by Jason Letts
“You can do this. If you make it urgent enough, the monitor will leave without logging off, especially if you find an older one. As soon as you hit send, run back to bay thirty-seven.”
Bailor’s shoulders and back seemed to tense up, but he closed his eyes, nodded, and took a deep breath.
“I’m ready. I knew it was only a matter of time before we needed to do something more than wander into ill-attended ships,” Bailor said in his high, squeaky voice.
“Great. That should be enough to clear everyone out around the ship. The way in is through the front landing pad column, which is about four meters high and leads to the undercarriage, where…”
“And who’s going to do that?”
“What?” Rion said, annoyed that his train of thought had been broken.
“If you’re working the pilot and I’m off at one of the terminals, who is going to enter the ship?” Bailor asked.
It took Rion a second to realize he’d overlooked one of their most basic requirements. This was going to have to be a three-man job.
“Someone who can climb four meters along a tight, enclosed shaft, then worm through the undercarriage to the rear where there’s a panel connecting to the lavatory on the main level,” he said.
Rion had an idea about who they would need to do that. Without another word, they climbed out of the drainage basin and began hustling down the tunnel.
“Where are you going?” Bailor asked, out of breath.
“To find the girl.”
“Do you think she would do it?”
“I don’t know.”
There were plenty of reasons to be reluctant about including the new girl in their plans. They had no reason to trust her, she might not be as talented as she let on, and she might leave behind another mess. But Rion had a hunch that she was the only one who could snake up that slim shaft. Wud was too big for it, and the other boys had turned their backs on him too quickly for a chance at something like this. That reduced his available resources to her, if he could find her.
Rion and Bailor scoured every nook and hiding place in the spaceport that they could imagine, turning up nothing more than the odd homeless person. The clock was ticking, and although even simple repairs on a big ship like the Star Yacht took time, they couldn’t waste much on this.
“Maybe she’s really gone for good now,” Bailor said. His cheeks had reddened and he was starting to lag behind.
“No, she’s here somewhere. Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. If I was her, more or less oblivious to the dangers and caring little about what other people thought, where would I go?”
The answer struck him, and he turned around on the spot. They’d been looking in all of the wrong places. They headed down a larger tunnel leading toward the middle of the spaceport. He felt Bailor’s hand close around his arm near the elbow.
“It’s going to be OK. Act naturally and keep your eyes down.”
The spaceport’s main lounge was a sprawling expanse of screens directed at groups of plastic chairs fixed to the tile floor. Windows along the roof gave excellent vision of all of the ships coming and going. At least a thousand people were milling about, many waiting for public transportation. More than once Rion had considered stealing enough charges and buying a ticket to anywhere, but there was no guarantee things would be better for him at any of the other stations or planets. He gave up on the idea of leaving unless it was under his own power long ago and never went near the lounge.
But the girl had to be in here.
They canvassed section after section until they spotted her parked in a chair along one of the front rows, her head slumped to the side and her legs dangling onto the floor. She looked bored out of her mind. When she saw them coming toward her, she blinked a few times, sat up, and glanced at the nearest tunnel. Rion prayed he wouldn’t have to chase her.
Fortunately, no one else was seated in her immediate area, and the boys took seats next to her.
“Did you miss me?” she asked.
“No, I need you,” Rion said, fumbling with how to best pitch his case.
“That’s kind of the same thing, but you can’t have me.”
“Are you sure? We’re looking at breaking into a Star Yacht. Have you ever heard of one of those? It’s as grand as it sounds. The thing is, it’s a three-man job.”
“Sounds like I can’t help you then, and neither can you two for that matter,” she said.
Rion exhaled through his nose.
“It’s a three-person job,” he corrected himself. “We need you to use your climbing skills to get up one of the landing pad columns to get inside.”
“Now that you’ve told me how to get in, why don’t I go and do it myself?” she asked. For the most part she was staring at the screen above them, barely acknowledging them.
“Because there are people inside and outside of the ship. We clear them out, you get inside.”
“And what’s in it for me?”
Rion didn’t hesitate.
“A third of whatever you can get your hands on. These people are stupid rich. Jewels, charges, you name it. Whatever you can carry out,” he said, but as soon as he said it he could see he hadn’t persuaded her. Instead of a twinkle of excitement in her eyes, the glaze over them only increased.
“No, goodbye,” she said.
She didn’t budge, but neither did the two boys, who glanced at each other. Bailor shrugged his shoulders; he was a smart kid and stronger than his size let on but just didn’t have the knack for figuring these things out. Rion dug deep in his mind to try to think what else might appeal to her that this job could offer. If a dirt poor girl couldn’t be enticed by riches, what would it take? Rion surmised that in her mind she wasn’t poor at all.
“No one’s ever gotten into one of these Star Yachts before. It’s next to impossible,” he said. Her eyes drifted toward him. It was enough to pounce on. “One boy tried to break into one and was shot on sight. I’ve got a foolproof plan, but we’ve got to start moving now.”
