by Tom Jordan
“It’s not a total loss for you, Saito.” He sounded almost sad, rather than his usual smug self. “Despite it being out of your control, you should view this as a business transaction. I’ve left you Rebel Star. It’s my gift to you. You can sell it, if you wish.”
Tommy hung his head in his hands, shaking it back and forth in disbelief, then scrunched up his face and raised his voice. “How is that fair? You stole Audacity and I lost Gliese Voyager. I nearly died!”
The hologram Marco opened his mouth to speak, but Jade interjected before he could.
“I trusted you and joined the team based on your word. And it meant nothing! Nothing!” Her fists balled at her sides. She screamed with a fury she’d never known before. “This was my future!”
Marco’s tinny, digitized voice came out of the cockpit’s speakers. “Nothing lasts forever, Saito. Enjoy your ship’s upgrades and the time we had together. Plan your next move. You’re all capable pilots.” Henning stared at the hologram with dead eyes.
“You used me!” Jade shouted.
“I don’t see it that way. What we shared was very nice. I enjoyed myself a lot, and I know you did too. More than once.” The hologram Marco smirked.
Jade’s entire face flushed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was in poor taste.”
“You didn’t care about me at all!” She leaned forward and pointed a finger at Henning while still looking at the hologram. “You’ll take away Henning’s ship from him and his family, take away all his work? Do you have any grasp of what the three of us went through for this mission? Did you really care about any of us?”
Tommy looked down at the wrist computer and the ship’s holomap.
“Don’t waste your time tracking the ship,” Marco said. “I disabled that. Sorry, Tommy. I know you were ready to pat yourself on the back for that one.”
Tommy dropped his arms to his sides. “I know you aren’t doing this on your own,” he said through gritted teeth. “I know you, man. If this is just about money, well, you'd be making more with us in the long run. That means you received a new, higher offer. So who are you working with? Who paid you to betray us?” Jade stared at Tommy. It completely unlike him to direct an accusation at someone, especially Marco.
Marco paused, contemplating his answer. He continued deflecting Tommy’s questions, but Jade stopped listening.
She closed her eyes and focused inward on the blackness in her mind. Why were these terrible things happening to her? Every step she took to make things better, without exception, blew up in her face. Was she just a failure as a pilot and a person?
She drew a deep breath, visualizing her emotions as a thing—a container, a box, the only thing existing in the blackness behind her eyes. She distanced herself, taking a mental step to the side. She moved away from the stab of pain over being manipulated by Marco into a physical relationship, her embarrassment over Marco referencing their sex in front of Tommy and Henning, and the shocking theft of Henning’s ship, their shared cargo, and their hope for the future.
Marco’s behavior and choices were vile. Coldhearted. They were beyond forgiveness, but even worse was how unnecessary they were. Marco could have stayed with the team and continued to make money. A new realization hit her with a shock like being dropped into icy water—Tommy had been right when he’d tried to warn her about Marco. Hairs lifted on her arms and neck. He’d tried to warn her, and she hadn’t listened.
She put all these thoughts in the box with her feelings, locking them away for the moment, and something was left behind—a spark, and an inner core of strength hidden behind everything else.
Jade latched onto that strength. She hadn’t lost her ship, like Tommy, or her future the way Henning had, so she had to be strong for them as well as herself. She had to chart a course through this struggle. Misfortune had pounded her without relenting, but refused to give in to hopelessness.
And she didn’t have to sit here and listen to Marco spit his bullshit at them anymore.
She took one more breath to stabilize herself and opened her eyes. “Hey, Marco,” Jade said, interrupting his sentence. “Fuck you.”
She leaned over and slapped a button to end the transmission. His hologram winked out, and the matrix of green dots dispersed like a cloud of flies.
Chapter 21
Jade looked out the window at the repair robots. They worked to fix the ship, unfeeling and uncaring, not knowing the magnitude of the betrayal and crushed lives a few meters away.
