Fragments sf-6

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Well, he's one of the most interesting artificial intelligences I've ever seen. I'll give him that,” Ayan said as she inspected one of the other ships nearby. It was a snubbed nosed, six deck ship with as many patches as portholes.

  “I'm actually starting to like him. Don't tell him that though.”

  “But you argue with him, often,” Ayan pointed out with a chuckle.

  “Alice was the same for a while when she was in early development. Once she was sure I wouldn't wipe her if she challenged me. Then again, she wasn't installed in a ship, but on my comm.”

  “But we can trust Lewis to do what he has to, right?”

  “I think so. I was just on the bridge. He's scanning the area constantly, we'll know the instant something crosses our perimeter.”

  “Or when Minh gets back?”

  “I think he's as anxious as we are, I'm sure we'll know the moment he picks anything up. Nothing agitates an AI like a question they can't answer.”

  “I think everyone's thinking of the Triton tonight. We left so many people behind.”

  Jake chuckled quietly. “Right now everyone’s talking about the dressing down their Security Chief just got from their Senior Commander.”

  “Oh, right. Was going to bring that up.”

  “Well, Stephanie’s pissed.”

  “Chewed your ear off about it?”

  “No, she was in the military, she’s been put in her place before. She let on that she’s sore that you attacked her competency in front of so many people though.”

  “Looking back, that was going a little too far. You know how it works though, someone steps too far out of line and you put them down so everyone can watch them get back up. It’s in the training.”

  “She knows that, but we’re not in a military unit. A lot of people will take that at face value.”

  “So, what do I do?” Ayan shrugged, too tired to let the conversation become a disagreement.

  “Just give her an opportunity to show everyone you trust her abilities. Any doubt will fade as soon as they see you have faith in her.”

  “I’ll watch for opportunities, and I do trust her, you know. It’s just strange, she’s always distanced herself until just recently.”

  “Well, I’m just glad we have time for gossip. We'd be in worse shape if we were still in the Wastes.”

  “So you're happy with the deal I made to get us this space?” Ayan asked finally. It was something she wanted to know but didn't know how to until then. She felt his hands on her shoulders, his fingers kneading her tense muscles. “Ah, that's heaven,” she sighed.

  “We didn't have much to trade, so you offered what we can deliver right now.”

  She thought about his answer for a moment. It wasn't an affirmative or negative, but a sentiment that fit neatly between. His thumbs worked the base of her neck and she almost forgot about the nagging question. Almost. “But are you happy about it?”

  His hands stopped moving. A long moment of silence followed. “We're a lot better off than we were when we first landed. I don't think I could have done any better.”

  “So you're pleased with how it turned out?” She pressed.

  “It was the best decision for everyone, so yes, I'm glad you got us here.” His hands went back to work.

  It was the small victory she was looking for, even though she would never admit she was seeking validation, even from him. A more difficult question remained, and instead of sitting on it, letting it fester, she just asked; “How do you know Patrizia?”

  His hands didn’t stop kneading, a good sign, or a sign that he knew the question was coming and already had his escape plan ready. “We did a few jobs for her three years ago. Maybe four.”

  “She guessed I was the one who gave you the white scarf you used to wear.” It was a daring move, offering more detail in hopes of getting extra information without directly asking. “Seems like she had been wondering who gave that to you for a while.”

  “I remember her asking. I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t know who gave it to me at the time. To be honest, I assumed it was from a wife I couldn’t remember. Instead of making something up, I just ignored the question.”

  “Oh,” Ayan said quietly, too distracted to enjoy the shoulder rub Jake was giving her.

  The silence grew thick, and Jacob’s hands stopped. “Did something happen while you were dealing with her?”

  “No, well, it’s only Stephanie seemed so opposed to dealing with her.”

  “That’s because the last time we dealt with Patrizia she told us we were liberating a political prisoner from the low security wing of a prison, when it turned out we were rescuing her girlfriend from a prison term she earned. She still has a warrant out for her in that system.”

