’t know if she could do anything for the injury, but she could try. “What’s your name, doll?”
“Ais.”
“Say what?”
“Ah-ees.”
“That doesn’t sound like most Jekhan names I’ve heard.”
“Tyneali. Uh. Ex…permanent.”
“Experiment? You’re an experiment?”
“Periment. I raised. Taken. Far place.”
That jumble of words didn’t make a heap of sense, but Eileen honed in on the part that seemed most important for the situation at hand. “Taken? You mean, by Reg?”
At the mention of Reg’s name, Ais flinched and tried to scramble backward away from Eileen, but Eileen was the only reason the frail woman was upright at all.
“No, no. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not gonna let Reg hurt you, either. I don’t work for him.”
“No…work?”
“Oh! Yeah, I guess this probably doesn’t look right, me being in his ship. I’m stealing it.”
Ais blinked.
“You know. I’m taking it. The ship’s not really his, anyway. He borrowed it from his momma without asking.”
“Yes?”
“No. Or…yes? Hell, I don’t know what you’re asking, but suffice it to say, he ain’t getting the ship back. The Jekhan Alliance has confiscated it for the cause.”
“No Reg?”
“No.”
Ais’s shoulders fell down from her ears.
“I don’t know what happened to you, but you don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s my problem, not yours, okay?”
“Yours.” Ais furrowed her brow.
“Long story. We’ve got to take a trip.”
“Trip?”
“Yes. Fly.” Eileen crooked her thumb in the general direction of the stars. “Need to look for a man. Very important trip.”
She couldn’t tell from the cant of Ais’s head if she understood, but at least the smaller woman had stopped scrunching her face.
“I don’t know what to do with you. I’m waiting on a guy and we were supposed to go find this other guy. You being here kind of complicates things a little. Why are you here?”
Ais furrowed her brow. “I—”
Eileen put up her hands. “Wait. Never mind. No need to make you go feeling around for the words when I’m wearing this damn COM band that’ll translate for ya.” She rolled her eyes. “One of few perks of being a shuttle attendant. You get top-of-the-line translation tech.”
Eileen was just about to tap the band on her wrist to manually activate the voice controller, but the speaker let out a chirp before she could.
Someone was trying to get in touch.
She paused with her opposite hand over the face of the unit, squashing the reflexive response to automatically accept every incoming call as she’d been doing since she left Earth.
Before Amy had gone off the grid, she’d been Eileen’s most frequent caller. Since the riots, Eileen only got calls from the transport authority telling her that she still hadn’t been booked on an outbound flight to Earth, and assuring her that her pay wouldn’t be cut yet. No one else called.
She tapped her COM band once and said, “Identify caller.”
“Unknown party,” the pleasant computer voice responded.
“Shit.”
Ais cocked her head even more, obviously befuddled.
Eileen held a finger up to her lips and mouthed, “Hold tight.”
Ais didn’t say anything, but her belly did. The grumbles were loud enough to echo through the room.
“I’ll get you something to eat in a minute, okay?”
“Ais eat.”
Eileen tapped her band. “Who the hell is this?”
“Eileen, tell your COM to recognize this signature as mine.”
“Damn.” She clapped a hand over her eyes and slumped with relief. “Jesus Chris, Salehi. You got me all worked up. Nobody except work has pinged my COM in almost a year.”
He chuckled. “Apologies. I didn’t think to have you program my information in before now, but I suggest you program me with some generic name that you’ll recognize for the next time.”
“Understood.”
“Good. I picked up gear from the cache and am five minutes out. I’ve confirmed that Reg has just settled in at his house for the night, and that he was two sheets to the wind, thanks to my friend Escobar. He followed him to the pub and kept the bartender plying him with drinks.”
“Escobar sounds like my kind of guy.”
“Oh, yeah? He’s got a face like an angel and likes blowing things up.”
“Okay, maybe not my type.” Eileen tended to prefer guys who didn’t make things go “boom” on purpose.
“Anyhow, there’s a low risk of Reg dropping in on the depot, though I have no way of knowing who he may have watching the place.”
