by Elle Casey
Jeffers presses a button on the array for me bringing up a floating virtual keyboard, and I ready myself to enter the data.
“Alpha, charlie, lima, five, five, niner, bravo.” He pauses. “Need me to repeat?”
“No, I’ve got it.” I pull the document I took from the givit table just two hours ago and hold it up in front of the keyboard, pressing the button that I know will capture the image of it. Once I see it floating in front of me in holographic form, I hit the Transmit key.
“Transmitting now,” I say, folding the paper and putting it back in my pocket.
Jeffers nods, and I get the feeling he’s impressed with my knowledge of the onboard holo-comm system. Now if I could just figure out the damn buttons, maybe I’d feel like I deserved that respect. The manuals I used always showed them in a different configuration.
“Just give me a minute to verify that signature,” the lieutenant says. The little box with his face in it turns to fuzz, telling me he’s still connected but talking to someone else I’m not hooked in with.
I grip my hands together to keep them from shaking. Cold sweats take over as I wait for his official decision. The evidence might not hold up in front of a full-fledged tribunal —I’m not sure what the OSG’s position on givit pots would be— but it’ll give me time to get the hell out of here and out into the Dark before Langlade can stop me. A tribunal would take months to convene, and that’s assuming he’s stupid enough to want to call for one. My instincts tell me he stays far away from the judicial arm of the OSG like most of the people I have contact with out here in the Badlands. The Havenots rarely fare well in front of an OSG tribunal.
Lieutenant Brak’s face comes back up on the screen and he’s almost smiling. “Got the all-clear from Dock Control. Sorry for the trouble, Captain.”
“No problem, Sir. I appreciate your help.”
“You got it.” He’s about to cut the line, but then he stops. “Hey.”
My finger hovers over the NO-TALK button. “Yes, Sir?”
“Did I hear right? You won this ship in a game of givit?”
“Partially right, Sir.” I say, nerves making me sound like a new recruit — serious and scared. “I won it in a hand of givit, not a whole game.”
He shakes his head, smiling. “Cass Kennedy. Card shark. Remind me never to engage you in a hand of givit.”
I have no idea how to respond to this guy. The OSG has always been the one thing standing between me and the life I’ve wanted to live, that I was born to live. This guy acting like we could be friends is throwing me off my game completely.
“I’ll do that, Sir.”
His expression goes dark as something catches his attention off to the side. “Brak out.” His connection cuts off, and his face disappears. I watch through the clearpanel as a fight breaks out between Langlade and the group of people around him, some of whom I recognize from my nights in the underground clubs — troublemakers just following the action because there’s nothing else better to do.
The official jumps into the melee, his shock wand out and doing some serious damage. Damn, he’s good with that thing. Good meaning vicious, that is. Soon, several human forms are writhing on the ground in pain.
I’ve felt the sensation of thirty jotts of laserbolt energy running through my body on more than a few occasions, so I pity those idiots who thought fighting in the presence of an OSG official would be a good idea.
I allow myself to relax just a tiny bit, now that I’m back to the business of running my ship and preparing for launch without the threat of being taken down by the OSG. “Well, that went okay. I guess.” I let out the breath I feel like I’ve been holding the entire time.
“I suggest we leave as soon as possible,” Jeffers says, moving away from my chair.
“Where are you going?” I ask, watching him walk to the door on the right side of the flightdeck.
“To prepare our next meal.”
I check my watch. “It’s zero two hundred.”
“And by the time you get everyone back onboard and things underway, it’ll be time for breakfast.”
Four hours from now. Holy shit. The immensity of what I’ve undertaken kind of hits me all at once. Not only do I have to do the not-at-all minor task of getting this ship off the dock and out into the Dark without killing anyone or running up a repair bill in the process, but I also have to figure out how this particular DS works and what shape its various systems are in. Now that I’ve had the tour, I know at the very least that I need to get it cleaned up so it functions properly. And then … gee, I don’t know. I guess after all that’s done, I’ll figure out where to go from there.
Why had my plans and dreams never gotten me past the acquisition of the ship? Did I really not believe I could pull it off, deep down inside? Now that’s a depressing thought.
The crackling of the speaker pulls me out of my melancholy thought stream and brings me back to the more demanding present.
“Yo, Captain Kick Ass, you up there?” It’s Gus and he’s smiling.
“Back so soon?” I’m pretending I’m not happy to see him. He can’t possibly have been to Hackmore’s and back so quickly, but it sure is nice to see a somewhat familiar and friendly face after my OSG run-in.
He turns partway to let someone else’s face show up on my panel. “Found your friend loitering on the docks not far from here. Mission accomplished.” He bows.
“I wasn’t loitering,” my best friend Baebong says, a hint of a scowl changing his normally placid expression. “I was coming to the Anarchy.”
“Anarchy?” Gus perks up. “What’s that? Is that a bar? Are there dancing girls there? With clothes or without?”
Baebong shoves Gus out of the frame. “Shut up, droid.” He addresses me directly. “Knock, knock.” His grin flashes and then disappears, leaving his face expressionless again. I hate playing givit with him; he has zero tell. “Open the hell up.”