  “Girlfriend?” Ayan boggled.

  “I couldn’t make it up if I tried. They put her away for code breaking and we managed to get her out, then she tells us the whole story about why she was there and that Patrizia was pretty much her sugar momma.”

  Ayan burst out laughing, more from relief than at the story itself.

  Jake’s hands went back to her shoulders and continued their work, laughing along with her. “Guess it is pretty funny now. Still, we’ll have to double check every bit of information we get from her.”

  “And everything. She gave me a very expensive ring as a keepsake. I scanned it, there’s nothing inside, and it registers as about seventy years old. Not something you buy in a backstreet bazaar.” She said, holding up the gold and platinum lion’s head ring. “Think she fancies me?”

  “If she does, she’ll have a fight on her hands,” Jake replied with a playful growl.

  With a few gestures on her comm unit she selected a different shape for her vacsuit that left her shoulders bare and lowered the neckline significantly. He stopped a moment as he clothing complied with her order then continued, his bare hands on her bare skin. They felt harder than she expected, but they were warm, strong.

  The thought that her outfit modification could be seen as some kind of a reward flicked through her mind and made her blush furiously. It didn't seem to occur to him, or if it did he didn't seem to mind. He was a deft shoulder and neck masseuse, and she couldn't help but put her head down and relax. “How is everyone settling in?” She asked quietly.

  “We had to evacuate the Samson. About a third are leaving, setting out for Port Rush City proper. The rest are settling into the other ships. Things seemed to calm down once they saw the food and cots. Stephanie and Alaka are keeping things pretty orderly.”

  “A third, that's a lot of people moving on.”

  “I expected it. We'll probably see half gone by morning, especially if there's an uplink to the Core World Banks available in Port Rush.”

  “From what I saw today, there must be. The transit centre we passed through was busy, the busiest I've ever seen. How are their spirits?”

  “The ones who are moving on? A lot of the people from Enreega took a moment to thank Stephanie and I on their way out, even Alaka, who wasn't there. Except for Edward. He had to make a grand stand about informing whoever he could find about where we are so they could take us in for the bounty. Listening to him you'd think he was kidnapped and forced into hard labour.”

  Ayan found the astrophysicist half frustrating and half amusing. Most of the people she'd met in his field were patient, reasonable and high thinking problem solvers. He was anything but, and even though she never wanted to deal with him herself, watching the drama at a distance was sometimes entertaining when she could get past the frustration he inspired in most onlookers, herself included. “Well, he won't be missed. It won't be long before everyone knows you're here though, with or without him flapping about it.”

  “You're right. I'm glad we chose to land here. At the very least, I have Patrizia’s respect and she’ll help protect us if we can stay on her good side.”

  “Oh boy. Well, I never did experiment in College,” Ayan commented with an exaggerated show of p
iqued interest. “This might be my opportunity.”

  “I’m not sharing,” Jake said in a low, serious tone that sent a shiver up her spine.

  She closed her eyes and simply enjoyed the massage for a few moments. His hands moved down her back, kneading as they travelled. A thought occurred to her then; “There won't be much point in hiding here any longer by tomorrow morning. You'll be moving about the moon making deals and forming ties without my help.”

  “Disappointing?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  “No, I was right out of my comfort zone today. Seeing the cities was amazing, but I couldn't enjoy it. Had too many things to do, and most of our problems don't have easy solutions.”

  “Well, I hate to tell you, but you’re still going to be in the hot seat when you wake up tomorrow. I have to go into hiding. Multi-million credit bounties have reach, especially in ports like this. I don’t know how long I’ll have to hide either, so you’re going to be the representative of the crew for as long as we’re here, maybe longer. Even when the Triton gets back. We're going to need a home port, especially while we try to perform repairs.”

  She let that sink in for a moment. Home port. “Here?”

