Rose turned and looked at Hart, snoring peacefully in the bunk. Color had returned to his lips and the hollows under his eyes no longer appeared blue, but his appearance was still pallid, the spacer hue of pale white and distinctive veins. She sat up straight, squared her shoulders and turned back to Mira.
“Save him.”
Mira twisted her face into a wry smile. “I thought you’d say that.” A month ago she would have put Hart on ice and returned to the station without a second thought.
“How long will it take to reach the United ship?” Rose asked.
“I can’t be sure. We’ll know when they hail us.” Which they would. The militant wing of a primary competitor wouldn’t take kindly to their paths crossing.
The message came the moment Mira had finally found a comfortable position in which to rest. As she went about the familiar procedure of unclasping the elastic cot wrapped around her, she watched Rose and Hart sleep through the bleating communications alarm. It had been a long time since she had slept deeply enough to tune out the ship’s sighs, groans and calls.
Wincing at the lingering pain in her shoulder, Mira clambered over to the console and opened the waiting message.
An accented male voice rang from the console speakers. “Empire salvage vessel, this is United Mining security vessel Prophet. Your current trajectory intersects our restricted buffer. Alter course immediately.” The message’s “acknowledge” command blinked, signifying her expected response.
Mira strapped into the console seat, switched the console to its navigation mode and instructed the computer to commence an immediate deceleration. Though familiar with freefall maneuvering, Mira nonetheless felt a surge of nausea as the Nyx rapidly pivoted in place. Reoriented, it began its deceleration burn.
Harlan would have words with her about the indiscretion of burning so much reaction mass on this little escapade. That much was certain.
She brought the communications console back up, located the Prophet’s communication details and started her response.
“Prophet, this is Empire salvage shuttle Nyx. We have a medical emergency and request immediate assistance.”
She sent the message. To have warranted a warning message, the Prophet was close enough that her response would be received immediately. She waited, counting out the time in her head. Any substantial delay would mean they needed to think about it.
The answer when it came was hesitant and deliberate.
“Empire salvage shuttle, we are unable to assist you at this time. Please modify your course.”
Mira keyed her microphone immediately.
“Prophet, we have informed Empire of our intention to seek your aid. We request aid as guaranteed under our mutual shipping protocols.” She sent her message with a violent stab at the communications terminal.
Harlan was going to have conniptions.
The response this time was delayed significantly. When it came, a different speaker, a resigned, unaccented voice, gave the shuttle clearance and details for navigating to its rendezvous with the frigate.
Mira muted the communications console. If they changed their mind now, she didn’t want to know about it. She punched the navigation course through the console and grimaced. Bound for the asteroid belt, the Prophet was only two hours away on the Nyx’s hardest burn.
She glanced at Rose and Hart in their bunks. Hart’s breathing was labored in the thrust’s pseudo-gravity; he remained pale. In contrast, Rose’s cheeks were flushed with warmth and her lips were pulled into a smile.
Mira massaged her scalp, numb with fatigue. Sleep was tempting, but in two hours she needed to do more than only face the crew of a United Mining ship. She needed to work out why she was acting against years of habit.
Mira swung away from them in a sudden flash of rage, a burning heat in her veins temporarily dispelling her exhaustion. She wanted to scream. Spacers were on their own, should be on their own. That was the nature of space, the nature of the job. It was how it always had been and everyone out here knew it.
Directing her anger and the fire in her shoulder into action, Mira climbed unsteadily down the ladder to the hold. Her suit and equipment were locked away where she’d placed them after sorting out Hart.
The Nyx was her shuttle, her home. At least it was now that Jake was gone. Now there was an engineer who knew what it meant to be a spacer. Together they had always completed the job and accepted the risks, no matter the cost. People had died, but spacers always died and the job still needed doing. And it was her job now. The responsibility rested on her shoulders and she would have to do it for the both of them.
Mira ejected the magazine from her handgun and absentmindedly rolled its topmost round with her thumb. It made a dull, threatening noise as it scraped the housing.
Her problem, she realized, wasn’t really Rose or Hart. Rose was no spacer, and Hart should probably be dead, but that wasn’t what hurt. It was the situation. Everything was different. Rose was playing by different rules. Different rules which forced Mira to question years of life-and-death decisions. Mira didn’t want guilt or the paralysis of doubt. No, the job and the harsh realities of spacer life were clear. She’d been living it long enough.
Mira’s breath caught in her throat briefly. Why was she sending the Nyx to meet some damned United crew? No one ever crossed company lines anymore; no one had called on the mutual aid protocol in years. People set foot on her ship purely at her discretion. Mira tapped the unloaded gun against her head in frustration.
It was time to make a choice. She could give in, board the United ship and break all the rules she’d come to accept, or she could clear the board, bringing a hard stop to it and show she remained in control, the rules be damned. Both solutions would upset the boss, but she had to act.
Mira flipped over the pistol, reloaded the magazine and strode back to the ladder. She’d be damned if some wet rookie and a half-dead spacer were going to ruin her career and get away with it.