“You got your stuff with you?” My hand rests just above the OPEN button.
He jerks his head toward something behind him. “Yeah. And a few little things I scored when you were busy being a crazy-ass bitch.”
“Hey, watch it. This crazy-ass bitch won herself a DS, and she’s not letting you on it if you don’t show a little respect.” I’m grinning hard now. This is going to work. Baebong is here. I knew he’d come.
Baebong salutes. “Yes, ma’am. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me. Permission to come aboard.”
I try to see around him, wondering if the others are there just outside the range of the transponder. “Where are Nance and Zeke?”
Baebong’s face remains impassive. “Being limprods.”
My heart sinks a little. I thought more of my friends would follow me. Whenever I shared my vision they seemed to agree it was the best way to live.
“Permission to come aboard granted,” I say, pressing the button. Some of my spark has left, though. Running a DS with a skeleton crew doesn’t feel like a really great idea. I keep thinking back to my tour guide’s comment about a non-spark issue. Please, Universe, don’t let me turn into a jellyfish.
I’ve never seen one of those poor suckers who’s been lost in the Dark without a ship’s gravity field in person, but I’ve heard stories and seen images. Doomed to spend their last months of life without gravity because their bones have become too weak to handle it, their skeletons begin to disintegrate and break apart, eventually resulting in these poor people dying in horrible pain as their bodies can no longer physically support their internal systems. Cells perish, immunity disappears, and the body goes into full pain response. Most choose the floating death over the suffering.
The great rumbling starts again, and Baebong looks to his left. He speaks to someone I can’t see, I assume Gus. “Grab that side and push.” He points to a cart of Baebong’s equipment on wheels.
“What is all this junk, anyway?” Gus asks.
Baebong leans over, and I hear a smack of skin against skin.
“Ow! What was that for?” cries Gus, the recipient of Baebong’s abuse.
“That’s for touching shit that doesn’t concern you. Just push it up the ramp and into my space.”
Been there, done that. I have to admit— it really is hard to not touch Baebong’s stuff. It’s all so interesting and sometimes as outright cool as Haloid’s ice.
“Dude, you just got here. You don’t have a space yet.”
Baebong looks at me with his eyes slightly more open, which is saying a lot since he is a slant-eye as Gus suspected earlier. “I better have a space.”
“Yeah, yeah, you have a space. Just get your ass on here, would you? I miss your ugly face.”
“Back at ya.” He winks at the screen as it fades to black.
I have no idea where I’m going to put him, but he’s right; he needs a space big enough to sleep and work in, since he tends to wake up in the middle of sleeptime to tinker with things, and I hate when he disturbs my rest.
I leave the flightdeck to welcome him onboard the DS Anarchy and to locate the perfect spot for a guy who designs weapons and ammunition for a living.
Chapter Nine
“SO, THIS IS IT, HUH?” Baebong stands in the center of the cargo hold as the airlock door is closing behind him. Gus disappears from view as he leaves to help his brother.
“Yep, this is her. The DS Anarchy with me at the helm.” I can’t stop smiling. This is really happening. Hell yeah, it is!
“I hope we don’t die,” he says casually, his eyes going over the details around him.
“Me too. Come on.” I walk toward one of the several corridors that branch off this central area. “Let’s go find you a bunk.”
“I thought you already had one ready for me.”
“How in the hell would that be possible? I just got here. Besides, I figured you’d want to choose your own.” I glance over my shoulder in time to catch him looking intrigued.
“Good idea.” He follows behind me at a jog to catch up. “I need a spot that’s big enough…”
“To sleep and work in. I know.” I shake my head. “We’ve been friends for three years, and you think I haven’t noticed how you operate?”
“Ha. No. I know exactly how much you notice. Exactly everything.”
I’m smiling at what feels like a compliment until he finishes his thought.
“It’s like living with the OSG sometimes for shit’s sake.”
I whip around to face him, my legs spread apart and my hand at my thigh. He knows better than to call me OSG. “Watch your mouth, asshole.”
He holds up a hand near his chest, palm out. “Relax. Not meant as an insult. Hey, look.” He points over my shoulder. “A bunk. Could it be mine, do you think?”
“Don’t try to distract me,” I say, not falling for his game of squirrel.
He sighs, his shoulders dropping. “Listen, Cass, you need to relax if this is going to work.”
“If what’s going to work?”
“This.” He throws his arms out to his sides and looks all around. “Being the captain of your ship. Being a drifter. Managing a crew of ten people.”
“Six.”
His expression goes confused. “Six? Six what?”
“Six people, including me.”
His jaw drops open for a few seconds. Then he goes into overdrive, his hands flying up to rest on his head. “You can’t pilot a DS with only six people! That’s insane!”
I fold my arms across my chest and lift my chin. “Langlade did it.”
“Langlade’s an idiot.” His hands come down hard and slap his thighs. “He lost his ship to a girl in a hand of cards, for fuck’s sake.”
“Thanks.” I glare at my best friend, wondering what the hell happened to make him so grouchy.
