Stars Uncharted

by S. K. Dunstall

  “Storekeeper still refused credit. I told him I could have bought his store. He laughed at me.”

  Brown Combine had a reputation. They honored their word. Surely they hadn’t stopped the payment. They couldn’t have, but Josune was starting to twitch. “Check your credit.”

  “I checked it before Carlos went.” But Jacques called up the accounts anyway. “We have ten million, fifty thousand—” He looked hard at the screen. “It’s a mistake.”

  “How much?” Josune asked.

  “Nothing. It’s a mistake. I’ll sort it out.”

  No balance. Zero credits. Someone had cleaned them out.

  * * *

  • • •

  Carlos called Roystan. “Don’t hire any crew.”

  “But I’m just about to sign—”

  “Don’t, Roystan. Come back to the ship. We’ve got a big problem.”

  He cornered him as soon as he stepped onto the ship. Josune, sitting with Jacques and drinking her second cup of coffee, watched through the link with the sound turned down.

  Jacques switched through to the speaker near the airlock. “Welcome-home tea is served.” A big, booming sound. “Come and eat this flatbread before it goes cold.”

  Josune’s stomach rumbled at the words. They ate a lot of flatbread. She suspected that was more because Roystan liked it than because Jacques liked cooking it.

  Roystan held up a thumb to the camera feed in acknowledgment, said something to Carlos, and led the way down the passageway.

  “Not sure how we are going to cope without crew.” Jacques sounded morose.

  “We’ll have to manage.” Josune wasn’t sure that they would, especially if Roystan forced her to go. She’d have to talk him around, although she was tempted, for a moment, to head off to her room.

  Roystan and Carlos arrived. “I’d kill for a coffee, Jacques.”

  “Coming right up. Bad news is always better on a full stomach.”

  “Or it gives you indigestion. What’s this about no funds?”

  “I keep telling you,” Carlos said. “Brown cleared us out. Jacques. Show him.”

  Jacques finished serving Roystan before he brought up the figures. “They took everything.”

  It was the first time Josune had seen the numbers. 10,050,822.16 credits. Someone had withdrawn the whole amount. The withdrawal had cleared five hours earlier.

  “I tried to stop it,” Jacques said. “The bank refused. Said it was a legitimate transaction and had already gone through.”

  “It wasn’t Brown.” Josune had been telling Jacques that for hours. Brown Combine wouldn’t know how much was in the bank. Besides, all they would have done was prevent the ten-million-credit payment being cleared in the first place.

  Roystan gave her a sharp look. “Is that firsthand knowledge?”

  She shook her head.

  “And speaking of, didn’t I—”

  “Check the codes,” Josune said, before he could tell her she was off ship in front of everyone. “The only person who can clean out an account like that is someone who has been authorized. That makes it you or Jacques.”

  “I did not—”

  “Hold it, Jacques. She’s right.” Roystan rubbed his eyes. “Check the account. See who has access other than you or I?” He pushed away his half-eaten slice of flatbread.

  Jacques’s gaze followed the bread. He drooped.

  “Accounts, Jacques.”

  “There is no one else.” He brought up the accounts with a flourish. “If Josune is so certain of it, then she . . . oh.”

  Three names had appeared on-screen. Hammond Roystan, Jacques Saloman, Pol Bager.

  “Pol.” If Carlos got any angrier he’d steam.

  Roystan rubbed his eyes again. “She is—was—assistant cargo master.”

  “I am going to kill her,” Carlos said.

  No one else said anything, until Josune coughed. “The calibrator’s cracked.” And it was her fault. She buried the guilt. “We can’t use it, and we have no credits to buy another.”

  Roystan tapped codes onto the screen. Pol’s name disappeared off the list. “Any more bad news?”

  “What about Josune?” Carlos asked. “She’s paid crew, and we can’t pay her either. It’s time we brought her into the profit share.”

