by Elle Casey
“How many minutes until contact?” I ask Baebong, tapping my finger next to the array panel.
“Five. What’s the plan when we get there?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see what it is and then decide.”
“It could be a landing spot,” Jeffers suggests.
“Or a temporary trading station,” Gus adds.
I nod. “Gus, maybe you’d better get to the engine room with Tam. Just in case.”
“Just in case what?” he asks, his expression perking up.
“Just in case I need to fry someone, I don’t know.” Assuming they even have hot weaponry on board. I have to believe Langlade made sure of that.
He grins. “Excellent. Just call me when you need me.” He jogs off the flightdeck, leaping from the top step almost all the way to the door.
“I think he likes blowing things up,” I say, watching him go.
“He does,” Jeffers says with a sigh. “It can be a problem sometimes.”
I stare at Baebong’s back. “I know the feeling.”
Eight. That’s how many fires Baebong has set in my living quarters over the past three years with one of his inventions. I have a feeling he and Gus are going to get along really well.
“I don’t want to hear it,” my lieutenant says without looking at me. Eyes in the back of his head, that guy has.
Jeffers looks at me with his eyebrows up, but I shake my head. Maybe around the dinner table we can talk about my bedroll catching on fire or my pack being vaporized, but not here. Not now. I need to figure out how to get some water and then get the hell out of here. The minutes blip by in what seems like slow motion.
The ‘Talk’ button lights up on my array and then Lucinda’s face appears floating near it. I connect.
“Go ahead, Lucinda.”
“I talked to Rollo.” She grimaces. “He says he heard about the OSG shifting focus at the last station. Said there were rumors going around about ships being stopped and searched.”
“Searched? For what?”
“No one knows. They’re also claiming water rights, like they said.”
“Bring him up, would you, please?”
“Yes.” Her face disappears and the comm signal cuts off.
“Great.” I shake my head, pissed I didn’t spend more time in the dive bars while I was on that last station. That’s where all the news is shared, not on the magnoscreens. I should have known better than to trust the shit disseminated by the OSG. Of course they wouldn’t announce to the universe their plan to steal our basic human rights from us. That would cause an outright rebellion. Instead, they’re hitting us one by one, when we’re alone and weak. A totally classic move taken directly from their playbook. And I should know, because my father helped write the damn thing. Bastards.
“What are you thinking?” Jeffers asks. Baebong turns his chair to face me.
“I’m thinking that we need to do an ice grab where they don’t have eyes, get our filtration systems as tight as we can, and then go lie low somewhere while this shakes out.”
“I agree,” Jeffers says. “Not that you need my agreement, Captain.” He gives me a slight scolding look that has me rolling my eyes.
“Give it a rest, Jeffers. You know I had to nip that shit with Lucinda in the bud.”
He nods once. “I realize you have a challenge on your hands.”
“And?” Obviously he has more to say. I can’t believe he’s held back this much as it is.
“And Lucinda is … she can be…”
“A bitch?”
“No, I was going to say an ally. Or an enemy. Either way, she can be formidable.”
“So you’re saying it would be better if she were on my side.”
“Yes. I am saying that. And I’m saying that out here in the Dark, drifting, one cannot have too many friends.”
The idea of having a big group of friends makes my ass twitch, and not in a good way.
“Cass is more the loner type,” Baebong offers. “Don’t count on her for all that touchy feely stuff.”
I scowl at him. “I can be touchy feely.”
He snorts. “Yeah. Okay.” His chair swivels and he goes back to monitoring our progress.
If I had something to throw, I’d aim it at his head, but since I don’t, I just stare at the clearpanel. “How much longer?”
“We’re here.” Baebong presses some buttons. “Stop thrust.”
I follow his instructions and then look at the view I have of the entire space around our ship. All I see is the Dark.
“There’s nothing here.”
Baebong points. “There! Cloaking device!”
I squint my eyes, seeing nothing. “You’re dreaming. No one has a cloaking device that good.” People have made efforts, but they might as well hang a glowing sign on their ship saying, ‘Here I am! Over here!’ the way it turns the space around them milky white. Something about the technology interferes with starlight or whatever. I’m not really much of a tech person, but Baebong is, and he should know better.
“Look there.” Baebong throws a laser tack up on the clearpanel and uses it to draw a circle around something. “Warping. I can see it. Can’t you?”
I can’t, but I know when Baebong’s excited, and this is as animated as I’ve seen him in a long time.
“Throw a beam at it.” I wait, hunched over, as Baebong moves to follow my orders. Then I realize what could happen if we try to uncloak an unfriendly source.
“Wait!”
Baebong’s finger hovers over the beam sending command.
Connecting into the engine room, I speak rapidly. “We have enough juice for a shield?”
“How big of a shield?” comes one of the ginger voices.
“Big enough for a warning shot.”
“Yeah. But it won’t leave us much after.”
“We’re using it. Be prepared for shit to hit the thruster blades.”