  “If we can get set up. We saw worse places even before the Eden virus broke out. Looks like they're over that here, on to rebuilding.”

  There it was again, the years she knew little to nothing about. Those years in command of the Samson that helped shape Jake into the person he was as much as the memories he inherited from Jonas. She’d spent an entire night talking about those times with him and felt there was still so much she didn’t know. “I’m going to need your help, often. You have so much more experience out here, sometimes it feels like I’m a hapless tourist.”

  “Your instincts are good. Don’t worry, you can make sure there’s always someone around. I won’t be able to be on comms with you all the time though, or be seen staying on the same ship. I’m going to have to blend in with some of the crew so people can’t pick me out, Stephanie and most of the Samson crew will be doing the same.”

  “You know what would help, I think?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell me more about your time on the Samson. What was it like?”

  His hands stopped half way on their way back to her shoulders. “That's a big question,” he replied quietly.

  Ayan wouldn't let him escape it. She pulled her arms around her tightly and slid backwards, resting against his chest. “That's why I'm asking,” she whispered.

  He stretched his legs out and got comfortable around her. The arms she'd drawn around her waist weren't just resting in place any longer, they were holding her. “Nothing stayed the same for long,” he whispered. “The ship always needed work, there was never enough time, or there was too much time. You know the routine of ‘hurry up and wait.’ We’d always be really busy in port then left with days in hyperspace. Crew came and went all the time. The longer the trip, the more the crew would get at each other, so I had to keep finding small jobs and bounties between the bigger ones so they'd have something to do other than stare at each other and get into each other's business.”

  “So there was a lot of fighting aboard?”

  “More during the first couple of years.”

  “What did you do about it usually?”

  “You can't really separate people for long on a ship like that, but I tried. Confined a few people to quarters a couple of times, but if I had to do that for two people, one of them would get a cot in the machinist's closet.”

  Ayan couldn't help but chuckle a little. The mental picture of a crew member locked in a small, dark, greasy closet with a cot as punishment for misbehaving was unexpected, but she'd seen the inside of the Samson, and it fit. “I guess that's a bit too severe.”

  “It was, but I still did it every once in a while. Stephanie locked someone in there once for bringing a grenade into Sarcost Port. Got her whole team held up in quarantine and I had to go pay the processing fees before we could do business.”

  “There was a weapons restriction?”

  “Oh, yeah, there was, and everyone was told about it before they left. There was no point in carrying anything but a sidearm anyway, Stephanie's team was only following a lead on a repo job to get a little shore time.”

  “Who was the crewman who brought the grenade?”

  Jake thought for a moment and nodded to himself. “Rooni, never got to know him. He was killed about two weeks later on the same job when we caught up with the Evening Crooner.”

  “Did that happen a lot on repo jobs?”

  “No, most repos were easy. We'd wait until the crew put into port and the ship was almost empty then use the manufacturer codes to take control of the security systems. Tracking the ships from system to system was usually harder than the takedown. The captain of the Evening Crooner had replaced half her systems though, and he was paranoid, so he never let more than a quarter of his crew leave the ship. When we thought we had control of his ship it was really a copy of the operating system installed on a computer with a receiver and the interactive manual.”

  “So it looked like everything was normal.”

  “Yup, he was a piece of work. Went away for nine years after we took his ship. I guess he really did have to stay on the move, he should have kept up with his payments. I always planned on borrowing that security system idea for the Samson, never got around to it though. Can't really hack into the Samson using her serial numbers and manufacturer codes anyway.”

  “I guess paranoia was catching in your line of work.”

  “Nothing paints a bullseye on your back like being freelance law enforcement. It was good money for us though, especially since we didn't stay in one place for long.”

  “That's another part of hunting? Moving around a lot?” She intertwined her fingers with his heavier digits. Being there, in his arms, hearing about a way of life that was completely foreign to her as it was spoken in whispers, it was the kind of thing sharing she wanted with him ever since they met on Pandem.

