by Hugh Howey
“Fuck him,” Mitch says, with all the disgust of a man with a shitload of debt who feels very close to a large pile of credits and sees another man eyeing that same pile.
“I’ve got to let him,” I say, waving Mitch for the mic.
“You could claim a section 12b, extenuating circumstances related to injury in the line of duty.” He nods at my sling, all the bandages over my little cuts and scrapes, and the array of purple splotches.
“Now you tell me,” I say. I key the mic to radio this Vlad character. “This is the operator of Beacon 23. Locking collar Bravo. I’m under quarantine, so please stay aboard. Over.”
“Copy,” Vlad says.
And beside me, Mitch O’Shea rattles in annoyance.
• 2 •
“Look, I don’t really want either of you on my beacon,” I tell O’Shea as we wait by airlock Bravo. “You’ve both got warrants for scans, so you’ll both get them. Then you’ll get the hell off my station.”
“I’m telling you, this guy’s an asshole,” O’Shea warns.
The light above the airlock goes green, signaling the second bounty hunter’s ship has a good magnetic seal and that the atmo on the other side is clean. I didn’t even hear the hull make contact, the landing was so soft. I glance at O’Shea, but he’s fuming and oblivious. Vlad might be an asshole, I want to say, but he’s a damn good pilot.
I key open the airlock. A bewildering sight awaits. There’s a man in a tuxedo on the other side of the door.
“Vladimir Morrow Rostokov,” the man says, extending his hand to me.
I accept his hand with my inverted left. Before I can introduce myself, Vlad shoots his colleague a nasty look. “Mitchell,” he says, in his thick accent.
O’Shea says nothing in return.
Vlad reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a printed sheet of paper. He unfolds it, and I can see it’s the same bounty O’Shea showed me.
“What do to your arm?” Vlad says, leaving out a non-vital word in there somewhere.
“Grav panel issues,” I say. He looks me up and down in my boxers and bandages, seems to be waiting for more than this. “Fluctuations,” I tell him. “Polarity issues. Went for a bounce or two.”
Vlad shrugs. I gesture toward the printed flyer. “And no, I’ve never seen her.”
“Here,” Vlad says, handing me the flyer anyway. “Keep for you.”
Perhaps too eagerly, I accept the flyer and fold it back up, sticking it in the waistband of my boxers.
“Ding-Dong,” I hear myself say.
“What now?” I ask.
The two bounty hunters stare at one another.
“You mind?” I point into Vlad’s ship. He shrugs, and I step past him and enter what looks more like a swanky hotel than a star cruiser. Everything is large clean slabs in that pre-post-second-modern style. Some black and white photos hang on the walls, mostly alien portraits either staring right at the camera or off to the side. They almost look like mug shots, but artfully done. A wet bar in one corner gleams with shiny bottles of all shapes, most of them half-full of a myriad shades of amber.
Vlad waves me forward, leading us past transparent doors that look in on small posh rooms. In one of these rooms, a young man looks up from a bunk, his hands shackled in iron fists. I realize these rooms are cells. I’d kill to live in one. They look amazing.
Behind us, I hear O’Shea jangling and following along. He grumbles enviously about something or other. Vlad tells him to not touch that.
I duck my head and enter a meticulously kept cockpit. You can smell the leather. The place is so nice that even my nose is perking up. O’Shea and Vlad crowd in beside me, and all three of us peer out the canopy.
“I don’t like this,” O’Shea says.
“Me either,” says Vlad.
In the distance, my voice whispers, “Ding-Dong.”
“Look, it’s not my favorite day this week,” I tell the two bounty hunters. “And yesterday, I cleaned the shitter.”
It takes me a moment to find the new arrival, to see what the bounty hunters are seeing. This third ship is matte black. It can be picked out only by the background stars it gobbles and shits out as it moves across the constellations. A dim red and green light glows at each wingtip, but probably below legal illumination levels. A white light flashes from the nose of the ship, directed toward my beacon. Pulses of long and short.