Mira emerged into the cabin to find the engineer and crewman still sleeping. Rose had turned over in her straps, facing away from her, her head hidden by a tangle of hair. Mira raised the pistol at the mess of hair, thumbed the laser sight.
There was another option, but this was the easy one, right? In the last four years she had shot and killed thirteen people. There was good reason. She filed all the paperwork and no one complained. Twelve were pirates, armed scavengers trying to strip Empire equipment before it could be officially salvaged. One was a survivor, fatally wounded already by a reactor accident and in more pain than her first aid kit could deal with. He knew what was happening. He even begged for it.
The cold metal of the trigger was warm beneath her finger. All she had to do was pull, turn to Hart and pull again. Her problems would be gone.
Yet how could she? Explaining it wasn’t the problem. The sleeping face, serene and unworried, was her, somehow, a shadow of the person she could never be again.
An unfamiliar wave of guilt turned her stomach. Mira released the trigger and thumbed the safety on. She’d have to resolve this the hard way.
She turned to Rose’s suit, discarded beneath her cot. Strapped to the orange fabric of its legs were the box-shaped pouches dedicated to holding Rose’s personal tools. Mira opened one, removed a bulky sublimation iron and inserted the pistol in its place.
United would know of Mira and the threat she represented. But a rookie unweathered by serious time in space would be another matter. Her lack of experience would also make United assume only a weak allegiance to Empire. With luck the Prophet’s crew would disarm Mira but ignore her new crewmate. Should the situation turn bad, at least she would be armed.
Mira’s heart thudded as she clasped the pouch shut and descended to the hold to place the iron amongst her tools. Her hand rested against the machine pistol, strapped in place in the ca
binet. Inspecting it, she once again slipped into an automatic, meditative trance, disassembling the gun and checking the parts, removing a jot of residue here, applying a dab of lubricant there. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t used the gun since its last inspection; it focused her mind, this automated motion of her hands.
The routine promised stability. Yet even so, deep inside, a fear of vain routine and empty promises grew and tugged at her heart.
The shuttle’s thrusters sputtered, shifting the deceleration rate and announcing the beginning of their final docking maneuvers. Mira had lost count of the number of times she had disassembled and reassembled the machine pistol. A glance at Rose’s sublimation iron protruding from a tray of the weapons locker brought about a skipped heartbeat, a cold flush at her cheeks. She pushed it deeper, closed the cabinet and ascended to the crew compartment. She needed to get Rose busy.
Rose was already out of her bunk, examining the spacer. Hart appeared to be nearing death, his skin now an ashen gray. Mira handed her one of the Nyx’s spare suits.
“Get it on him,” Mira said.
At the sound of her voice, Hart’s eyes snapped open, turned and locked on her.
“You can’t stop it,” he said.
“We can’t stop what?” Mira asked.
He seemed to stop and think about this for a moment, before knitting his eyebrows together and glancing around the cabin. “Where am I?”
The shuttle’s thrusters chose that moment to cut out altogether and the cabin returned to free fall. As if on cue, Hart closed his eyes and his breathing fell into a rattling, steady rhythm.
“He’s asleep,” said Rose, bouncing into the air, one hand holding a support bar by Hart’s cot.
Mira rolled her eyes. Only a couple of minutes remained before the shuttle docked with the Prophet. She pushed off and made her way down to the hold. It was game time.
The communications console gave a plaintive chime as she reactivated it, sealing her suit around her. Four outstanding messages from Harlan waited, blinking patiently.
Mira ignored them and hailed the Prophet as the shuttle’s thrusters kicked in and out, settling them against the other craft. The crewman who answered sounded positively cheerful.
“Empire shuttle, welcome to United Mining support vessel Prophet. Please come aboard when you’re ready.”
Mira raised her eyebrows and turned to Rose.
“I thought they didn’t like us,” Rose said, sealing her suit.
“They don’t.”
“They could have changed their minds.”
“No, they couldn’t have. Get your helmet on and let’s find out what they’re playing at.” Mira donned hers. “Because either way, we’re here.” She fingered the strap on her machine pistol.
Floating inside the air lock, Mira slowed her breathing and listened to her suit, waiting for it to stiffen and pop should the pressure suddenly change.
Instead, the exterior door slid open. Locked open, the Prophet’s air lock revealed a clear view into its hold.
The faces staring through at her confirmed that the Prophet’s crew were typical spacers, pale, gaunt and bald. Each of the three arrayed around the frigate’s inner air lock hatch bore the same wry grin. Two were dressed in casual uniforms. The third wore his blue armored pressure suit unsealed, its helmet strapped to his back.
Each was armed.
“A weapon will not be necessary,” the suited spacer said, his voice loud and crisp with authority. The sound echoed in Mira’s ear, both amplified by her suit and transmitted by the ship’s atmosphere between them. He waved a handgun at Mira. “Take it off and pass it through. Helmets off too.”
“My weapon’s a part of my uniform,” Mira said, removing her helmet and clasping it to her suit. She nodded for Rose to do the same.
“Then leave.” The spacer’s smile widened.
