Raven's Children

by Sabrina Chase

  “Sometimes.” Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. She pulled him closer and held him tightly, feeling his response, feeling his arms around her. He sighed and sank his face into her hair. She turned her head to whisper, “Right now, I don’t understand at all.”

  He made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob and started kissing her, kisses that increased in intensity and hunger. Moire did her best to satisfy him, with a gratifying degree of success. Perhaps my office would be a better place for this…‌

  As if reading her mind, a comm signal bleeped. Reluctantly, Moire pulled one arm free and punched the button. “Roberts here.”

  “Captain! We tried your direct line but you didn’t answer.”

  Moire grimaced. “Something’s wrong with my earring.”

  “Menehune’s here, and on her way.”

  “Right. Thanks.” She closed the link, hoping her voice sounded normal. Turning her attention back to Ennis, she gave him a thorough, passionate kiss and then resolutely pushed him away.

  “That’s no way to dissuade me,” he said, reaching for her again.

  She put a finger to his lips. “Hold that thought. I just wanted to give you something to tide you over. Company’s coming.”

  “So?”

  “So Yolanda would probably give advice on technique, but Alan might come with her. If you want to explain this to him, good luck.”

  He let go. “Not without the blast armor, thank you.”

  When only Yolanda came through the door, Ennis gave Moire a look, which she ignored. Somebody needed to be cautious for both of them, especially since pretending the attraction wasn’t there didn’t work anymore.

  Catching the speculative look on Yolanda’s face when she glanced at them in turn, Moire spoke quickly to head off any embarrassing questions.

  “How is it out there?”

  Yolanda made a sort of balancing gesture. “Eh. It’s pulling down.”

  Moire shook her head. “What does that mean?”

  “The cut happened, but everybody’s still trying to figure out how they stand, ya know? Some people don’t like the new ceeyo, some people want the ceeyo to like them more than he does, everybody got somethin’ making an itch. Think it will be better with this guy, though. Zandovar ain’t crazy to kill, just wants money. We can work with that.” She reached into an inner pocket of her jacket. “Got the circulars ya wanted.”

  Ennis took the textsheets silently and started scanning through them.

  “Think it’s safe for us to go out?” Moire asked.

  Yolanda scratched her head. “If we’re real careful and don’t go too deep, yeah. See, they’re still learning the new order and strangers make 'em nervous. I got an idea, though. If we get some kinda ship identification for everybody that goes out—‌you know, so they can tell we belong together? Then they start to see us around, know we aren’t part of anything they care about.”

  “You mean like a uniform?”

  “Nah, just some kinda mark.”

  Moire thought for a moment. It went against her instinct of not being noticed, but Yolanda’s argument made sense. They had to be known here to be safe. “OK, do it.”

  Yolanda nodded, then pulled out a commlink. “I gotta call Kilberton first, though, or he’ll think I’m dead already. And don’t tell him I’m goin’ out by myself again, OK?”

  Now this was a change. Wondering what was going on, Moire made the merc handsign that meant “all clear.” Yolanda grinned and activated her link as she left the bridge.

  Moire looked over at Ennis. “Any messages?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.” He looked like he would say more, but then Moire heard the sound of stumping feet coming toward the bridge.

  Gren came in waving a datapad in his hand. “I think we figured out a way, but we’ll need some specialized components I doubt we can find with salvage. They’re pretty new.”

  “Great. You know we can’t stay long here, and we have to put the salvage ship up for sale. How are we going to do this?”

  Gren sat down heavily at the communications panel. His eyes were bloodshot and his shoulders sagged. Moire wondered how many hours of sleep he’d had recently and felt guilty about her objections. She couldn’t afford to lose anybody, though, especially her chief engineer. He would insist on going himself, too.

  She looked at his datapad, trying to come up with a solution. A few minutes later Yolanda entered the bridge, panting, and handed her a neat stack of floppy gray squares, each printed with a simple, stylized black line drawing of a bird and lettering that said “Raven” at the top.

