Stars Uncharted

by S. K. Dunstall

Roystan carefully pulled the sleeves up over her arms. The shirt was long and loose. Not Josune’s size. Roystan’s.

  Josune hobbled out of the cargo hold, favoring her sprained ankle. “The lock didn’t disengage properly.” She finally answered Roystan’s question.

  Roystan gently caught her elbow. “Lean on me when you put your foot down.”

  Nika smiled at the two of them. Serious, focused, each deliberately not concentrating on the other.

  “I had to go back into the spur to release it.”

  “You should have left it.”

  “The oscillations would have torn us apart.”

  Roystan nodded.

  “I cleared it, but the oscillations had already damaged the airlock. I couldn’t get back in.” She stepped down harder than she’d meant to. Grunted. Cut it off. “You should have made Jacques disengage.”

  “Humans can’t nullspace outside a ship.” Roystan managed to smile, at last. “Or some sort of container.”

  Like the spur of a station.

  “Well, I appreciated that you didn’t disengage. But the damn thing broke away anyway. All I could see was The Road disappearing into deep space.”

  “It must have been bad.”

  Josune patted his arm. “For a few minutes, it was. But you came back.” She looked from Nika to Roystan. “That was the most beautiful piece of piloting I ever saw.”

  “Nika calibrates with a steady hand. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but maybe better than a machine, even. She anticipates.”

  Which machines could never do. They could only respond, and anticipation was responding to a different set of stimuli.

  “I hit pretty hard,” Josune said. “I couldn’t move, and my suit was damaged. Otherwise I would have waited at the airlock. I knew someone would be out to look at it.”

  “What about linking in?”

  “Suit link was broken. I lost your handheld at the spur. And my eye link was gone.” She shivered. “That bit was horrible, actually. To be so close and unable to do anything. Until I remembered the cables to the antennae, and I knew you would hear it in the crew room.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They gathered in the crew room. Jacques served them a thin grain porridge, or it might have been soup. It was delicious. Roystan had his own version, which looked like slimy gruel. The smell of it turned Nika’s stomach.

  Roystan ate it with enthusiasm.

  Carlos saw her looking. “That’s Roystan’s special porridge. It’s awful.”

  Jacques deposited a plate of bread and two bowls of dipping sauce onto the table.

  Carlos took a piece of bread in each hand and dipped one in each bowl. “This is good,” he told Nika and Snow. “Try it.”

  “Not you.” Jacques reached out to rap Roystan on the knuckles as he reached across for a piece. “You know your stomach won’t take it.”

  Nika took a piece of bread. “We have the Dekker here. After we’ve checked Josune, why don’t I check you as well, Roystan? Maybe we can work out what to do about your weak stomach.”

  “Don’t waste it on me, Nika. When you’re settled in your new place, I’ll come and visit and you can go over me with as much detail as you like. Until then, I’ll wait.”

  Nika chewed thoughtfully. Roystan was hiding something.

  23

  NIKA RIK TERRI

  The diagnostics on the Dekker proved what Nika knew already. Josune had three cracked ribs and massive bruising. Her ankle was sprained, but not broken. She was still shedding skin, but the Dekker confirmed it was mostly dead topical layer, and that the skin underneath was good.

  The pink and red patterning was barely visible yet beneath the flaking skin. The final look would be amazing, nothing like someone who’d come out of a Dietel. She neatened Josune’s hair with the scissors from the first-aid kit. The layering suited her. Maybe Nika should have stayed with color for her own new-season look.

  “There’s not much we can do for you until we get you to a machine with a calibrator.”

  After that, Josune insisted on checking the ship.

  Roystan sighed. “Why don’t Snow and I inspect the lower deck and work up. Josune, take Nika as a helper. You can start at the top and work down. We’ll go prow to bow, starboard side. The top and bottom decks are most likely to be damaged.”

  He’d very neatly gotten out of his own diagnosis, Nika noticed.

  “Roystan’s digestion is a worry,” she said now, as she waited for Josune to—carefully—buckle on her tool belt. “How long has it been like that?”

  Most of Josune’s attention was on her belt. “I don’t know. I haven’t been crew long. To be honest, I thought it was Jacques justifying his existence in the galley, rather than in the cargo hold. Pol did most of the cargo work.” Josune stopped to look up at the overhead compartment. “That’s why she had access to the accounts.” She frowned, looked around, then called Roystan.

  She used an old handheld Roystan had dug out from Nika-didn’t-know-where. Roystan had found one for himself, too.

  “Are you using the welder or the foam?”

  “A problem?”

  “Not sure. Looks like we got hit by a plasma bolt.”

  Nika would have said two or three.

  “We’ll bring it up for you.”

  “Thanks.” She clicked off.

  “So how long had you been with the crew?” Nika asked. This was the sort of ship where “not long” was probably two years. Surely Josune would have noticed something about Roystan’s eating habits in that time.

  “Six weeks.”

  That short. “You’re very comfortable with a captain you’ve only known six weeks.”

  Josune smiled. “Comfortable.” It was soft, affectionate. “That’s what he is. But not just comfortable, Nika. He’s competent. He does what needs to be done, things other people only think about, might even balk at.”