“Okay, Tommy, what can you tell me?”
He was sitting in the same position as before. Henning sat next to him, slumped over, despondent. Tommy looked up. “What?”
“I need options, Flight Commander. We need to make our next move. Right now. We’re getting that crate and handing in the bounty.”
Tommy let out a slow, forlorn sigh. “What can I do? He disabled the tracker,” he said, gesturing to the wrist computer. “He’s got us shut down. We’re beat.”
Jade stepped across the small cockpit to Tommy. She seized his shirt and raised him out of the seat. His eyes went wide.
She pulled him into a hug, leaned in close to his ear, and whispered, “Listen to me. I know you’ve always been there for me. Even when we were apart, I know you cared. I need you to be there for yourself now, and for Henning. I have it bad, but you have it worse than me, and Henning has it worse than either of us. He needs our help, too. We’re still a team.”
“Still a team,” he whispered, nodding.
“We can either decide to lie down and give up,” she said, “or throw ourselves out the airlock or whatever, or we can move forward and break free of this.” She released him.
“Okay,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Okay. Let me think.” He snapped his fingers and looked into her eyes. “The crate!”
Jade rolled her hand in a circle, prompting him to continue.
“Well, when I was checking out the crate while you were…when you left with Marco, I was able to inject a monitoring program into its operating system.” He held up his arms, pointing at the wrist computer. “It should be sending status updates over the web back to me.”
Tommy tapped at the screen. “I should be able to…” He paused, frowning. “Yes. Right here! It’s two systems away. We can at least go to its last check-in, if I can compare its location signal to stations or bodies there…”
Tommy continued to murmur to himself. He sat back in the chair and swung it to face holomenus he loaded with the switches on the chair’s arm.
“No,” Henning muttered. “No more.”
Jade turned toward him, unsure whether she’d heard him correctly. “What?”
“Yep. I’m done.” He put a hand on the deck and rose slowly, looking cold and awkward wearing his formfitting boxer briefs and single sock. He tossed Jade’s blanket to the floor.
“What do you mean?” asked Tommy, craning his neck around. Jade wasn’t making any sense of this, and apparently, neither was Tommy.
Henning rubbed his hands together, clearing them of dust and soot that were on the deck plating from the atmosphere on Balenos A. He was staring at the maintenance robots—which had finished affixing the new cockpit window and were now skittering away—as though they had some special meaning or significance to him.
“I’ve had enough. How deep into this shit pile do I have to go before I learn? I’m out.”
He turned around, walked down the corridor, slapped the controls to lower the ramp, and walked down into the hangar bay. Tommy and Jade looked to each other, then both rushed after him. Jade leaned against the hull next to the controls at the top of the ramp, and Tommy shuffled after Henning.
“Please don’t leave,” Tommy said. The tone of his voice, full of sorrow, melted her heart. Tommy was so full of enthusiasm and innocence that Jade often saw him as a big kid, and right now it seemed like that kid’s big brother was abandoning him.
Henning looked back for a brief moment, a flat expre
ssion in his eyes. He didn’t stop walking, and from Jade’s elevated viewpoint she could see that he was making a straight line for Marco’s ship, Rebel Star.
Tommy walked after him, trying to keep up, gesturing and pleading with him not to leave. Henning continued to walk unfazed. Jade’s experience with him led her to conclude that he wasn’t the kind of man to change his mind once he’d settled on something.
She sighed. It appeared the team was about to go down to two.
Henning reached Rebel Star, raised a muscled arm up to a handle on the exterior hull, and pulled himself into the ship’s fighter-style cockpit, not even using the nearby wheeled metal staircase intended for the purpose. He swung his legs over into the pit, then said something to Tommy as the ship’s canopy began to lower.