  “How the hell did you get that done so fast?” Moire said, astonished.

  “Got a stand that does these patches and things real close to our dock. Saw 'em coming here; that’s what gave me the idea. I paid her extra, and she said she’d tell her other customers the captain of Raven hired her to make stuff for the crew.”

  “That was real smart. Now we have to figure out how Gren can get his shopping done and I can get the salvage ship on market without staying here all day.”

  “I can go by myself,” Gren said, sitting up straighter. “The tech end isn’t as bad as the rest.”

  Yolanda shook her head sharply. “No comp, no data. It’s bad everywhere now. Don’t even think about it, Captain,” she said, pointing her finger at Moire and scowling. “You’d go and say something antique like you do, or ask some hardbody what he meant when he says he got load.”

  Moire smiled weakly, remembering the incident. “Nobody got shot.”

  “That was before the cut. Wanna bet that hardbody don’t remember you? You’re eighty years out of date and it shows. Gotta watch you every minute, I do.”

  “OK, fine. You take Gren before he falls over and get his stuff. I’ll just have to wait until you get back.”

  “I can go with you.” Ennis came over to where they were standing.

  “No.” Moire paused and took a deep breath to calm herself. “They’ll know who you are; that circular ad has been around the Fringe and back again by now.” She wasn’t going to make him go back to the criminal environment he’d worked so hard to avoid, even if it was safe for him.

  He smiled crookedly. “You don’t know those people. Being a confirmed killer is a mark of distinction. If they do recognize me, they’ll just think I’m one of them.”

  “What makes you think you know anything about Kulvar Lower, huh?” Yolanda wanted to know. She shot him a challenging look. “Take my main line taglight way, yeshure. You menu allaround, random snap, read?” She looked him up and down, her lip curled.

  “Mainline allaround, gita. Bag a count.”

  Yolanda gasped, shocked. Ennis’s face had gone cold and hard, and he gave her back stare for stare.

  Now would be a good time for the subtitles to appear. Then Yolanda cracked up.

  “Right, you got load. Where’d you learn?” She chuckled again. “Haven’t heard that last one for years.”

  “Ever hear of Fimbul? I grew up there.”

  She frowned. “But that was…‌I mean, plenty of bad types, but it was a prison, right?”

  “It was supposed to be. Didn’t always work out that way. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. And when the blowup happened—‌there were no rules. The guards were the first to go.”

  Yolanda nodded slowly. “Right. OK, you can go with her. Don’t let her talk to anybody if you can help it, though.”

  Moire blinked. “Excuse me? He’s not going.”

  “I’ll do my best, but you know what she’s like,” Ennis said, sighing.

  “Yeah, we all do.”

  “Hello! This is your captain speaking! This is an unscheduled mutiny, I’ll have you know.”

  “Come on Gren, let’s move. Captain’s in a big hurry.” Yolanda tugged at Gren’s arm.

  Moire sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “She’s trying to help you,” Ennis said quietly. “So am I.”

  She looked up at him, watchin
g his expression carefully. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  He nodded. She didn’t like it, but he knew what he’d be getting into better than she did. “Yolanda. Before you go, check in with Perwaty. He’s got a message to send. Do it priority data, OK?”

  “He got that kind of money?” Yolanda asked dubiously.

  “We do, and we owe him.” Moire glanced at Ennis. “You’d better change into something that doesn’t look like a Fleet uniform, OK? I’ll get us some guns. Got another message for you to send,” she said in a lower voice to Yolanda as Ennis left the bridge. “To McNaulty. Tell them to meet us on Bone with all their people and gear. We’ll provide transport out. That’s a priority data too, and if you can convince the clerk to fudge the station of origin, do it.”

  “Is he going to still be with us?” Yolanda jerked a thumb at the direction of the door. Moire knew who she meant, and sighed. “We’ll figure that out when we get there.”

