Wastes of Space

by Darcy Town

  Tasanee took her gun out and checked that the safety was off. “I was the first kid in my family, but I’m a girl so they handed me over once they had a boy. I think I was five. I only have a few memories of being at a home.” She led Ravil down a path deeper into the field. Grass grew over their heads, trees and bushes rose up on either side. Every few meters, Ravil spotted concrete blocks, or rusted metal machines.

  Tasanee shifted the Russian part in her hand. “My first real clear memory is holding a wrench in the mechanics’ bunks. I was short even then, so I got assigned to work on the tiny parts. They used us kids to crawl into the small spaces.” She waved her gun around. “They had machines of course, but we were there to do quality checks. In order to do that, we had to know what wasn’t quality. I went through years of training: building, taking apart, and rebuilding ships. I dreamed about it at night, studied blueprints during the day. It was all I did. All that I know how to do.” She smirked. “I was about as clueless as you were about things like biology for a long time, so I know how you feel and don’t worry I don’t think you’re stupid.”

  Ravil hadn’t thought anyone would assume that. “Thanks I guess. I, uhm, had a childhood like yours too.”

  Tasanee nodded. “It shows. We child laborers can sense our own. The Americans just don’t get the concept.” The path curved and they ran into a piece of sheet metal leaning against a tree, it obscured the rest of the path. Tasanee looked back at Ravil. “Welcome to my workshop.”

  She pulled back the metal and waved Ravil through the hole. The ground descended steeply past the gate and Ravil had to hang onto tree roots to keep from sliding down the packed earth. At the bottom of the depression, the grass was stomped flat. Ravil steadied herself and looked up. Her mouth dropped open. “Whoa!”

  Tasanee’s workshop filled what had been the basement level of a half-constructed building. The upper story walls had fallen away, leaving a deep depression in the earth that was open to the elements. The space was covered by camouflage netting, hiding it from the air.

  “My hotrods.” Tasanee jumped down beside her. There were three completed ships and many others in stages of being built out. Scrap metal littered the ground. Trees and bushes grew out of the few bare spots of earth left. The rest of the hollow was set twenty feet into the ground; the netting above their heads crossed the area at what would have been street level.

  Ravil nodded appreciatively. “No one can see it from the air.”

  Tasanee nodded. “Not that anyone is looking, but no reason to invite trouble by being in plain sight, right?”

  Ravil walked up to one of the works in progress, a pilot’s chair, the webbing looked familiar. The cab was partially-built and the screens were in place, but it was open to the air on one side. Ravil looked to Tasanee. “May I?”

  Tasanee nodded. “These are all safe to sit on.” She waved towards the machines at the far end of the former basement. “That stuff is unsafe, but this should hold.” She thumped the seat and brushed dirt off. “Look familiar?”

  Ravil jumped on the seat. “It’s the cockpit of the tanker.”

  “Good job.” Tasanee nodded. “Yeah, she’s real sturdy too, just like the other one.”

  “You’ve stayed there, the water bottles were yours?” Ravil grabbed the flight controls and squeezed them.

  “Yeah.” Tasanee laughed a little. “Sometimes I sleep there when I want some time to myself. It reminds me of the old days.” She held up her ventilation part. “Want to see the Russian stuff?”

  Ravil nodded and hopped off the chair. They navigated around two Chinese cabs and passed spaceship guns the lengths of cars with rounds as large as Ravil’s hand. The pair reached a structure covered in a tarp. Tasanee pulled the tarp down. A red ship gleamed in the sunlight; it was a large cube. Ravil smiled. “It’s so bright!”

  Tasanee rapped her knuckles on the hull. “That’s why I keep it covered most of the time.” She pressed her thumb into the keypad near the door. It opened a few inches. Tasanee sighed and wrenched on the handle. “Damn fucking doors.”

  Ravil helped her. The door opened with an ear-piercing screech of metal on metal. Ravil rubbed her ears. Tasanee punched the surface. “No matter what I do that fucking door sticks. It’s the Russian parts. Their ships are sturdy as fucking hell, but too sturdy. They don’t even want to open.”