  “Ah, yes. Josune.” Roystan looked at Josune.

  “Roystan and I need to talk before that happens,” Josune said. “I’ll stay for the moment. You need all the crew you can get, paid and unpaid.” She looked at Roystan, almost a challenge.

  “We’ll see,” Roystan said.

  There was an uncomfortable silence while everyone in the room digested that.

  Jacques broke it. “Are you two sleeping together?”

  How did you jump from being kicked off ship to sleeping together in one deductive leap? Josune shook her head.

  “No,” Roystan said.

  “Because if you are, don’t make the fights uncomfortable for the rest of us.”

  Carlos leaned close to Jacques. “Why do you think that?” He made it quiet, but the only noise that covered it was the air-conditioning.

  “Because. Secrets. There’s nothing private on this ship, but they have a secret.” Jacques scowled at Josune. “That business when he was decoding the memory yesterday. He was showing off for her.”

  He was? Josune looked at Roystan. Color stained his cheeks.

  He sat back. “It’s not that. Something happened while we were on the Hassim, Jacques. And no, I’m not telling you what it was. Josune is going to leave.”

  “I won’t leave you while we’re in this mess,” Josune said.

  Carlos patted her shoulder.

  * * *

  • • •

  Josune and Carlos put the calibrator back together using soft filler on the damaged parts.

  “You don’t have to leave because of what happened on the Hassim,” Carlos said.

  She’d tried not to think about what happened on the Hassim, tried not to think about what she was going to do next. But Carlos’s words brought back memory in a blinding, heartbreaking rush. Her home. Her friends. Her old life. Destroyed.

  She couldn’t see for a moment. Fumbled.

  “Or because you went crazy with the sparker and half destroyed Roystan’s ship.”

  Half destroyed was a slight exaggeration. The only thing they couldn’t repair was the calibrator.

  “Roystan will eventually forgive you.”

  Was that why he thought she was leaving? “Can we not talk about it?”

  “Sorry.” Carlos patted her shoulder clumsily.

  When the calibrator was in one piece again, they stood looking at the damage.

  Carlos circled it dubiously.

  “It’s not going to work.” Josune said aloud what they both knew. “It’ll break the first time we nullspace.” Who knew where they’d end up. Maybe in a galaxy a billion light-years away, with nothing around them except empty space, and no way to get back, even if they knew where to go back to.

  They couldn’t risk it. “Let me talk to the captain.” Roystan would consider the safety of his crew. “I can loan him the credits.”

  “He doesn’t take loans, Josune.”

  Maybe he could take a passenger, then. Josune could pay, and she had nowhere else to go.

  Light steps heralded the arrival of Roystan. “How’s it going?”

  Carlos said, “If we’d known this was going to happen, we’d have taken the calibrator off the Hassim.”

  Roystan grimaced. “If I’d known this was going to happen I’d have done a lot of things differently.” He leaned against the counter. “You all right, Carlos?”

  Josune might not have been in the room.

  “Jacques is taking it bad,” Carlos said. “He and Guardian
were friends.”

  “What about you?”

  Carlos traced the crack on the calibrator. “I’ll get over it. I never liked Pol anyway, and Qiang kept to herself. Guardian?” He shrugged and waved the word away. “Let’s say I don’t want to meet him again any time soon. Although I admit, I was spending those lovely credits in my head.”

  “Let’s deliver our cargo, Carlos. Then we’ll see.” Roystan turned to Josune. “I need to talk to you.”

  She nodded, and made toward the door.

  “Josune,” Carlos said. “We’ll help you work through it. Don’t run. It never works.”

  “Thanks.” Her voice was husky.

  Roystan led her to the empty cabin next to his own and closed the door. “What does Carlos think you’re running from?”

  “Whatever it was you alluded to that happened on the Hassim. Or my wrecking your ship.” She still wasn’t sure which.

  Josune sat on the lower bunk, then pulled her knees up so her feet were on the bed and her chin was resting on her knees. “You’ve a good crew.” What was left of them.