I locate the HF on Vlad’s dash and pick up the mic without asking. Legally, with the ships docked to my beacon, they’re under my command. Warrant or no.
“Won’t need that,” O’Shea says, squinting up at the ship.
I ignore him and squeeze the mic. “Vessel inbound at beacon 23, state your intentions.”
“Won’t work,” Vlad says. “She no talk.”
“Who is that?” I ask the two bounty hunters, who both seem to know something about this ship. “Another friend of yours?”
“I’ve crossed paths with her once or twice,” O’Shea says. And I note the lack of ire in his voice. Maybe even something like respect. “Don’t know her name, but she makes the quiet type sound like an afterbooster in atmo.”
“Well, surely she listens,” I say. I watch the flashes. My Morse is rusty, but the context helps; I get the marshal business bit of her spiel.
“Well, looks like she wants to board. Seeing as I’ve only got the three lock collars, and my lifeboat ain’t moving, you two should clear out. I’ll beam all the scans and logs I have to the lot of you, and to anyone else who shows up.”
Vlad shrugs. He seems to be okay with this. O’Shea grimaces at me. As we pass back through the ship, O’Shea pulls me aside. He’s holding a few bills of Federation money out to me. “Give me a thirty-minute head start,” he whispers.
I turn to study him. He adds: “For getting here first. And saving you a trip to your radio.”
I take the money and pocket it. O’Shea smiles. The boy in the cell is watching us through his long black bangs, but he returns his gaze to the floor when I glare at him. We follow Vlad back to the beacon, where the two colleagues exchange thin frowns and disappear into their respective ships. Using the keypads by the doors, I close the airlocks on both of them.
••••
After the two bounty hunters decouple and pull away, I watch through the porthole as the black hull of the third craft comes into view. There’s no seeing inside it, as its canopy and all its portholes are tinted. The ship quickly fills my porthole, and the pilot docks with a very capable nine on the bump-o-meter. I wait for the light to go green, key open the airlock, and find a ninja standing on the other side.
A bit of a derail here to say what a huge fan I was of Urban Ninja Detroit growing up. All I ever wanted to be was an urban ninja. My parents got me a costume for Halloween when I was seven or eight, and I kept wearing that getup until the split-toe shoes would barely squeeze onto my feet and the pants rode up above my calves. Because of me, everything in my neighborhood was peppered with holes from throwing stars and blowdarts. Hell, I probably joined the military instead of going to college because of the overdeveloped sense of honor that damn TV show gave me. I’ll also say here that I like to pretend Urban Ninja L.A. never existed. Urban Ninja Chicago wasn’t so bad. But I digress.
“Lemme guess,” I say to the ninja. “Looking for a certain fugitive?”
The bounty hunter, who is dressed from head to toe in all black, with cowl and goggles and everything, nods. I see that most of the black attire is a mix and match of official Navy reg gear. I recognize much of it, and even know the decade some of it was in service and the field of action in which it was assigned. Someone hit up the surplus store and found a sale.
“Haven’t seen her,” I say.
The bounty hunter pulls out a small tablet and keys something in, I assume to show me the text or to make the tablet speak out loud. I’m sensing that this person can’t speak, rather than that she chooses not to.
“You want the scans,” I say.
&
nbsp; She nods and wipes the screen with the side of her hand. Starts writing something else.
“And radio logs.”
Another nod. And I think I can tell from the movement of shadows across her cowled cheeks that she’s smiling.
“No problem,” I say. “I’ve got a quarantine situation here from NASA, so you’ve got to stay on your ship. I’ll beam you the data. You need anything else?”
For some reason, I’ve always felt the urge to go out of my way for those who ask for the least, rather than those who ask the loudest. But she shakes her head.
“Okay. If you’ll pull away, I’ll go up and get you and your two buddies what you need.” I say this, even though I kinda don’t want her to go. But I’m embarrassed about how I look and how the beacon looks. My life is all about miserable timing.