  Ravil smiled, remembering the blueprints she’d looked at. “They are thick, strong.”

  “That’s all they are, thick and strong. These pieces of crap are slow too, but they’ll take a damn good beating and still fly, only reason they had any sort of presence in the dark, you know. Besides that, they’re shit. Seriously, who makes cube shaped ships?”

  “Why do you work on it then?”

  Tasanee grinned and climbed inside. “For the challenge.”

  Ravil followed her in and shivered, the ship air was a cool sixty degrees compared to the eighty-degree weather outside. Dust kicked up as they stepped in. Tasanee pulled the door shut and lights flicked on. Ravil coughed and looked around. They stood inside one large compartment. “It’s a square inside too?”

  Tasanee nodded. “Boring as shit, add that to the list. But for something so stupid looking, the parts are hard to find, don’t like fitting together, and the instructions are in goddamn Russian gibber-scribble.” She smiled and pulled out a wall panel. She set it to the side and slipped into a crawl space. “So a challenge.”

  Ravil touched the wall panels, squares painted in various shades of red. She walked to the pilot’s chair and hopped up. She remembered this design, or at least one that was similar. She strapped herself into the chair and looked at the buttons and keys. Her eyes flicked up to the dim lights. “Is it powered?”

  “On minimum only, I only have a few generators and solar panels, just enough to turn the lights on when I want, keep the AC going for temperature control, and the games.” Tasanee’s legs hung out of the wall; she kicked her feet as she worked. “They can’t fly unless given more juice, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Ravil pressed a button, but nothing happened. She grabbed the lever that would activate manual flight controls. “What do you need to fly them?”

  “Fuel cells, but this brick will fly with solar power if you can believe it.” Tasanee sneezed and sent dust pluming around her head. “Fuel cells are hard to come by, I have some, enough to get them going, but they aren’t here.”

  Ravil pictured the darkened fourth floor. “You keep them in the house?”

  “Only safe place really.”

  Ravil opened her biology book to where she had left off, early adulthood. She traced the words with her fingers, picking up the language as she went. “Rat, what does cancer mean?”

  Tasanee hummed. “Isn’t there a glossary in that book?”

  “What is that?”

  “Flip to the back of the book, Ravil.”

  Ravil found the glossary. She broke into a smile. “Thanks!”

  Tasanee smiled from where she worked. “Sure thing. Hey, if you’re hungry smack the wall panel to your right, I keep candy in there.”

  Ravil hit the wall panel. It came open an inch. She leaned over and wrenched on it until she could get her arm in. She pulled out a chocolate bar. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Ravil peeled off the wrapper and ate while she read, switching between the glossary and the chapters of text. She found biology fascinating; she had no experience with this knowledge. Information of this kind on her species was restricted. There was no reason for Navigators to understand how their bodies worked.

  She stared at her arms, imagining the network of veins and nerves under her skin. She read about skin pigmentation and about this albino thing they kept calling her. There were inset tests for color blindness, she took them, she wasn't. She checked out her own vision by stepping away from the book and reading the descending numbers.

  She read for hours, coming to the end of the book and re-reading the chapters she
found the most challenging or fascinating. Tasanee left her alone a few times to go back for parts and pieces. When she came back with lunch, Ravil waved her over. She pointed to the text on drug addiction. “This is what Rake has?”

  Tasanee leaned over her shoulder and read the chapter heading. “Yeah.”

  Ravil’s face fell. “Why did he ever do that to himself?”

  Tasanee hopped up on the console. “He gave up.”

  “Why?”

  Tasanee handed Ravil a bottle of water. “Rake’s had some bad times in his life and he got to a point where the bad times outweighed the good. I don’t think he thought he had anything left to continue for. He didn’t see a point.”

  “But he has you guys.”

  “We weren’t enough and we had our own problems to deal with.” Tasanee chugged her water bottle. “No one noticed until he was into the junk already. He left the house and disappeared into the slums before we had a chance to do anything about it.”

  “How could you not notice?” She looked at the symptoms in the book. “It was noticeable to me.”