  “Such as?”

  Josune smiled again. “He’s practical. He’s full of surprises. He hoards obscure information that nobody thinks about.”

  Her non-answer was an answer itself. Roystan’s choice to ignore Banjo when they’d first met at Snow’s studio showed how practical he could be.

  “Jacques feeds him well.”

  “We’re not complaining.”

  Yet while everyone else on ship showed the effects of all that food, Roystan himself looked malnourished. And he’d been treated with hu-skin for blaster burns, when there were cheaper and more effective methods.

  Skin that didn’t take. A stomach that didn’t digest well, especially after stress.

  Nika didn’t like the conclusions she was drawing.

  A botched mod.

  Sometime in the past, Roystan had gone into a modder’s studio and come out damaged.

  24

  JOSUNE ARRIOLA

  The plasma cannon hadn’t been damaged, which was a tribute to Roystan and Snow’s foresight in not turning it on until the last minute, for it was the first thing an enemy aimed for. Unfortunately, that was the only thing that was okay.

  “The area surrounding the cannon is so brittle that if we fire it the housing will shatter,” Josune reported to Roystan. “It will be the last shot we make with it.”

  “Told you we didn’t need another hole in the ship,” Carlos muttered.

  “Put a patch over the area,” Roystan said.

  Josune agreed, although she would have liked more than a one-shot working cannon. What other weapons did they have?

  Three havoc bombs.

  A two-shot cannon was better than one, and if she put a bomb on the outside of the cannon she could send it on its way fast, using the handheld. No one would know it was coming.

  Provided they didn’t fire the cannon before she sent the bomb on its way.

 
With Carlos’s help, she made up a quick, airtight panel from what they had in the workshop. They’d need a second one for the outside.

  Roystan and Snow put it up, and she was glad of that. But she insisted on inspecting the outside damage herself. She had to, unless she asked Roystan to set the bomb.

  He’d say no.

  “You can’t,” Roystan said. “You’ve cracked ribs, a sprained ankle, and you’ve just got your eye back.”

  “Plus, you’ve some sort of flaking disease,” Carlos said. “You’re a walking hospital case.”

  “Her healing was incomplete,” Snow said repressively, with a side glare at Nika. “She was brought out early. Something no registered modder would do to a client.”

  “I’m fine.” Josune’s ribs hurt, but she didn’t plan to sit around and wait to be attacked.

  Roystan looked at Nika.

  The modder was watching Josune. Please let her understand she needed to do this.

  Nika nodded. “She’s not fine. As you say, she has cracked ribs and a sprained ankle. Both of which happened after the mod. The mod, that part’s fine.”

  “Botched mods,” Snow muttered. “She takes risks. Stupid risks. They both do.”

  “Josune’s mod is not botched.” Nika sounded exasperated. “Her skin will clear up in a week. Sooner if I could get her into a machine. Can’t you see the pattern coming out? Does it look botched? It’s the outer skin shedding. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize it as dead skin, because I will not believe you.”

  She turned to Roystan. “There are calculated risks and there are foolish ones. Josune knows her body’s limits.”

  Thank goodness for Nika, who understood.

  “If you’re worried about her flaking skin, don’t be. Snow still has things to learn.”

  Josune bit her lip at Snow’s outraged expression, determined not to laugh. She turned away, only to have Roystan corner her.

  He pitched his voice low. “Josune. You wouldn’t send a crew member out in your state.”

  She had to set the havoc bomb. Otherwise they had almost no weapons. “If I don’t go out again, I’ll lose my nerve.” She hated misleading him. She just hoped her words weren’t prophetic.

  Even Roystan couldn’t argue against that.

  * * *

  • • •

  A plasma cannon did a lot of damage. Luckily for The Road, this particular hit had melted the metal onto the ship frame, rather than sheared it off. Luckily also, they had good shielding. Otherwise they’d be looking at a massive hole right now.

  Unluckily for them, that made it harder to repair. She had planned on removing the damaged panel, replacing the wires underneath it, and welding the new one back over the old.

  “It’s a mess, Carlos,” Josune told the other engineer, through the link.

  “I didn’t need to hear that.”

  Snow swam past her with a grace that said he’d spent time in freefall before. She felt his boots click on to the outer hull. Good. He knew what he was doing.

  “The panels won’t work.” Better to spray the whole thing with foam and take the ship in for repair. Foam didn’t last long in the brittle cold of space. It was emergency use only. “You ever done a foam repair?” she asked Snow.

  “No,” Carlos said through the link. “Please tell me we can fix it, Josune.”

  “You won’t fix this without a shipyard and a workshop.”

  “How bad is it?” Roystan asked.

  “It’s slag. The panels have melded to the frame. You’re not going anywhere, except heading in for repairs.”

  She could imagine Roystan’s anguish from the silence. “I’ll get Snow to start spraying while I patch what electronics I can.” She surveyed the molten mess. “I’m not sure what we can rescue.”

  Snow was competent in a suit, but not confident around repairs. She should have brought Nika, who might not have worn a suit before but certainly knew her engineering.