Instead of turning back to her ship, the bounty hunter hesitates, like there’s something else.
I hazard a guess: “You want a head start, don’t you?”
She nods.
I think of all those mornings sitting in front of my TV watching masterless warriors scale glass towers and fight back the hordes of shoguns sent by the evil Tao-Lin Corporation. I have a soft spot for ladies in all black. Probably the real reason I joined the navy.
“You’ve got it,” I say, my free hand dropping to my waistband, where the bills from O’Shea peek out next to a folded bounty flyer. “Good luck on your hunt.”
I don’t really mean this last. In fact, I feel rather conflicted as the bounty hunter disappears and I work my slow way up the first ladder. It feels like the grav panels have gone on the fritz again, twisting me this way and that. Sometimes you want the good guys to get their man. Sometimes you can’t tell who the good guys are.
Up the second ladder, into my living quarters, I silence the proximity alarm again. Then I head up the last ladder into the command pod, and my mind goes back to how bad things seem to come in threes. Three bounty hunters, arriving within moments of each other. Can I count them as three individual bad things and assume my day improves? I decide to.
A voice interrupts my thoughts.
“Those assholes gone?” someone says.
I emerge up the ladder and turn to see a woman sitting in my command chair. She’s got a blaster in her hand and a frown splashed across her face.
It’s the girl from the bounty flyer.
I never thought I’d see her again.
• 3 •
“Jesus, Scarlett, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Are they gone?”
“Yes, they’re gone. They’re out there looking for you. What’re you doing here?”
I take a step toward her, and the blaster stiffens in her hand. She looks me up and down and smirks at my attire. The wounds across my body don’t seem to faze her. She’s seen me in worse condition than this. And in fewer clothes.
“What am I doing here?” she asks. “Don’t be dense. I came to find you.”
“Why? How? And you do realize you brought the badass brigade with you, right?” I nod my head toward the portholes. Scarlett doesn’t glance away from me. Instead, she shrugs.
“I needed a ride,” she says.
That’s when it hits me how she got here. She must’ve stowed away on one of their ships, then probably tipped them off that she was here. I reckon she had to’ve been on one of the first two ships, and got out when we were in Vlad’s cockpit. I’d wager O’Shea brought her here. Vlad’s ship was too neat for hiding.
“Nice blaster,” I say, gesturing with my free hand. “I thought we were friends.”
I should mention here that I really don’t like guns pointed at my head. Not unless I’m the one doing the pointing.
“So you’re working for NASA,” Scarlett says, as if this answers my question. “Why?”
I let out a sigh. Scarlett never could stand any government agency. Doesn’t matter what they do, they aren’t to be trusted.
“I needed a job,” I say.
“Tell me why you’re working for NASA,” Scarlett insists.
“Money,” I say. “Pension. Job. Dinero.”
She raises the blaster. Her voice as well. “Why are you working for NASA?”
I scratch one of the bandages on my arm. They say the itch is a sign of healing. I’ve been healing for a long damn time.
“I needed to be alone,” I whisper.
The blaster wavers. I try to remember the last time I saw Scarlett. In a trench on Gturn, I think. Or one of its moons. A lot of those trenches looked the same.
The blaster lowers a little. She believes me. She should. I told her the truth. I always do, eventually.
“Now please tell me what you’re doing here,” I say. “How’d you find me?”
Scarlett points the blaster toward one of the portholes. I turn to see the sparkle of debris out there like a billion new stars. And it makes sense. Sometimes bad things really do come in clusters, because one leads to the other. I think about the rock, which I wouldn’t have found were it not for the wreck. I think about the wreck I am, which Scarlett wouldn’t have found without the accident.
“NASA has to file a report with the Navy when there’s a wreck like that,” she says. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time. Your name finally popped up.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been looking to not be found.” I turn back to her. “Can you put the blaster away? Please? I’m not a government stooge.”
“If you’re working for their pension, you’re their stooge.”
