by Jay Allan
“Thought you might say that.” Ethan began backing away and offered a mocking salute with his right hand, while his left stayed near his plasma pistol. “You’re too young and pretty to die.”
“Ethan!” Alara whispered sharply beside his ear, but he was past caring.
Desperation and despair do wonders for a man’s courage, he thought. You’re not afraid to die if life’s not worth living. That was one of the reasons why the fleet tried to stay out of civilian affairs. They had a cushy lot by comparison, and they had much more to lose.
The nova pilot looked on with a scowl, but he said nothing.
Once Ethan had backed up to the bend in the corridor which led back the way they’d come, he turned around and began walking swiftly to their room.
“So much for that!” Alara said. “If I’d known you were planning to play chicken with an Imperial officer I wouldn’t have bothered coming with you.”
Ethan shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on it, Alara, but krak happens sometimes, you know that.”
She snorted. “More often around you.”
“Hoi, have some respect, kiddie.”
Alara turned to glare at him. Ethan pretended not to notice. “Besides, we did get something out of that nova pilot.”
“Oh? And what’s that?” Alara asked.
He turned to meet her gaze. “A way out. We’re going to enlist in the fleet.”
CHAPTER 3
“Join the fleet?” Alara demanded. “Are you completely skriffy?” She was lying on the bed in their room again; her jaw hung open in exaggerated shock, and her arms were crossed over her chest. “What about the Atton? We’re just going to throw it away after we put so much work into it? We wouldn’t be in debt right now if it weren’t for your damn ship! We wouldn’t be hiding here. I could’ve had a life on Forliss, instead of this.” She gestured to the peeling walls around her.
Ethan was standing by the viewport, his eyes and thoughts wandering out into space. He didn’t have the energy required to face Alara’s angry tirade, so he stayed silent, his thoughts processing his plan without her until she came down from her wailing, emotional high and talked to him in a more rational tone.
“This is unbelievable! If you could’ve just had this idea a few months ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I could’ve gone back to work in the agri-domes with my parents, and you could have thrown your life away all by yourself—instead of dragging me down with you. I don’t know why I stay with you! I must be sick. That’s it. I must have some sick screw loose that makes me gravitate toward a grub like you.”
Now Ethan did turn from the viewport, and his eyes glittered darkly at her. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean it.” Alara looked up at him miserably. “I’m just angry—at our situation, Ethan. Not at you. I’m sorry. I take it back.”
He walked up to the foot of the bed. “No, it’s too late for that, Alara. Sorry isn’t wide enough or deep enough to cover up the truth. So that’s what you really think of me. You think I’m a grub.”
Ethan held up a hand to stop her next objection, and he pressed the other one to his forehead to massage away an encroaching headache. His eyes squinted shut and he took a long moment to answer her.
Alara stood up from the bed and walked over to him. She laid a hand on his shoulder and stood up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Please forgive me.”
He turned, opened his eyes, and shook his head. “Why are you with me, Alara?”
“Ethan…”
He took a step back and she took one forward, but he gently pushed her away. “No, you know what, you’re right. You don’t need a grub like me holding you back. You were born for more than this.” He gestured to the boxy room with a sneer. “Your parents are big shots in the agri corps; you could go back to them just like you said. You were one of the lucky ones until you struck out on your own—now you’re just an upper-class snob trying to live the common life. It’s a joke, Alara, and no one’s laughing at it. You’ll be better off with them.”
Alara gaped at him.
“Besides, if you want to make your own way, you can do better. Pretty girl like you could make a good living in a pleasure palace,” he said, and she flinched as if he’d slapped her. “Or you could go pro and find some rich husband in Brondi’s gang. Wouldn’t that be ironic.”
Alara shook her head. “You don’t mean that.”
“Sure I do. You said it yourself, you don’t need a grub like me holding you back. You need to move on to bigger and better things. I understand. Go to sleep, Alara. I’ll wake you in the morning. I wasn’t planning to sell the Atton, but since I’ve been such a dead weight for you, seems like that’s the only fair thing to do. I’ll drop you on Forliss Station, sell the ship, pay off your half of the debt we owe Brondi, and you’ll be free to go live your life.”
Alara looked more hurt than ever, and now Ethan could see tears shimmering in her eyes. “Frek, Ethan, I didn’t mean it! You’re hurting me!”
He smiled thinly and brushed by her on his way to the door. “I’ll be at the bar if you need me.”
He opened the door with a wave of his hand, and she whispered after him, “I’ve always needed you, Ethan. It’s you who doesn’t need me.”