I nod at Baebong. “Shield up and then beam it.” I flip the all-comm switch and speak to the crew. “We’re beaming and expecting a possible small hit. Shields are up, but put down any knives you might be carrying.” The books are full of people stabbing themselves when gravitational equilibrium is lost.
Baebong’s eyes go a little wide, but he moves to follow my orders. “Whatever you say, Ahab.”
“Cass will do just fine.” I grip the arms of my chair and brace for impact.
Chapter Sixteen
THE BEAM LEAVES THE DS Anarchy and spreads out to the spot Baebong claims he can see is cloaked. I half expect to see the ray disappear into the Dark, but when it doesn’t, and instead lights up another DS in ghostly blue, I nearly piss my flightsuit.
“What in the name of all that is holy…?” I lean closer to the clearpanel, as if that will somehow dispel this illusion I feel as though I’m suffering.
Jeffers moves closer to the clearpanel. He sounds as incredulous as I feel. “That can’t be. They’re …cloaked.”
Everyone talks about the ability to cloak a ship and hide from the OSG, but until now, it’s always been relegated to that folder in my brain reserved for myths and wishes that will never come true.
“Told you.” Baebong’s hands hover over his array as he awaits my next order, while I chew on the inside of my cheek and try to figure out what the hell this all means.
“Post our channel,” I say, worried if we try to transmit blindly we’ll alert the warship to this other DS’s presence. “Flash a landing light a few times so they know we can see them. Let them contact us.”
The distinct glow of red lights comes around the clearpanel, reflecting off the protruding edges of our ship. It’s quiet enough on the flightdeck now that you can hear each individual breath we’re taking.
A crackling sound follows and then a glowing frequency number appears. “Reach encrypted,” is all the voice says.
“Accepted,” I say to the other DS and to Baebong.
He quickly selects the responding encryption passcode before it disap
pears, so we can hear the rest of the transmission. I can’t wait for them to start talking; it feels like we’re running out of time fast.
“Captain Cass of the DS Anarchy here. We see you but we don’t see you. Over.”
“DS Anarchy, this is Gunter Beltz, captain of the DS Mekanika. Someone on your ship has good eyes.” His heavy Germanic accent has me smiling.
“That’d be my lieutenant. We received your position from the DS Arcadia. What’s going on?” My palms are sweating. I try to wipe them dry on my flightsuit, but it doesn’t work.
“Well, apparently, the OSG thinks it can control our water supply now. But we have something to say about that, do we not?”
“Yes, we do.”
Jeffers is nodding off to my left, giving me the courage to continue.
“But how are we going to get our water without them seeing?”
Rollo and Lucinda appear through the portal and walk up onto the flightdeck, stopping next to my chair.
“What’s going on?” Rollo whispers.
I wave him off so I can listen to Mekanika’s response.
“We recommend a short-range grab,” the guy says.
Rollo speaks softly. “Whoa. Sounds like Rollo picked the wrong DS to hitch a ride on.”
“Are you sure there’s no other way?” I ask.
“No. You can do it long range, of course, but then you must pay the tariff. I hear it is quite large.”
I flip the comm switch for Gus and Tam. “Hey guys? Exactly how much water do we need to top off?”
Tam answers after a couple-second delay. “A megaliter, maybe? Give or take.”
“Shit.” I’m back to chewing the inside of my cheek. “That’s not good.”
“What’s not good?” This is Gus speaking, now. I can tell by the slightly carefree vibe to it.
“We’re being told to do a short-range grab.”
“Awesome. I hope we don’t die.”
A fainter voice comes over the comm. “Did she say we might die? Did I hear that right?”
“Shut up,” Gus says to his brother. “Just get that uptake config fixed. We need it.”
“Fixed?” My heart flips over in my chest cavity. “Did you say he needs to fix something?”
“Yeah, but it’s no big deal. Just relax. He’ll have it good in no time.”
“No, I won’t!” comes the fainter voice. Tam. “I’m missing a part!”
“Goddammit!” I shout, banging my fist on the arm of the chair.
“What part does he need?” Baebong asks. Then he presses his own comm button. “What part do you need, Tam?”
“Oh, nothing,” he says sarcastically, “just a boom chuck.”
“A boom chuck? That’s what keeps the boom from hitting the ship, right?” I look around the room, hoping someone is there to tell me I’m wrong.
“Yep,” Rollo says. “Could-a scored you one of those at the last station. All you had to do was ask Rollo.” He lets out a long-suffering sigh, which I ignore.
I link up comm with the other DS. “Mekanika … any chance you have a spare boom chuck for a DS lying around?”
Lucinda laughs bitterly behind me.
A crackling over the speaker precedes the answer. “As a matter of fact, our stock in trade is DS parts. You need the standard boom chuck or the Mekanika upgrade?”
I feel like I could fly outside without a darksuit right now, I’m so high on life. What are the chances we’d need a part and then end up floating right next to a hardware trader? Maybe the universe doesn’t hate me after all. Now I just need to figure out what a Mekanika upgrade is without looking like an idiot.