  ¤ ¤ ¤

  “I’m about ready to go out,” Lorai said into her commlink. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “Good luck,” Palmer said. The signal was lousy. “Get moving.”

  Lorai closed the inner door of the airlock, wedged herself carefully around, and unsealed the heavy, clear hood of her shipsuit. She almost pressed the activator nub before she realized she hadn’t attached the cable. Once it was firmly connected to her and the ship, she took a deep breath, sealed the hood, and opened the outer door.

  Only when she’d carefully stepped out did she start the oxygen capsule going. Her hood was stiff now in vacuum. One quick glance to get her bearings, then she crouched huddled under her protective sheet of plastic, carefully skimming over the station surface. There was just enough residual gravity that she could get traction if she didn’t push too hard or too fast, but it was difficult to remember that when all she wanted to do was haul back on the cable and get inside.

  They’d figured any survivors would be in the section below. The only way to get there now was by going outside, and there were millions of shards of sharp metal debris—‌hence the sheet of plastic she was hauling to cover her back.

  She reached the hatch sooner than she expected. It opened slowly when she worked the controls, and only cracked the seal. It had to be running on emergency power, then. Not a good sign. She’d used up ten minutes already. Then she realized there was no way to fasten the cable and cycle the airlock. She had to have the cable to get back, but she also had to be able to get inside.

  She struggled to remove the piece of plastic without straining her shipsuit, feeling sweat bead on her face and not being able to wipe it off. “I sure hope this works,” she muttered to herself, attaching the other end of the cable to the plastic and gently moving it in place, flat against the station hull. She watched for a few seconds, but it didn’t budge, and she turned quickly back to the airlock and cycled through. She’d find out if she’d been living right or not when she got out again.

  The interior was a shambles. Her hood was relaxed now, meaning there was some kind of pressure, but she didn’t feel like taking it off. She had to move fast and look everywhere. Much of the interior had been wrenched away from the bulkheads and was strewn in piles, and a survivor could be under any of them.

  Scanning quickly, her eyes wide to catch anything that looked like a body, she saw streaks of something dark on the floor. They ran between a closed emergency pressure door and another, regular door that was blocked by a fallen light array. Her pulse quickened when she saw the tan fabric of a station uniform, but then she saw that the chest was crushed. She glanced quickly at what she could see of the face, but there was nothing she recognized.

  Something ahead…‌something that looked like a plastic tent. She doubted that had been there originally. Using a piece of strut to knock away the sharper pieces of the light array, she scrambled through the door. Another body on the floor, or pieces of it. She swallowed and looked quickly away. She really didn’t want to get sick in her shipsuit.

  There was someone in the tent. Someone moving. She rustled the fabric, and the shadow of an arm reached up and did something that opened a slit. She ducked inside. A man lay surrounded by canisters and other junk. He was filthy. His face was smeared with dust, blood, and some kind of dark oily fluid that also soaked one side of his tan uniform. One leg was bent at an unnatural angle.

  He was looking up at her with bloodshot, desperate eyes. His mouth opened, but either her hood obscured the sound or he couldn’t speak. Lorai pointed at him, and held up one finger. “Just you? Anybody else?” she shouted.

  He pointed to himself, then shook his head. His shipsuit collar was dangling free, and her heart sank. There was no hope of getting a seal. Now what was she going to do? The only way out was through the airlock.

  “Dammit, just when you think you’ve got it all figured out….‌” She bit her lip and knelt to examine his suit. Even the oxygen assembly had been damaged, so she couldn’t use that. There were slashes in the fabric elsewhere, too. First things first. He needed to breathe. That meant oxygen, and something to hold it.

  She unsealed the tent and dashed out. The two dead people—‌their shipsuits weren’t usable, even assuming she could get him into a new one, but the oxygen assemblies were still there. One was damaged, but she managed to get the other, grimacing in distaste at the blood and matter still covering it.