  Even Guardian had been decent. But it hadn’t stopped him from being greedy.

  “I do,” Roystan agreed. “But I’m not putting up with company spies. Especially as you know as well as I do what’s sitting in The Road’s memory right now. You’re a good worker, Josune. I like you. But I don’t trust you, and we’ve lost everything else.”

  The only thing Josune had left was her dream. Captain Feyodor had been convinced Roystan was the key to that dream.

  Josune blinked on the array behind her eye. She held out her hand. “Give me your communicator.”

  He hesitated handing it over. “The Hassim’s memory isn’t linked. You can’t retrieve it. Or wipe it.”

  She sorted quickly through her own records. What could she give him to prove she wasn’t a threat? Sassia. The red bracelet that Pol had worn. Josune’s notes, her pictures of the rock, subsections as she’d cut it. Her own voice describing what she’d discovered. Her arm, with the indelible red stain. She pushed it down to him.

  “I don’t need the Hassim,” she said, when he’d finished watching it. “I told you, I’m not company. I’m an explorer. Goberling’s lode is what I’m searching for.”

  “Josune Arriola.”

  She shouldn’t have been surprised he knew the names of the Hassim’s crew without having to look them up.

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say? It was your ship. Survivor rights. We could have—”

  “Would I be alive now if I had said?”

  Roystan rubbed his nose. “Pol.” He looked away. Looked back. “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I, but there is nothing left for me on the Hassim.” Except the memory of her crewmates’ death. “The only reason I’m alive is because Feyodor sent me to find you. Coming out of nullspace right in front of you wasn’t accidental.”

  “I knew that as soon as I saw the recording.” Roystan dropped onto the bunk beside her with a sigh. “I can’t help you find that world, Josune. Not won’t. Can’t.”

  “But you know why she sought you out.”

  “Yes.” He bounced to his feet again, hitting his head on the top bunk. “And no. I won’t tell you that.” He rubbed his head. “Ow.”

  This time it was won’t, not can’t.

  “I’ve no ship. Nowhere to stay. I know you took me on under false pretenses, but I’m a good engineer.”

  She tried to read his body language. She couldn’t see much. His legs and stomach as he leaned against the top bunk. He was almost scrawny. How could he continue to eat Jacques’s food and stay so thin, while the rest of them stacked on the weight?

  “And thanks to us, you’re homeless.”

  She’d have been dead if it weren’t for Roystan. “Thanks to a company. But if it lets me stay, then yes, I’m homeless.” Then, because it was Roystan, and he would keep her on because of that. “You know why I’m staying. Always remember that.”

  She heard his sigh above her. Muffled, as if he’d buried his face in his hands, or in the bunk above. “You know what I wish, Josune? I wish Goberling had stayed home. Accepted the job his company offered him, and stayed around to become an accountant.”

  “You don’t wish that.” Roystan knew too much about the Hassim to think that. “Besides, Goberling wasn’t an accountant. He was a pilot.”

  He didn’t answer.

  It was time to change the subject. “Roystan, if I am staying, I’m not going to risk my life with a faulty calibrator. I’ll pay you for letting me stay. I’ll buy you one.”

  “We’re not a charity, Josune.”

  “I’m living on borrowed time. I didn’t survive a massacre just to die in nullspace.”

  “Technically—”

  “Technically nothing, Roystan. We are getting a new calibrator.”

  She knew from the silence that he considered refusing. Eventually he sighed. “I’ll let you know how much it is.” He turned for the door, then hesitated. “You might want to do something about the eye before you go back to Carlos.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Put that thing into the recycler,” Carlos said, before he left to buy the new calibrator.

  She would, but not until they’d installed the other one. Things went wrong. They might need to cannibalize some of the parts.

  Carlos hesitated before asking Roystan, “You good with this loan? I know you don’t like them.”