-o0o-
Ethan Ortane was a man of his word. Despite Alara’s protestations, the next morning he charted a course straight from Chorlis Station to the Forliss System. The final space gate in the series plotted by the nav dropped them right on top of Forliss Station. From there, if she wanted to, Alara could book passage to the surface of Forliss and join her parents working in the giant agri-domes, or else she could stay on the station. There were plenty of hydroponic modules for her to work in agriculture if she wanted to, but there was also plenty of just about everything else. The station stretched out for kilometers in every direction, lighting up space with a million twinkling lights. Cylindrical mall and market modules joined with spindly arms to spherical hydroponic modules, which in turn joined to circular hubs that were connected to blocky habitats, hangars, and office spaces. Forliss Station was one giant city in space, hastily constructed, and poorly thought out, but big enough for a person to get lost—both literally and metaphorically.
Ethan lined his ship up with the blinking green docking buoys, and stopped at the inspection point. While he waited, Ethan transmitted his ship’s remote access codes to the station, and then a nova fighter popped by and ran a quick scan on them. Once they were cleared by the Nova, the docking controllers acknowledged receipt of his codes and gave clearance for Ethan to enter the station’s landing pattern.
As soon as the station’s pilots took remote control of his transport, Ethan turned to Alara and said, “Well, I guess this is goodbye.”
Alara sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “I guess so.” Her voice sounded so flat and despondent that Ethan felt the need to comfort her.
“Look, all hard feelings aside, this is what’s best for both of us. You’re right. You don’t deserve to be saddled with my debt. It’s my ship after all.”
She turned to him then. “We racked up that debt together, Ethan.”
“Well, consider it a gift, then. I’m joining the fleet, and Brondi can’t easily touch me there. This way, at least one of us is still free.”
Alara nodded silently and turned back to look out at the stars. Ethan wasn’t sure what else he could say—what she wanted him to say—so he looked away, too. The station grew larger and larger before them until they spotted the amber glow of the hangar deck where they were being directed. Ethan watched the transport ahead of them duck inside the station, and then the station’s pilots took them in next, using the hangar’s grav guns to guide them straight into the nearest empty berth.
The station’s docking tube snaked out toward them. It connected resoundingly with their hull, and a cheery message came over the comm, “Welcome to Forliss Station! We hope you have a pleasant st
ay.”
Ethan slung his travel bag over his shoulder, shut down his ship’s reactors, and walked aft. Alara was just a step behind him. He reached the amidships airlock and keyed the control panel to cycle it open. The inner airlock door opened with a hiss of equalizing air pressure, and Ethan walked inside.
“So that’s it?” Alara demanded from the other side of the airlock. “After three years of friendship, you just drop me off at the nearest station, sell your precious ship, and enlist in the fleet?”
Ethan offered her a helpless shrug. “What you want me to do? We don’t have a lot of options. You could always join me in the fleet.”
“You might get in because you’re a rare ‘five-A’ pilot.” She made quote signs in the air with her hands. “But I don’t have any special skills, Ethan. What I do as your copilot, a trained monkey could do.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit, but there’s no other option, Alara. I’m sorry.”
Alara shook her head. “No, you’re wrong, there is another option.”
Before Ethan realized what she meant, she’d slapped the control panel, and the inner airlock door was cycling shut.
Ethan lunged for the narrowing gap, but airlock doors were made to open and shut quickly, and he wasn’t about to risk having an arm chopped off for his trouble. So instead, he devoted himself to the control panel on the inside of the airlock, but as soon as he tried to key it open with his password, it spat out an error message and beeped angrily at him. With a dawning horror he realized his mistake. He’d thought Alara’s silence along the way had been out of sadness, but hers had been a vindictive silence, and somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, Alara had changed the ship’s entry codes. He tried waving his wrist over the identichip scanner, but the control panel sounded with another error beep.
Ethan looked up to see Alara smiling and waving at him through the small square of transpiranium set in the top of the airlock door. He pounded on it with his fists. “Let me out!”
She cocked her head and regarded him dubiously. “Are you sure?” she mouthed. The airlock was soundproof.
Ethan gritted his teeth and hit the door one more time for emphasis. The dull thud of his fist echoed through the ship, and abruptly Alara seemed to make up her mind. She tapped another sequence into the airlock controls, and the outer door cycled open. Alara gestured to it meaningfully, and he scowled back at her.
She was stealing his ship. He couldn’t believe it! It wouldn’t get her anywhere, though. Even selling it, he wouldn’t have been able to pay off the entire debt to Brondi, and he’d been willing to use the entire sum of money to pay off Alara’s half of the debt, so this really wasn’t any different to him, except that now he didn’t need to find a buyer and haggle for a decent price. He’d miss some of his personal belongings, but he didn’t have a lot of those. As a prisoner on Etaris, he’d gotten used to keeping all the important stuff with him in the old brown travel bag which was already slung over his shoulder.