Baebong shrugs when I look to him for an explanation. After quickly connecting the engineers to my open line to Mekanika, I ask my next question.
“What’s the difference between a regular boom chuck and a Mekanika version?” Might as well call a spade a spade. I’m an idiot.
“Mekanika version is lighter and self actualizing. No need to give a manual hitch.”
“I want it,” Tam says in a rush. “Get me that one.”
I point at Rollo. “You go talk to the gingers and get a list of what they need. Everything. Your job is to acquire all that stuff at the next station.”
He looks at me kind of funny. “You got money? Because a boom chuck ain’t cheap.”
I look at Lucinda. “I have something better than money.”
Her chin lifts in the air and she turns away, but not before I see the flash of pride in her eyes.
“We’ll take the Mekanika special,” I say. “Are you prepared to be boarded under that cloak?”
“No, I am sorry, but we are not. I can shoot the package out to you. What do you have to trade?”
“You don’t want credits?” I can’t believe our good fortune.
“No. We would like a dead chicken, please.”
My jaw drops open.
Baebong speaks before I can. “What the fuck is up with the dead chicken, action, man?”
Chapter Seventeen
I MOTION FOR JEFFERS TO come closer as Rollo leaves to talk to the gingers. Lucinda moves in without my invitation. I mute the comm with Mekanika so we can have a private flightdeck conversation.
“What’s up with the dead chicken? Seriously.”
They both shrug.
“I have no idea,” Lucinda says.
“Me either.” Jeffers looks over at Baebong. “You said you incinerated it?”
“Hell yeah, I incinerated it. Who keeps a dead chicken lying around?”
Everything keeps swirling around in my head, and I’m having a hard time keeping it straight. The OSG controlling our water? A cloaked DS that makes custom parts? Dead chickens being used to barter? What the hell. None of this kind of crap played out on the simulator or in the manuals I studied and practically memorized.
I connect back up with the other DS, hoping I’m doing the right thing. “We used to have a dead chicken.”
We wait, holding our collective breath, for his response.
“What did you do with your dead chicken, may I ask?”
“Well,” I try to laugh it off, “heh-heh, it kind of stunk so we incinerated it.”
There’s a long pause before he answers.
“That is unfortunate.”
We all exchange confused glances. I lean toward my array as I speak. “And why is that?”
“Go check your incinerator and maybe you will see.”
Baebong and Lucinda take one look at one another and then scramble from the room, leaving me with Jeffers.
“We’ll get right back to you,” I say, before muting the connection again. “What do you think he means by that?” I look to our ship’s cook and healer, knowing he doesn’t have the answer I seek.
“I wish I knew.”
“Do you think there was something inside the chicken?”
“It sounds like that might be the case.”
“But why a chicken?”
Jeffers thinks about it for a few seconds before responding. His eyes have a faraway look to them. “In some communities, the chicken is a very rare commodity. Perhaps if you kept a dead chicken, it wouldn’t be considered all that strange to someone who knows this.”
I think about my past life, how I used to have chicken several times a week. I never wondered much about where they came from or the fact that others didn’t have that luxury. That’s the danger of living too close to the OSG; you become blind to what the rest of the universe must do to survive.
I think about the stench that was in the former pilot’s bunk. “I suppose a dead chicken would be the last place someone in the OSG would go looking for something important.”
“Or valuable,” Jeffers adds.
We both go silent as we consider the ramifications. Was there something important hidden in the pilot’s room? Is that why he came after us both on the dock and then in that PS, risking being turned into space junk with the way he was flying it? Baebong said there wasn’t anything left in
his bunk besides the chicken. That must have been what he was coming back for. But why didn’t he take it when he left for his appointment with the prostitute?
There are too many mysteries on this ship for my liking or comfort. As soon as we can bed down somewhere without interference, I’m doing a full sweep and having a come-to-captain meeting with all the crew. But for now, I need to find out what the hell is going on with dead poultry and a cloaked DS offering me the one thing I need to survive out here.
Chapter Eighteen
BAEBONG COMES BACK ONTO THE flightdeck fifteen minutes later with Lucinda right behind him.
Seeing something in the palm of his hand, I stand. “What is it?”
He comes up the stairs with his hand out. There’s a flat, black disk there with no identifying markings on it at all that I can see.
“I have no idea what it is or how damaged it got in the fire,” he says, a little breathless. If the look in his eyes is any indicator, he’s itching to get the thing on his workbench so he can figure it out.
Taking it from him, I run my finger over the top of it. Some soot comes off, but the surface of the thing itself seems undamaged. It’s black, shiny, and very slightly rounded toward the centers. “Fire safe,” I say mostly to myself.
“Hard as hell, too,” Baebong says. “I scratched the wall with it on the way in.”
“What’d you do that for?” I ask.
“I asked him the same thing,” Lucinda says, rolling her eyes.
“To test its density, of course.” He shakes his head at us non-engineering types. “Stronger than steeloid, at least.”