  He seemed to understand what she was doing when she came back. He had an extruder with a cartridge for sealant tape, and she cut off a chunk of the tent material to make a jury–‌rigged hood for him. She wasn’t sure how they were going to get the sealant tape off of his skin afterward, but that was a minor problem.

  She tucked the hood material carefully around the salvaged oxygen assembly, making sure she could reach it to activate it and that the edges of the plastic were completely sealed by tape. As she did she noticed the survivor had a rather prominent nose—‌almost Roman. This guy was wearing a station uniform, though. Didn't matter now. Harrington must be dead, or had left already. Time to save what she could.

  She was starting to pant now. Her oxygen capsule had given out, and she still had to get him out to the hatch. She pulled out her spare capsule and shoved it in the backup slot in her collar, but didn’t activate it.

  The man had no strength to help her, and he couldn’t even stand. She taped his hands together at the wrist and pulled them over her head, wincing at the burden as she stood up. She’d have to be careful not to fall, or they’d both be dead.

  Long, too long, to get back to the hatch. Her vision was getting blurry. Inner door shut. She activated her capsule with relief, breathing the oxygen, then twisted and got the survivor’s capsule going too. She opened the outer door, searching in a panic for her cable. For a terrifying moment she thought it was gone, but it had just drifted down. She could still reach it.

  She bent. Her fingers grasped the plastic, pulled, then found the cable tied to it. Suddenly she was out of the airlock, drifting away, and she felt the man on her back twitch and kick in a futile attempt to grab anything that could save him.

  She had the cable. She wrapped it quickly around her wrists so it could not pull loose. It was almost impossible to fight the instinct to pull, pull hard, but if she did it could snap the cable or make it come loose from its connection, with the extra mass now attached to it. She had to pull gently and not strain it, and they had to hope no fragments came their way, either. The shield would not cover them completely.

  The cable went taut. Lorai took up the tension in her arms, then gently, gently started to go hand over hand up the cable. Too slow and they’d both suffocate. Too fast and the cable would come loose. She tried not to think about that. There was nothing she could do if it did. Her commlink wouldn’t be any use out here.

  They started to drift back toward the station. Shaky with relief, Lorai kept going until she finally made it to the open airlock and was able to shut the door. A station tech was waiting for her w
hen she cycled through.

  “He’s the only one,” Lorai wheezed as soon as she got her hood open. “Let’s get him on the ship—‌he’s banged up pretty bad.”

  She wasn’t sure if she could have gotten back without the tech’s help, because she felt like nine days of misery. It took all her concentration to walk forward. The man was coughing now; deep, racking coughs.

  Palmer was pacing in front of the ship hatch. As soon as he saw them he started shouting. “Come on, everything’s loaded! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  They stumbled in. Palmer dogged the hatch and sprinted for the bridge. Lorai and the tech dragged the wounded man through the corridors crowded with people and supplies, finally dumping him on top of a crate. He moaned when they moved his broken leg, trying to say something that was drowned out by coughing.

  “Here’s some water. Somebody’s getting the medkit.”

  Lorai took the drink bulb and held it to the man’s mouth. He drank greedily, draining it. He sighed.

  The tech tried to wipe off some of the oily fluid from the man’s face, but it didn’t help. “What’s your name?”

  The man wheezed, coughed, then tried again. “Harrington.”

  CHAPTER 15

  BECOMING HUMAN

  Harrington stifled a groan as he shifted in his bunk. The next time—‌assuming there was a next time—‌he’d make sure to bring his own supply of pain medication. Between broken bones and bruises there was no comfortable position to sleep in, so he didn’t. They didn’t have enough meds on board even for the critically injured. He would simply have to develop a stoic mentality.

  He’d been damned lucky, at that. There had been moments, trapped in the wreckage, when he’d wondered if he’d survive.

  The door slid open, and his rescuer stepped in. He frowned in an effort of thought, trying to figure out why he felt a twinge of recognition.

  “How ya doin’?” she inquired. Harrington firmly squelched an unworthy spurt of resentment at her cheery tone.