  “No, it's the hardest way to approach the business. If you're lucky you land somewhere and work the leads without anyone figuring out what you're up to. If you're unlucky everyone already knows who you are and what you're about, so whoever you're there for is already on their way off world. Most bounty hunters stay in one place for their entire careers, get to know the different law enforcement agencies, learn to work with other hunters and have a good lay of the land. Some worlds even have hunter syndicates. Makes hunting safer, especially when you can bring in more than one team and the syndicate makes sure everyone gets paid equally. That would have been better, settling into a nice, active solar system but I was looking for Alice.”

  There was a heavy silence as she waited for him to go on, tried to think of something to say. The daughter of strange origins who she never met, who she wished she could know almost as much as she wanted to know Jake. His grief was still fresh, and she was the only one who knew its depth. “I'm sorry,” she whispered finally.

  “It's all right.”

  It wasn't, she knew. It wouldn't be for a long time, but she'd have to let him close the wound in his own time. All she could do was make herself available to him, make sure that he could trust that she would listen and not judge.

  “I didn't have much to go on, but it was a purpose. Asking questions was second nature, and before long I learned how to find the right people, people who might have answers. The first crew of the Samson gave me a lot of trouble, especially since I tried making money by doing anything that came along. Hauling cargo, repairing satellites, claiming salvage, you name it. I kept on getting back to bounty hunting though, it was what I was best at. It wasn't my favourite kind of work, mind you. I ended up delivering a lot of good people to their accuser's doors, but I knew I'd need money for the times when there was no work, and we were between systems. The early crews would always get nervous, even though I paid them a sma
ll wage if work wasn’t coming, but later on those dead times when we were in hyperspace for more than a week or two the crew would gel. Especially after Ashley came aboard.”

  “She seems nice, and fun.”

  “She's both. Smarter than people give her credit for too. I never thought the life was for her, but I think she grew into it. Most times I wish she didn't.”

  “Oh?”

  “That's the problem with a ship like the Samson; you need good people with the right skills aboard, but if you get to know them too well, if you learn to like them, then it's the last place you want them to be. I thought she'd be retired to one of my haulers within another year or so. I brought it up once and she looked at me like I was kicking her off the ship. She was almost in tears.”

  “I could just imagine.”

  “Back then I didn't know where my search would take us. I expected it would be dangerous, I knew a lot of people were after Alice, probably for freeing me and maybe for something else. I needed loyal people who wouldn't waver when I finally found her, people who would help me get her out of whatever trouble she was in. They'd be paid, sure, but cash only motivates people so far, loyalty takes them the rest of the way. I needed to find her, help her, and I needed answers. Somehow I knew the scarf she'd left me wasn't hers. I knew I wouldn't have bought it myself. It just didn't seem to match anything else. It still had your smell on it for a while too, which was the biggest hint, I think.”

  “That lilac and vanilla base perfume I used to wear?”

  “It lasted for months, got some strange looks from people when they stood too close too. I imagined I had a wife somewhere, that she might have been looking for me, or that the same people who were after my daughter had her in a prison somewhere.”

  “You must've dreamt I looked like all kinds of people,” Ayan teased. “Disappointed?”

  He squeezed her a little and lightly kissed her behind the ear. “For the first time in a long time, I feel lucky. Really lucky.”

  The tingles of him whispering against her ear and his inference made her blush furiously. “No promises,” she replied. She turned her head and he caught her lips. He wasn't the man she'd known on the First Light, far from it. This was an experienced man of the universe, someone who had been places she couldn't imagine, seen things she would never want to, and beneath his hardened surface, there was a sea of emotions that he'd let only her see. The stories of him on the Samson were all of a man who didn't allow anyone to see him as he truly was, and it made his softer side even more precious. It was hers, somehow she'd gained the gift of his trust, and it surpassed anything anyone had ever offered her.