  Tasanee looked at her hands. “Rake’s a force, a presence, and he was able to put on a great show even when he was strung out. He’s an amazing faker when he wants to be and we thought he was all right.” She nodded. “You’ll see once he’s back to his real self.”

  “Mica said he came here to lose himself.”

  “I didn’t know him before the Space Silence, but Kat said he came here to run away. I think he decided to die after he realized that running didn’t change anything. He hadn’t changed, and maybe he decided it was too much effort to change, or I guess he didn’t think he could. Or more depressing, he didn’t think he should, that he deserved this.” Tasanee jumped off the console. “Come on. We should take a break.”

  Ravil followed her out of the ship. “What now?”

  “You’ll see.” Tasanee headed deeper amongst the ships. She stopped at a matte black vessel that looked like a van-sized spear point. She ran her hands across the side. “US Defender A Class Fighter Jet.” She rapped on the metal. “Rake’s.”

  Ravil touched it. “His actual ship?”

  “No, but it’s the same model.” Tasanee pressed her fingers into an indent in the hull. It beeped and a door slid back. She jumped in. “All aboard!”

  Ravil climbed in after her. There was barely any room inside. Tasanee slid into the far seat and patted the one next to her. Ravil leaned against Tasanee’s chair as the door slid shut. A row of white lights came on at their feet. Ravil grinned and settled in her seat. “This is a better ship than the red one.”

  “This ship is sex.” Tasanee grabbed the flight controls. “This baby can fight atmosphere to space, they can land on their own, refuel in the air, and fuck shit up.”

  Ravil looked at the controls in front of her. “Yours are the pilots?”

  Tasanee nodded. “Yeah, you are the gunner.”

  Ravil grabbed the controls and squeezed, a clicking sound filled the cab. She released the controls and looked around. Two screens lit up blue. Ravil gaped. “What is it?”

  Tasanee pushed on the steering controls. “Wake up, baby.”

  The screen changed to show a runway. Ravil stared; the graphics were clear and realistic. “What is this?”

  “Training program, I found it and loaded it on the ship.” She smiled. “Adjust your seat.”

  Ravil found the buttons that moved the seat and shifted positions until she was comfortably within reach of her controls. She looked up. “Now what?”

  “Now we’re going to kill some Chinese.” Tasanee pressed another button and started the training module. The ship rumbled as sound from the speakers filled the cabin. Ravil gaped and grinned as the seats tilted back.

  Tasanee bounced in her seat. “Unfortunately this isn’t a simulator so we don’t get to go upside down, but I modified the chairs to do a bit of jostling. If we get hit, we’ll bounce.”

  Ravil strapped herself into the seat and stared at the screen. “When do I start firing?”

  “As soon as you see anything that doesn’t look like us.”

  Ravil got her hands ready at the console. “Does it really look like this?”

  Tasanee nodded. “That screen can show what’s really out there, a video, vectors, heat, whatever the pilot feels like it should display, you can even watch X-Rays if you feel like it.”

  Ravil nodded and pressed the buttons in front of her. Her screen changed to show distances, numbers, things she recognized. A red blip flashed on it.

  Tasanee pointed. “Incoming.”

  Ravil rolled the controls and moved the guns, feeling them out. They took a hit and the seats bounced. The lights in the cabin changed to red. Ravil fired a short burst, tracking how fast the ammunition moved, the range. She nodded and wrenched on the controls, she fired, and the red blip disappeared.

  Tasanee grinned. “Nice.”

  Ravil smiled. “Do the controls work this way when you’re actually in space?”

  “Oh yeah, this is a real training program, it’s not fucking around.” Tasanee leaned and turned them to the right so that they looked down at Earth. “It’s set up to be random, so I never know where the attack is going to come from.”

  The computer beeped and Ravil got a message on her screen. “Two, no uhm that number is four, four incoming, behind.”

  Tasanee whipped them around. Ravil locked in on the first and fired. Tasanee whooped and dove as they came under fire. The seats bounced. “Sorry, I’m not the best pilot in the world. Rake would rock this, so would Kat.”

  “Do they play too?”

  “Kat doesn’t like to, says it reminds her too much of the Corps. Rake doesn’t know about this, I started building it after he left.” She flipped them upside down. “He’d probably love it.”