  “What sort of training do you get repairing genemod machines, Snow?” She’d brought out two cameras to replace the ones they’d lost. She moved back to the nearest working camera to get a connection.

  “Training?” Snow looked up, his helmet a blank mask.

  “Fixing them. Modifying them. Nika has had some experience.”

  He went back to spraying foam. “That’s because she does things a legal modder wouldn’t.”

  Did he remember that Nika was listening to this conversation?

  Josune taped the camera down carefully. If she knocked against the slag, the metal would break off.

  “They teach you to call a technician,” Nika said, through the link.

  “As we should. We’re modders, not engineers.”

  Josune heard Nika’s sigh. “Snow. There are good and bad technicians, just as there are good and bad modders. What do you do if you get a bad one?”

  “Technician? Or modder?”

  “Both.”

  Snow sprayed foam with an intensity that said he didn’t like the question. Josune pointed out where the foam was thin. It was better to use too much foam than too little. Although it was a long time since she’d been on a ship where you had to count the cost of supplies.

  “A technician,” Snow said, eventually. “You find another one next time you’re on station.”

  “And the modder?”

  “You sue them.”

  Nika’s voice was soft, not meant for over the channel. “Did you sue your modder?”

  There was no answer, but she could only have been talking to Roystan. It was an interesting question to ask. As if she assumed automatically that Roystan would have needed to sue his modder at one time.

  “I’d be tempted to do it the other way around,” Nika said. “But you need to know how to fix things, Snow. How else will you know what the end mod will be?”

  “You do a design.”

  “You tell me a design will come out the same on your Netanyu as it will on a Songyan.”

  “Well, no. But it will be mostly the same.”

  “So you don’t need a Songyan, then. You can stick with the Netanyu.”

  “But a Songyan gives you more control.”

  “You said it didn’t make any difference.”

  “It has more outlets. It’s more precise. With a Songyan, you control flows down to fractions of a milliliter.”

  “You said it was all in the design.”

  Josune had a private bet with herself. By the time these two left The Road, Snow would be Nika’s apprentice. He was in everything but name now.

  “Nika, sometimes your work is only as good as your tools.”

  “Exactly,” Nika said. “Jacques might not have the best knives in the galaxy, but I bet he knows how to keep them sharp.”

  “My knives are the best in the galaxy.”

  Snow threw up his hands, knocking the canister. He had to swim after it to collect it. “What do Jacques’s knives have to do with it?”

  “They’re tools, Snow. You are only as good as the tools you have. You need to keep them honed. Not rely on someone else to do it. I bet Jacques doesn’t wait for someone else to sharpen his knives for him.”

  “Of course not. They’d be blunt.”

  Snow’s shrug was evident in the slight lift of his suit. His voice was a mutter. “I’d still get a technician to service my machine. Especially if I had a Songyan. If you service one of their machines yourself it goes out of warranty.”

  He sprayed more foam. Nothing came out of the canister. Empty.

  Josune’s first camera was ready. She pulled out the havoc bomb. “You ever use one of these, Snow?”

  He shook his head. But he recognized it, she could see that from the way he stilled.

  She clipped it to the front of the cannon and set the mechanism to target and release at an or
der from her handheld.

  “You’re insane. That’s . . . Why?”

  “Insurance. Don’t fire the cannon unless I say so. And make sure no one else does either.” She opened her link to Carlos. “Let’s test this camera, and then I’ll bring the panel back in. It’s useless. We need more foam.”

  “Sure. Camera panning now. Full control in engineering.”

  She hoped he wasn’t too concussed to check properly. “What about you, Roystan? Do you have full control from the bridge?”

  “Fine control here.” Then Roystan stopped, panned back, and zoomed in. A speck grew larger.

  “There’s a ship out there.”

  Carlos laughed. “Here? At the ass end of nowhere?” A pause. “You didn’t jump us into a shipping lane, did you, Roystan?”

  “No. I jumped to the Outer Pamirs. They have a cargo delivery twice a year.” A pause. “The next one’s due in two months, and we are where we’re meant to be.”

  Josune couldn’t see a ship yet, but she saw the dark space it made against the stars.

  “They’re not answering any messages,” Roystan said.

  If they were close enough for The Road to see, they were close enough to answer messages.

  “Salvage?” Carlos asked, but not in an enthusiastic way. “I mean. If they’re not answering.”

  Roystan’s cheery “We’re all allergic to salvage at the moment” cut through the awkwardness. “And how likely are we to come across two ships to salvage in the same week?”

  The Hassim hadn’t been a coincidence.

  “Especially inside legal space.”

  Legal space or not, this was an isolated sector, and if anything happened to them, there was no one around to witness it. Josune shivered. “Let’s get that foam, Snow. I want inside as fast as I can.”

  The view through the suit camera changed as Roystan switched away, onto another speck, and zoomed in.

  Josune really wanted the bioware she’d had before.

  “Another ship,” Roystan said.

  Carlos said, “If you’re seeing ships out here, Roystan, you’re seeing things.”

  But it was a ship. They’d run from two ships at Atalante. Now there were two, in a place no one expected to see ships. There were coincidences, and there was cause and effect.