Mira turned to Rose, whose furrowed brow and wide eyes were frozen into place behind her visor. Hart floated upside down next to her, unconscious, oblivious to the situation.
“Oh, fine.” Mira unstrapped the machine pistol and tossed it gently to him. “Come on, Rose,” she said, removing her helmet. “Let’s get your boyfriend seen to before this whole trip proves a waste of time.”
One of the spacers appeared to be the Prophet’s medic. As Rose towed Hart through the air lock into the Prophet’s hold, he took over. After first removing Hart’s helmet and giving his vitals a cursory check, he left, towing Hart through one of several hatches into another part of the frigate.
What Mira could see of the Prophet was impressive. The hold’s interior was a yawning cavern. Embedded with doors and shutters promising hidden storage, the ship would have a very substantial cross-section. Finished in formed beige plastics, it made the tired and battered metal of the Nyx appear antiquated. The implication that United designed its ships, rather than assembling them out of inexpensive mass-produced modules, suggested more wealth than Mira was comfortable speculating.
“I’m Mira. This is Rose, my salvage engineer.” She noticed the spacers hadn’t holstered their weapons.
The Prophet’s spokesman glanced at Rose for only a moment. He snorted derisively. “Smells green. New recruit?”
“Intern,” she said. A badge on his suit named him Warren.
“Figures,” Warren said, giving Mira a hard stare, “but with twenty crew I’m not going to introduce you to everyone. Boss wants you to sit tight in the decontamination bay until Doc is done with your boy.” He holstered his handgun and waved Mira’s machine pistol. “Follow me.”
Tailed by the remaining United crewman, Mira and Rose followed Warren through the same hatch the medic had used for Hart. The hatch opened onto a tubular, fluted access corridor that extended some fifty or sixty meters distant. Multiple access hatches were studded in rows along the corridor, and it was through one of these that Warren swung, followed closely by Mira and Rose. Mira caught one of several webbed seats studded around one side of the room.
“Boss will be down shortly,” Warren said.
Mira tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “I know you’re not happy to have guests.”
“You don’t know nothing,” Warren said. He resumed his grin and waved off his colleague floating by the chamber’s hatch. “Make yourselves at home. I’ll stick around until Boss gets here.”
“And my firearm?”
Warren smiled and patted it. “Who knows?”
They didn’t have long to wait. Mira was settling into one of the bay’s seats when a new crewman bounced into the room and wrapped himself around the seat next to Rose.
Tall and muscular, he imposed upon the room, shrinking its proportions in comparison. He wore a blue pressure suit similar to Warren’s, lacking only the armor panels. Rather than the shaved head of a typical spacer, he maintained a short but thick black Mohawk. His smile seemed genuine, amplified by glittering eyes.
Mira had never seen a spacer like him.
“I see Warren settled you in, Mira, Rose.” He nodded at each of them in turn. “I’m Deboss, the first officer.”
“I thought the boss was coming,” said Rose. Mira tried to stifle an involuntary laugh.
“No, that’s me. The captain they call “sir.” But that’s all very much beside the point. I thought you’d like to know how your man is coming.”
Mira saw Rose perk up at the offer. Deboss acknowledged her with an easy smile.
“Your crewman will be fine. He’s sedated in the infirmary on the other side of the access corridor here. He’s suffering mild radiation exposure and our medic is giving him a transfusion. He will be ready for your trip home in short order.”
“You sedated him?” asked Mira. “He wasn’t even conscious.”
Deboss grinned and made a dismissive gesture. “What I’m really interes
ted in, Mira, is something else.”
Faster than she could hope to react, he reached out and grabbed Rose, turned her in her webbing and unclasped the engineering pouch. Trapped in indecision about why she was even here, Mira was unable to recognize the signals until too late. She was too slow to stop him.
Holding her handgun with an air of calm confidence, the glint in his eyes took on a new meaning.
“I’d love to know why an intern engineer is carrying a sidearm,” Deboss said. The gun pointed first at Rose, then swung over to Mira. Braced against the bottom of her seat, she realized how futile her situation had become. She couldn’t possibly reach him in time.
“Or maybe,” continued Deboss, switching his gaze from Mira to Rose and back, “the engineer doesn’t know anything.”
Mira felt her shoulders slump. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all.
“Maybe Empire can’t afford to fit out its ships with basic security, but we’re not so ill-equipped here. We imaged the three of you when you came aboard. So tell me, Mira.” He waved the pistol at her again. “If you only wanted medical aid, why would you board us with a concealed weapon?”
Mira started to reply, wanted to say “for self defense,” but found she couldn’t. It wasn’t really true, was it? She caught her hands shaking, pressed them still. No, the gun had been a way out, an escape. As Rose turned to face her with wide eyes, Mira looked away, biting her lip.
“I’m also curious to know why you lied to us about having called Empire,” he said. “We checked, of course, and somewhere out there our people talked to your people, got your names and details and we heard that you’d made no change to your posted flight plan. It’s a little unusual, wouldn’t you agree?”
There was no right answer now, no plan. It was time to find a new starting point. Mira raised her head and furnished him with a quiet stare.
Writers of the Future, Volume 27 Page 32