Tommy took a step back as Rebel Star’s thruster turbines spun up. Landing and running lights flicked on in sequence, casting a bright luminescence in the area around the sleek one-man ship. Less than a minute later, Henning lifted Rebel Star off the hangar deck and swirled around in a tight arc. He hovered for a moment, the ship’s wing piercing a floating hologram screen. The myriad colors flashing in the hangar reflected off the ship’s gleaming hull.
Henning looked at Tommy, standing down on the hangar floor below, and then at Jade leaning in the entrance of her ship. She was crushed that Henning was abandoning the team right now, but what would she do if she was in his place? Would she feel any differently? She raised a hand and wished him a silent farewell, hoping dearly to see him again under better circumstances.
Henning blasted Rebel Star down the docking corridor and through an atmosphere retention field. Maintenance bots and equipment racks scattered throughout the bay went tumbling over from the force of the ship’s thrusters. A freighter that had been slowly moving through the retention field swerved and scraped the hangar ceiling as Henning cut in front of its bow. Sparks showered down from the point of contact and a deafening squeal of metal on metal echoed across the open space.
Turret weapons—mounted to the station just outside of the force field—deployed and rotated, firing bright bursts after Rebel Star, but the ship was too fast and nimble for them to connect. Henning pushed into open space, snapped a sharp starboard turn, curving away from Keillor and out of Jade’s sight.
Jade sat on Ghost’s deck, one leg hanging down the landing ramp, and watched Tommy standing alone in the middle of the hangar. She grasped her chin and analyzed the situation. She had to stay cool if she was to find a way out of this mess. The first priority, she reasoned, had to be to help Tommy. He’d be distraught over what had happened with Marco, and now Henning. His foundation had been pulled out from under him. After all, Jade was new to the team. Even though she and Tommy had a past, Tommy had been flying with Marco and Henning for some time, and had been through a lot with them. Now Tommy’s ship, friends, and life were gone. Except for her.
She had to treat him gently, but also get the two of them moving if they wanted any shot at getting back the crate. And they had to, if Tommy was going to be able to afford a new ship and make any kind of future for himself.
It seemed she was almost back to square one. She had one ship, an abundance of debt, and no money. But she had Tommy.
Was she crazy? How would they actually get this crate back? They could only sell it if it hadn’t been opened, and they had little time left. The timer had been at seventeen hours before she left for the hotel with Marco. She had spent a long time…with him, and had fallen asleep after. She checked the screen atop the ramp controls and found that over six hours had passed since then.
Would they be able to find Marco? How many people was he working with? Could they subdue their targets and somehow load the crate onto her ship? Would that be out in space, or would they intercept him somewhere on a moon, planet, or space station where the use of force would be illegal? Would Marco be meeting a buyer who would resent anyone messing with their new property? These were all unknowns. Variables. Dangers.
Did they have any chance at all? Either way, it didn’t matter. She’d worked too hard and been in too much danger to lose the crate. Hell, she’d murdered people to get this far. Recovering that cargo container and turning in its criminal owner would justify everything she and Tommy had been through.
It to make things right for Tommy and to get the money she was owed. She was all in right now. This was it.
She fished her earpiece out of her pocket and fitted it snugly into her ear. “Tommy.”
He turned around, looking at her from across the hangar. “Yeah, Jade?”
“Let’s get ready to go. We’re leaving.”
“Oh. Okay. What’s our plan? Like, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going after the crate. You said you had tracking data, right?” She stood up and crossed her arms, leaning back against the bulkhead at the top of the ramp. She was truly the captain now, whatever that was worth.
Jade looked out over the ships hunkered against the hangar floor, the bright floodlight beams cutting through the large space, and the flashing lights from video advertisements playing off the ship hulls.
Tommy paced back toward Ghost of Jupiter, his dark flight suit making his silhouette stand out against the brightly lit hangar floor. “I have some locations but can only make an educated guess about where they’re going.”
She glanced up at the holographic advertisements. “We’ll start with that. I’m suiting up.”
“Okay,” Tommy said. His usual enthusiasm was notably absent from his voice, but Jade knew it would return. They both needed time to heal, to find balance.