  He’d assumed it was a loan. No one had told him otherwise. Or where the “loan” was from.

  Roystan gave his crooked smile. “Josune makes a convincing argument that it’s better to be alive with a loan than dead without one.”

  “We’ll pay it off, Roystan.”

  “Just make sure this thing is worth the money you pay for it.”

  After they’d gone, Josune and Roystan made their way down to the crew room. There wasn’t much to do on a ship in dock. Sometimes Josune thought this crew spent too much time together. On the Hassim she’d spent a lot of time in her cabin or down in the engineering workshop.

  Roystan spent the time running through the revised delivery schedule Jacques had set up.

  If Pol’d had her way they wouldn’t have had schedules to rearrange. They’d have been off looking for the lost world right now.

  Jacques brought out savory cakes for them to nibble on.

  Josune took two. “I died and went to heaven.”

  Roystan’s communicator sounded. He flicked the channel open. Carlos.

  “You’re ready for your money?”

  Josune had transferred the credits through to Roystan earlier.

  “They say they’ve sold out.”

  “Of calibrators? What about the one they had on hold for us?”

  No one ran out of calibrators unless they were a one-man shop on the rim. This was the Hub.

  “They couldn’t hold it. Sold.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Of course it’s impossible. He offered me five when I was here earlier.”

  “Any reason for the change?”

  “Nothing personal, he says.”

  Nothing personal meant someone putting pressure on the shop owner not to sell. Did that mean someone didn’t like The Road? More likely they’d heard about the Hassim and wanted to keep the ship there until they arrived. The only people who could put that sort of pressure onto a store owner in the Hub were companies.

  “Try somewhere else. Even a secondhand one.”

  “I’ve tried them all. Everyone says the same thing.”

  “Sold out?”

  “Nothing personal.” Carlos hesitated. “I’ve seen a couple of company men wearing that black shiny pin. Like they had on the Hassim.”

  “They’re holding us here.” Jo
sune pushed her cake aside, a cold, heavy lump settling into her stomach. “They know we can’t jump. They’ll send someone to pick us off.” Probably a trained merc team.

  Roystan breathed out in a long sigh. “This is why chasing a lost cause is so stupid.” He looked at her. “Everyone will be after the memory. After us.”

  Nothing Roystan’s crew could say would save them. No one would believe they didn’t have the memory any longer. Especially not a company prepared to pressure a whole station to hold them here.

  “Can you put the other calibrator back in?”

  She shook her head. That was an emergency last resort, after all other avenues had been exhausted. “We’re smarter getting a calibrator from somewhere the company hasn’t banned, and modifying it to suit the ship.” She’d done that before. She leaned forward to speak into his handheld. “Carlos, see if there are any genemod machines for sale.”

  “Genemod. How will that work?”

  “They use calibrators, and they’re made by the same companies that make ship calibrators.”

  “You crazy engineer. They use totally different fluids.”

  “It’s still just inlet valves and outlet valves and regulating them.” She’d pulled one apart once. Once past the shell, they were almost identical. They could rig up a bypass to ensure that whatever fluids had been in the genemod machine wouldn’t contaminate the ship fluids. “Of course, we’ll have to readjust our measurements.” The flows were different.

  “Will it work?” Roystan asked quietly.

  She nodded. “Ninety percent sure.”

  “Which is better than sitting waiting for a company to get to us at their leisure. Carlos. Find us a genemod machine.” Roystan clicked off and laid the communicator on the table. He stared down at it.

  “If we don’t get out of here fast, we’re cattle ship fodder,” Josune said.

  Or dead.

  “But we’re way inside the legal zone,” Jacques said.

  “Doesn’t matter, Jacques. No one cares when this sort of money is involved.”

  “We’ll tell them we don’t have the Hassim memory anymore.”

  “They’ll attack us on the chance we might have something, even if we don’t.” Roystan stood up. “I’ll be on the bridge.”