Some of it was embellishment. He’d seen a boy shot but he wasn’t trying to infiltrate one of these ships. The effect of his claims was enough to establish credibility. The foggy stupor lifted from her eyes. For a second he imagined she was a glory seeker, but there was something else to it.
“I work alone,” she said, still reluctant.
“You will be alone,” Rion countered quickly. “I’ll give you the signal to move in, then it’s up to you to scale the tall landing shaft, something no one else on the planet could do. But if you could climb that wall, this should be a piece of cream stack. At the end of it, you’ll stand alone as the one person to illicitly enter a Star Yacht.”
His mind coalesced around the idea that she wanted to be unique, or more talented than anyone else. It wasn’t possible to know for sure how close he was to the mark, but what he was saying worked regardless.
She looked at him hard, as if she were trying to see into his soul.
“Lead the way.”
Scarcely an hour passed by the time Rion, Bailor, and the girl who refused to give her name began to execute their plot to rob the Star Yacht. They grouped at the corner of two intersecting tunnels. In the distance was a spaceport monitoring post in one of its least-trafficked stretches. An old man, rickety but armed, punched buttons into the terminal as he performed his duties.
Bailor’s hands twitched as he stared.
“Blurt out one lie, send out one message,” Rion said, trying to boil down his responsibilities.
The girl had a different tact.
“Don’t worry if you screw up and he shoots you. I’ll still go in anyway,” she said.
“I’m not going to make a mistake. I’ve spent so much time eyeing these machines that I could use their operating system blindfolded,” Bailor said.
Rion felt relieved at his friend’s sudden influx of confidence and wasn’t going to wait for it to burst.
“Go get ’em, Bailor the beast,” Rion said, giving
him a shove.
Rion and the girl started running along one of the corridors before Bailor had a chance to look back. While it was nice that she was comfortable breaking in even if the owners were inside the ship’s cabin, he sure didn’t want to be there if she got caught because Bailor couldn’t get them away. Chatting up the pilot with engine talk wasn’t going to cover him if another person of similar age got apprehended. They’d both be ejected during takeoff.
It was a fair distance to the yacht’s docking bay, and by the time they arrived Bailor had probably already either succeeded or failed. They’d only know if the owners got out and went for the colony. They huddled for a moment behind the cleaning cart, and Rion glanced at the girl and wondered what would be proper to say.
The look on her face told him that a pep talk would be met with something on the order of a punch in the stomach. Without so much as a nod, he turned and walked toward the ship, where the pilot and a dozen tools were underneath. He took a deep breath and tried to hide that he felt all of the nerves that Bailor displayed. The overalls and the grease he’d smeared on his hands suddenly seemed like a pitiful attempt at a disguise. If another chance came along, he’d find a way to do better.
The pilot spotted him, squinted, and paused his wrenching.
“Let me guess. Bad converter modules,” Rion said.
“Actually, it’s the auxiliary intake valve, but I’m having a devil of a time getting to it. I’m probably going to have to remove some of these dampener tubes.”
The proper method for fixing anything was beyond him, but he was going to have to take a stab at bluffing his way through, at least until he knew if the owners would leave and it was safe to send the signal.
“I’m training with the engineering corps and they sent me down here to give you a hand. Would it help if I took a look?”
The pilot grimaced, probably put off by being offered help by someone a third his age.
“I got it, kid. You can run along.”
“Can I at least watch, please? If I go back so soon, they’ll know I didn’t do anything. They might think I blew it off altogether and throw me out of the program,” Rion said, adding a little whine to his tone.
“Fine. But stay out of my way,” the pilot said, returning his attention to the exposed section below the engine. Rion took up position on one side where he could get a good look at both the exit tunnel where the girl was stationed and the raised entryway ramp.
He spent ten minutes watching and wondering if anything would happen. On more than one occasion he heard noises coming from inside the ship, but the ramp didn’t budge. The pilot managed to get to the broken part in that time and would have it fixed before long. A few more minutes passed and Rion wondered if getting himself out was the best course of action. That’s when the ramp began to descend.
The man in white, a woman of tan skin, and two crew members exited the ship and proceeded to walk directly for the terminal tunnel. A jazzed feeling overcame Rion as he realized that Bailor had succeeded and they’d have their shot at getting in. That nervous goof had done it!
Now it was Rion’s turn.
Once they were out of sight and the ramp returned to its upright position, he stepped closer to the pilot from the rear of the ship.
“Are you sure there’s not a problem with the converter module? They always seem to go bad on these boats. If you look closely you can see that it’s starting to wear. They have a tendency to overheat on and that’s what’s causing the discoloration,” Rion said, really trying to sell it.
The pilot glanced over and hummed before going back to the intake valve, which had been repaired and reinstalled. All that was left was replacing everything that had been removed to gain access to it.
“I’m sure it’ll hold out a little longer.”
Rion had to think fast, which proved awfully difficult when he glanced at the tunnel and saw the girl standing in open view at the end of it.