  Ravil fired as ships came within sight. “Is there a flight training program, one without the fighters?”

  “Yeah, why, you want to learn to fly?”

  “No, I just want to see the diagnostics of a regular flight.” She read the numbers on her screen. “Power, speed, maneuverability, that kind of thing.”

  “You won’t find that boring?”

  “Not at all!” Ravil focused. This would be good practice if she ever flew with Rake. Though when would she ever get to do that? She turned back to the screen. She had no reason to get her hopes up. Rake had promised her a lot, but it had been when she was ill; he’d only said it to keep her alive.

  Ravil ignored the growing disappointment in her chest. She would learn how to do this, if only because she would understand what Rake knew just a bit more. Navigators were supposed to be familiar with the craft of their pilot. She forced a smile. “I’d like to see what you can do.”

  Tasanee smirked. “I’m going to crash us into the moon.”

  “That too would be a learning experience.”

  “True.” Tasanee punched in a series of numbers and started them on a separate program. Ravil sat back and watched Tasanee go through the takeoff sequence. She ran Ravil through a flight in the atmosphere, showing her the transition to space. Ravil kept her eyes glued on her own screen. She watched Tasanee soar, examined the fuel and power gauges.

  She played with her monitor settings while she thought about her situation. She had assumed Rake would have left her back at the tanker, but he hadn’t, she’d been wrong. He had saved her, cared enough about her to bring her here to these people. He’d done something terrible to get her medicine and everyone seemed to think he was giving up needles for her. But that didn’t mean he was willing to fly into space and join a war he wasn’t a part of or even knew existed. Even she knew that was wishing for too much.

  Tasanee looked over. “What’s wrong?”

  Ravil leaned back in her seat. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “About what?”

  “Rake.” Ravil closed her eyes. “Or any of this.”

  Tasanee put them on autopilot and let go of the controls. “Yo
u have feelings for him or something?”

  Ravil was confused and then she blushed. “I…I suppose so.” That was far down on her list of worries. She hadn’t given it a thought since she had gotten up.

  Tasanee rubbed her neck. “Well that’s a bit prickly ain’t it?”

  “Because of my age?”

  “Fuck your age, I don’t care how old you are. It’s because of Rake.”

  Ravil frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “As long as I’ve known him, Rake hasn’t been with anyone.”

  “But the money making.”

  Tasanee cut her off. “That ain’t the same, if it was I would be kicking Kat’s ass up and down the block right now.” She smiled. “Ravil, you got to get it out of your head that love and sex are connected.”

  Ravil nodded slowly. “The desire for sex cannot manifest without the emotional feeling. When it does happen it’s near uncontrollable between partners, a need…” She trailed off, aware of how strange that probably sounded.

  Tasanee smiled. “That sounds hot.”

  Ravil blushed. “I guess. Where I am from, love and mating do not happen one without the other, to do so is not possible for my kind.”

  Tasanee grinned. “The albino kind? Or the Swedish kind?”

  Ravil gaped. “I…uh...”

  Tasanee held up her hand. “You don’t need to tell me about your kind, I’m not like Keto. If you want to be weird, go ahead and be weird and secretive.”

  Ravil nodded. “Can we play more of this and not talk about it?”

  Tasanee nodded. “Let’s switch. You should learn how to fly so that you can challenge Rake to a game when he gets back. He’s rusty, but if you beat him he’d be impressed.”

  “Okay, why not.” They switched places and got strapped in. Ravil held the controls. “My kind never pilots.”

  “Well first time for everything. Ready?”

  “Ready.” Ravil nodded. Tasanee reset the program. Ravil promptly crashed them into a building on takeoff.

  Tasanee snorted. “Maybe I should start you in the air. Takeoff and landings are the hardest parts.”

  The screen changed and Ravil took control of the ship in the air. She moved the controls and smiled as the seats leaned, the screen changed to show the sky, the ground, clouds. She took the ship into deep space and smiled as stars appeared. For a moment, she lost herself in the image, remembering what it looked like out there. She sighed, content.