Jade headed back into her cabin and sealed the door behind her. She stripped off her pants, tank top, and boots and then grabbed her flight suit out of her shore-leave bag, pulling the tight suit up and over her body. The memory of Marco removing it mere hours before came to her unbidden, making the flight suit seemed corrupted, foreign somehow. It was an old friend. She’d made the mistake, not the suit, and she decided not to allow her perception of it to be tainted.
Jade cycled the door open. She turned the corner and pulled the zipper up her stomach and chest. Tommy was shuffling down the corridor and looked up, then averted his eyes shyly.
Jade fastened the suit’s upper straps, flexed her fingers in the gloves, and put a hand on her hip. “Are you ready for this?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re down to one ship. With Henning gone, what chance do we have?”
Jade stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder. She kept her back straight, attempting to project confidence.
“Tommy, we can do this.” She hoped she sounded more sure than she felt. “Nothing’s changed. We have a crate that will make us a ton of money and solve all our problems. It just needs us to come get it.”
Tommy looked unconvinced, so she continued, “We can buy you any ship you want with that reward.” She pointed out to the hangar. “You want an XFX? We’ll get one. Or we can upgrade Ghost. He can be ours together. We’ll be partners and do any kind of work we feel like. We just have to move forward and take the obstacles one at a time. Let’s do it together.”
He looked up. “You would do that?”
Jade nodded and took a deep breath, fearing the answer to the question she was about to ask. She held her hand up for him to grab. “Are you with me?”
Not even a second passed before Tommy slapped his hand into hers. He hugged her with the other hand, and she did the same, patting his back.
Jade decided it might help Tommy’s morale to get him involved and busy. “Okay, Flight Commander. Let’s hit the preflight checks. Want to get us started?”
“Aye, Captain,” Tommy said. He flipped switches to change up the holos and begin the launch process.
The maintenance robots that’d repaired the canopy had folded themselves into compact shapes that dangled from a standing frame on the hangar floor. They appeared to each be centered over
a wireless charging port. Racked up as they were, they looked ready to be moved to a new location.
Their attention was drawn to a flashing notice in their information windows, one in each seat’s field of view. It read NOTICE: MAGNETIC LOCKS ENGAGED - LEGAL INVESTIGATION IN PROGRESS - DEPARTURE FROM KEILLOR DOCK FACILITY FORBIDDEN. It repeated the message in a variety of languages.
“What the hell is this?” Jade asked. She scrunched up her face in confusion. “What’s going on here? We’re detained?”
“Hmm. Looks that way,” Tommy said.
Jade fought her hardest to stay cool. She lowered her head to her fingertips, shaking it side to side. “I cannot catch a break,” she breathed.
“What was that?” Tommy asked. He looked expectantly at her, awaiting some insight to what their next move would be.
She raised her head back up and put on as neutral a face as she could muster. She had sworn to inspire confidence and trust in Tommy, and to find a way to make this work for both of them.
“Nothing. What can you tell me about these magnetic locks? How strong are they?”
He looked over, one eyebrow raised. “You’re thinking of breaking out of here?”
She browsed her holographic information menus, nodding vigorously. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. She leaned over her right-side armrest toward Tommy’s seat two meters away. “Look, I think those guns are for keeping people out, not to prevent them from leaving. That’s what clamps are for. Remember when we came in, and they hassled us about the life-support field? They were watching for smuggling. I’ll bet they don’t care nearly as much about who’s leaving. Henning was shot at when he blasted out of here, but he got away just fine. I think it’ll be easier evading their weapons going out than coming in.”
“You think?”
She shrugged, still smiling. “I’m fairly confident.”
Tommy considered it a minute. “It makes sense. It’s also scary. You’re scary.”
“Let’s get going. Time to make our own destiny. Run that preflight as fast as you can. I may need full thrusters if this doesn’t work.”