She says this, but the blaster goes away, back in her holster. In the porthole behind her, I see the flashing lights from one of the ships. “Shit,” I say. “I’ve got to transmit some stuff.”
The blaster comes right back out, but I ignore her. She isn’t here to shoot me. I start a wireless handshake with the three ships and then begin transmitting the scan logs and radio exchanges to the black ship first. I put in a five-minute delay to transmit to O’Shea, and a twenty-minute delay for Vlad. I message Vlad privately and warn him of bandwidth issues. Scarlett watches me the entire time. The procedure takes me longer than usual using one hand. Only now does she show some concern for my physical state.
“Still beating yourself up, huh?”
“Ha,” I say. “Grav panel issues.”
She snorts like she doesn’t believe me. I fish the bounty flyer out of my waistband and hold it out it to her. “Fifty million creds,” I point out.
Scarlett laughs and waves it away. “I got a copy. And I’m worth more than that. You’re worth more than that.”
“I don’t want any part of this.”
“You think you get to choose?” Scarlett laughs. And now I can’t remember if I liked her or hated her back in the day. It was my first tour on the ground. I’ve blocked a lot of that out.
She laughs some more and shakes her head. “You don’t want any part of this. Tell your parents that. The day they screwed in the back seat of some car in Kentucky, they put you here. Right here.” She aims the blaster at the floor, like she’s indicating the beacon.
I watch as one of the ships outside peels away toward the asteroid field.
“Tennessee,” I say, correcting her.
“Whatever.”
“Yeah, well, I think I do have a choice. I came out here to get away from the war—”
“News flash,” Scarlett says, cutting me off. “The war’s coming to you, Bub. You’re on the front lines.”
“This is not the front lines,” I say. She knows this isn’t the front lines. I don’t care what my dreams tell me, what the shakes mean, the things I see and hear when I’m alone. The war isn’t here. It can’t be. This is a different war on my beacon, between just me and my demons.
“Every square inch of this galaxy is a front line,” Scarlett says. “It’s just a matter of when. But it doesn’t have to be like that—”
Not this. I think I remember now that I mostly didn’t like Scarlett. It’s the narrow eyes. The way they think they se
e something that isn’t there. Conspiratorial eyes. But she stands up and moves like a cat across the module and stands close enough to me that I can smell how clean she is, this little pocket of freshness in the dank and dark, and I want to kiss her. I want to grab something beautiful and hold it and weep and smother it with affection so that maybe it won’t ever leave me. And that’s when I remember that I didn’t like Scarlett Mulhenry at all. And I didn’t hate her either. I think I loved her.
“Why are you here?” I ask, and I feel like I have to shout it, but it comes out a whisper, like my nightmare voice.
“I want you to end this war,” Scarlett says.
Her eyes widen for a moment.
I can see in them.
I can see that she’s dead serious.
• 4 •
I remember kids who thought they could end wars. Hell, I remember being one of those kids. Neighborhoods have always been full of them, running around with plastic blasters and blowing the heads off Ryph, pretending we’re shooting the last shot in the war, bringing it all to a heroic end. When we’re young, every imaginary battle ends with heroics. Finales come with a bang. Then you get older, and you see that life ends in wrinkles and whimpers.
Looking at Scarlett now, as she looks at me, and her ridiculous words about ending wars hang in the air, I remember more than just the fact that I loved her once; I almost remember what it felt like. I almost feel it again. Love comes as fast as shrapnel in the trenches. It’s indiscriminate. It gets whoever’s closest. When it’s your time, it’s your time. They assign someone to the bunk beside you, and it’s like a grenade landing in your lap.
I vaguely remember what I felt like before the war took my hope, and I vaguely remember what Scarlett was like before the war did something screwy with hers.
“I don’t have room for your dreams,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t have come here. I don’t know how we’ll get you out, but I’ll help you do that. It’s a capital offense, but I’ll help you. Maybe the next trader—”