“That doesn’t sound wise to me. Those things can go in a snap, leave you stranded out in the middle of space waiting for a tow. Disrupting plans and throwing you off schedule is just the beginning of it. I’ve heard of more than one mechanic lose their job because of it. We recommend these get replaced every year. Has that one ever been changed? I can show you right where to get a replacement. It’s not far.”
He instilled enough doubt in the pilot to make him think twice about ignoring the issue. Once the pilot stuck his head back in to take a second look, Rion decided to give the signal, lowering his fist from in front of his face to over his chest. He’d barely lifted his arm before the girl began moving forward. Despite her swift movement, she didn’t make a sound.
“Maybe you’re right, let’s go take…”
“Did you get a good look at the rear nut while you were up there? That can be a real warning sign and might need to be replaced as well. It only takes a second and costs almost nothing.”
Rion’s relief that he kept the pilot’s attention diverted fizzled when to his horror he saw the man in white coming around the corner and walking toward the spaceship. The girl had reached the front landing column only a moment before. She had her foot on the pad and was preparing to climb into the column when a loud voice rang out.
“What is going on here? You there, what are you doing? Get down from there,” he shouted.
The blood drained from Rion’s head and he thought he would collapse. He didn’t even think about what would happen to him since they’d been caught. The horror of being the main instrument in the next girl’s grisly end gripped him.
The girl stepped off the pad, moving slowly and more skittishly than she had before. She looked left toward storage rooms. There was nowhere to run there, but she stepped that way anyway.
“No, come over here. What were you trying to do to my ship, break in?”
The man’s hair had a reddish tint to it, and his flushed face almost matched.
“Rats,” the pilot said quietly. Even he knew it was bad. He may not have put together that Rion was working with her, and far in the back the man didn’t seem to notice that hers was the only out-of-place presence.
The girl seemed awfully short as she slowly plodded toward the man. She never looked back at Rion, never begged for help, not that he could’ve done anything to aid her.
“I wasn’t. I was just…”
“Stop. I don’t want to hear it. Look at you. Your face is dirty. Frankly, you smell. You look all skin and bones. Isn’t anyone feeding you?”
From her rear, Rion couldn’t see if the girl had broken down or if she’d maintained her composure. The man now appeared more disgusted than anything, his head swiveled back and his face wrinkled up.
Either what she said wasn’t audible to him or she didn’t answer. The man sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
“You need help. It’s not right you’re out here doing this stuff. Come with us. We can take care of you. I know there’s a penalty fine. I’ll cover it.”
Rion’s jaw dropped open and he unconsciously leaned forward. Not once in all the years that he’d been here had anyone shown one ounce of mercy after catching a thief, and certainly not someone as rich as this man. He couldn’t help but think of all the times he prayed something like this would happen to him. The kind of wet, hot, and secret tears with his head hidden under a ratty blanket hadn’t been enough to get a chance like this.
“No, I don’t think so,” the girl said.
She walked around the man and into the tunnel with all of the ease of someone moving about their own house. Her head never turned to look back, but the man did. He watched her go, eventually shrugging and continuing into his ship for whatever he came back for.
Rion couldn’t believe what he had seen. Who among the orphans wouldn’t have broken down at the man’s feet with sobs of joy for rescuing them from this hell? A guess came to Rion’s mind, and the scent of truth solidified it into a belief that had to be tested.
“I’ll go check on that part
for you,” Rion said to the pilot once the man had reentered the Star Yacht.
The pilot didn’t seem to care about his departure, leaving Rion to move toward the tunnel with a single-minded focus. That thought drove him, one so perplexing and unbelievable that it made the world shift inside his head.
His pace increased as he turned the corner and saw her ahead. She must’ve noticed him following her, because she picked up speed and even began to run. Maybe that was her way of signaling that he’d seen something about her, something she didn’t want to reckon with. Even though she was a little older and had longer legs, Rion watched her come nearer to him as he closed in.
Then he had his hand on her shoulder, pulling her to a stop.
“Tell me. Tell me, tell me, tell me,” he said.
She resisted, trying to shake him off and turn toward another vacant bay, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Tell you what?” she snarled.
He finally got a good look at her face when she turned on him. She hadn’t been crying, but she was breathing hard and had her teeth gritted. Tense, she was fighting more than just him.
It was tough for Rion to even say the thought out loud, not until he summoned his own anger.
“You weren’t left behind like we were!”
Her eyebrows furrowed after she flinched. Rion felt like he’d hit upon the truth.
“No, I wasn’t left behind. I left and I’ll never go back,” she said with enough volume to make its veracity unquestionable.
“But why? Why would you leave it all behind for this? Anything, anything else would be better.”
“That’s what you think. This is my life and I won’t have anyone else controlling it. Not my suffocating parents, not a rich man offering to take care of me, and not some little pricks camped in a spaceport. I can’t stand any of you. In fact, I can’t stand anyone and wish I could live my entire life alone,” she said.
The two stared at each other for a few moments, during which Rion tried to flip everything upside down to see things from her perspective.
“It’s impossible to live your entire life without contact with anyone else,” Rion said.