“There was a uniformed cop in the area of the depot earlier, but I think he went back to his own beat.”
“We won’t worry about him. Lillian will be better able to track the whereabouts of anyone working in an official capacity. Is the ship secured?”
“Uh…” She eyed Ais. “We’ve got a little problem.”
“What sort? Were you unable to initialize the controls?”
“Oh, the reprogramming is about done. The computer’s just waiting for your input. I got the paint stripper working, and I’m pretty sure we can get this puppy out of the gate into the air in less than ten minutes. Our problem is of the living-breathing sort.”
“Is there something wrong with life support on the ship?”
“No. I can go run a diagnostic if that’ll make you feel good, but I don’t think we should waste the time. Our problem is a stowaway, of sorts.”
“Shit. Don’t—”
“Hold on, now.” Eileen gave Ais’s trembling shoulder a calming squeeze and gestured toward the door. She figured there had to be some provisions in the galley. “Reg had a lady in a cage in his cabin. She’s got a messed-up wrist and a rumbly tummy.”
“Slave trade?”
That thought hadn’t even whispered at the back of her mind, but she sure as hell hoped that wasn’t the case. That would have added a level of trauma to Ais’s past that Eileen simply didn’t have the counseling skills to negotiate.
“I really hope not, but I haven’t questioned her yet. I’ve only made sure she’s not dangerous.” She gave Ais what she hoped was an eloquent look. “You’re not dangerous, are you, sugar?”
“Ais?” The pitch of her soft voice careened upward at the end with a note of abject incredulity.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Eileen said to Ais. She navigated them around the long metal table in the galley to the refrigeration unit. To Salehi, she said, “Yeah, I only had enough time to make sure she wasn’t dangerous. She’s not fluent in English. I think she said she grew up with the Tyneali. My gut said Reg snatched her from somewhere or other. I don’t know if the Tyneali are looking for her or if they care at all, but here she is.”
“I’ll be there in three minutes. Be aler
t.”
“Oh, whaddaya take me for, a total noob? I’ll run over and open the door for you in two minutes.”
He sighed, then disconnected.
“Men.” Eileen clucked her tongue and found the starving woman some cheese and an apple that hadn’t shriveled up too much. “Here. Start with those. We’ll work on getting something hot into you once Salehi gets here.”
She pulled out a chair for Ais to sit on, and then knelt beside her, watching the young woman take slow, small nibbles off the corner of the soft cheese.
“I’ll leave you to eat for a while,” she said, once she was satisfied Ais found the food edible. “Before I go, though, I’ve gotta ask—were you alone here? If I go into that locked cargo space, am I going to find living, breathing things back there?”
“Took alone. Here is quiet. No one come, just—”
“Don’t say his name. His own momma doesn’t like saying his name, so let’s be like her and make him persona non grata.” She squeezed Ais’s bony knee, felt for her gun at the back of her waistband, and then stood.
“I’ll be back in a bit. I need to let my partner into this depot. As you heard, he’s male and human, but he won’t bother you. Just trust me on that. I usually have a good gut for these things.”
“Gut?”
“Uh. Instincts.” Eileen leaned in the galley doorway and made a you know gesture.
“You…take home?”
“Honey, I have no idea where your home might be or if you even should be there, but we’ll certainly talk about the possibility. Sit tight. There’s water in that metal box if you want some.”
“Thank, Miss—uh.” Ais did that weird head canting again.
“Shit, I haven’t even told you my name. Just call me Eileen.”
“I…lean.”
Eileen shrugged. “Close enough.”
Out in the hallway, she looked to the left and eyed the double doors leading to the cargo space. She hoped to God there weren’t any other people in there. Dealing with just the one passenger was a monkey wrench they hadn’t planned for, and they couldn’t just dump Ais in Buinet and leave her up to her own devices. If they waited for the commissioner to come pick her up, they’d miss their launch window. They needed to get that tin can out of the area within the next hour or their risk of discovery went from the realm of middling to almost certain.