He lets out a big breath, pushing his hands together in front of him like he’s saying a prayer and doing a pec workout at the same time. Then he reaches out and taps my shoulder with those compressed hands. “Come on, you know what I mean. We need to be smart about this.”
“You calling me stupid?” I wait for him to say something even more risky. He might be my friend, but that doesn’t mean I won’t cut his ass.
“No.” He steps closer, his hands dropping away as he looks down at me, eye to eye. “I’m calling you the bravest, toughest, craziest bitch in this entire galaxy. A person I want to see succeed. Don’t stack the deck against yourself by going out under-crewed.”
I pull out of his personal space, refusing to be coddled into agreeing. “I’ve had the deck stacked against me since I was born. Why change things now when everything’s going so well?”
He shakes his head, but a small smile appears, too. “You know … I should just walk right off this ship and not even look back.”
“Yeah, right.” I snort. “Like you’d turn your back on the chance to be drifting and blowing up space junk with your stupid guns all day.”
“Hey, watch it. My guns aren’t stupid.”
“Whatever.” I wave my hand over the panel at the door to open it. Thankfully it cooperates, unlike many of the other ones around here. I hope this means Gus or Tam has been busy rekeying the codes for everything so they will function with the new crew. “Do you want this bunk or not?”
The door slides open and a terrifically awful stench comes out and hits us right in the face. We both put our hands up to our noses to stop as much of it as we can from entering our brains. I don’t have enough medcredits to rid our bodies of bad C-Cells right now.
“What in the hell died in there?” he asks, breathing through his mouth.
“This was the pilot’s bunk, I think.” I’d recognize that particular brand of stink anywhere. “We can get it cleaned out if you think it’s big enough.” I look to the left and right, taking in the large space, half of which houses a bed and side table and the other half of which hosts workbenches covered in crap. I see nothing usable there, but Baebong will. One man's trash is always his treasure.
He looks down the corridor to his left and right and then back at me. “It’s close to the cargo bay and not far from the engine room. I like that. Probably big enough, too.”
“The gingers are in that engine room, fair warning. And I don’t know if they have separate bunks somewhere else or if their living space is connected to it.”
“Gingers? As in plural? More than one? You can’t be serious.”
I nod, sharing his disbelief. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have trusted it either. “Natural twin gingers.”
“I thought they’d faded from the gene pool.”
I shrug. “Apparently not.”
“Ahh, I get it. Clones.”
“I don't think so. They don’t have the mark. At least one of them doesn’t.” I realize then that I was only offered a look at Gus’s neck. It’s possible one escaped marking, but I highly doubt it. Even so, I make a mental note to check them both out when they get back. Registering stupid clone butt everywhere we dock could be a pain. I’m not totally against it, but they’d have to have some serious skills I couldn’t live without to be worth the trouble.
Baebong looks around some more and then nods. “This’ll do if you can get rid of whatever rotten meat is stored inside it.”
“It’s not meat, it’s the guy who was living in there. Seriously, he stunk.”
“Whatever. Vacuum filter it and get one of those gingers to clean it up and I’m in.”
I laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“What’s so funny is you thinking someone else is going to clean up your room for you.” I reach beyond the door to the supply closet I know to be right inside. There’s a suction hose connected to the main system, wrapped up on a hook. “Here you go,” I say, handing him the nozzle. “Have fun.” Walking away, I giggle silently at the expression on his face.
“I thought I was going to be the Lieutenant of this bucket of bolts!”
“You are! Happy sucking, Lieutenant So-Sun!”
His cranky,
mumbled response follows me down the corridor. “I’ve got something for you to suck.”
I hold my laughter in until I get to the flightdeck, and then I can’t do it anymore. I collapse into my chair with a huge smile on my face and spin it around and around as I stare at all the blinking lights going blurry.
I’ve made it. I’ve finally made it.
My chair slows to a halt. And now it’s time for me to get my butt out into the Dark and start living the life I’ve always dreamed was waiting for me. I wait for my brain to stop spinning and then I just sit there, wondering what my next step should be. When I catch a whiff of my own stink, I realize what it is.
Dialing up Hackmore’s frequency, I do a quick mental calculation of the credits I have left over there. I need a shower bad, so that water filtration system needs to be in top working condition.
Chapter Ten
THE GINGERS ARE HAPPILY ENSCONCED in the engine room with their new toys, after a quick transmission over to Hackmore allowed them some credits to play with for parts and supplies on their lists. I assume Lucinda is in her biogrid chamber, trying to figure out how she’s going to keep hating my guts when three big boxes of supplies just showed up at her door. Baebong is to my right, sitting at the navigator’s station, and Jeffers is standing to my left, pointing out things on my captain’s seat array. Essentially, I’m getting a crash course on how not to crash.
“Everything’s pretty much labeled. The tags will change as you need them to.” He points. “See? OPEN when the door is closed changes to CLOSE when the door is open.”
“Redundancies?”
Jeffers points to the system monitoring station to my left, which I could reach in three running steps. “There. Set up the same way. You can switch back and forth here.” He points to the control switch. “I’ll man that station as needed until you either replace me or feel comfortable running them both yourself.” He shrugs. "In a perfect world, we have somebody there full-time, but you can only do what you can do."