Ethan cast a quick look to the open airlock behind him and the waiting docking tube, then he turned back to Alara, pursed his lips, and nodded. If that’s the way she wants it, fine. He gave her a curt salute, and then turned and walked away.
CHAPTER 4
Ethan didn’t look back. Alara hadn’t expected him to, but if he had, he would have seen the tears running down her cheeks, and then maybe he would have understood that she wasn’t being hateful or spiteful; she was trying to save him from himself. He’d catch up with her later, after he realized what a mistake he was making, and then she’d return his ship to him, and they’d go on as they always had—
Together.
When Ethan disappeared from sight, Alara turned and walked back through the ship. Rather than go to the cockpit and fly off immediately, she went to the lounge and lay down on the sofa bed to quiet her racing thoughts.
What have I done? was the first thought which ran around in circles in her brain. He’ll be back, was the second. And with that thought, she managed to calm herself enough to fall into a troubled sleep.
-o0o-
Once Ethan started down a road, he never looked back. It was looking forward he sometimes had trouble with—whether that meant moving on from his wife, Destra, or simply looking to the future with something more than abject pessimism. He hadn’t always been like that, but being sent to the mines of Etaris, ripped away from his wife and son, and being forced to face facts with a life sentence for smuggling stims, Ethan hadn’t become a big believer in hope. Then the war had come and ripped the galaxy to pieces, so pessimism seemed like a good bet.
The fact that he still maintained some small bit of hope that he might someday run into his wife and son again was the one glimmer of optimism that proved the pessimistic rule of his life. Nobody had to sugarcoat things for him. He was used to staring cold facts in the face, and the cold fact was, his partner and only friend in the universe had just betrayed him and stolen his ship. Prior to that she’d called him a grub and said she was better off without him.
I guess loyalty only runs so deep, he thought as he made his way around one of the many circular hubs aboard Forliss Station. By now, she’s probably halfway back to Chorlis Orbital so she can go back to hiding from Brondi. He wasn’t sure what she planned to do with his ship now that she had it all to herself, but he wasn’t sure he cared either. Out of respect for the partnership they’d once had, he hoped for her sake that she didn’t run into any collection agents on her way back. She wasn’t a half bad pilot, but not nearly good enough to shake off pursuing fighters with no shields and no copilot to man the guns. She’d be captured for sure, and knowing Brondi, he wouldn’t let her die easy.
Well, that’s her problem. Ethan switched his focus to the task at hand. He knew that there was a fleet recruitment office somewhere aboard Forliss Station. The trick would be finding it. The station was a maze of twisting corridors, and they shot off at all angles from the circular hub where he was now walking. Each corridor had an illuminated sign above it which described the module waiting immediately on the other side, but that didn’t tell Ethan what modules were waiting on the other side of those, and further still down the line. Ethan sighed and stopped walking in order to get his bearings. The nearest corridor branching off the hub went to Yuri’s Café, the next one around the bend, to the Summer Gardens.
Ethan turned to the nearest passerby and raised his hand to get the man’s attention. The man wore a shiny black suit—business attire—and he was walking fast. When he saw Ethan walking toward him, he sped up, but Ethan kept pace with him easily.
“Do you know which way to the fleet’s recruitment offices?”
The man shook his head quickly. “No, sorry.”
Ethan frowned. “Do you know where I can find the nearest station directory to look them up?”
“No.”
“Hoi, you must know where I can find a directory at least. You live here, right?”
The man turned and gave him a disparaging sneer. “Get away from me, grub.”
Ethan grabbed the man’s arm and spun him into the nearest wall, pinning him there. “What did you call me?”
“N-nothing.”
“Where is the nearest directory, you little kakard?”
The man pointed to a corridor that branched off the hub up ahead, the one whose sign read, Summer Gardens. “Through there! Now let me go! Please.”
“All right, no need to piss your pants. I’m leaving.” Ethan gave the man a shove, causing him to stumble and almost fall, and then Ethan turned to walk toward the gardens, but he still kept half an eye on the man he’d accosted. The businessman didn’t seem like the type to be armed and dangerous, but sometimes weakness was a guise, especially if it were worn too conspicuously. Looking defenseless and being defenseless were two very different things in Dark Space, and mistaking the one for the other could make you dead.
As the businessman hurried around the corner, Ethan finally turned his back and strode into the Summer G
ardens. The corridor branching off the hub was long and narrow. There was a moving walkway going in each direction, and up ahead a strange brightness illuminated the walkway.
The corridor soon arced out over the gardens and opened up, becoming a bridge. All around him the fresh, moist air swirled with the fragrances from a dozen different flowers in full bloom. Birds flitted over the bridge, twittering and chirping. Below and all around, the green fronds of leafy trees reached high into the artificial sky, which was a clear, cheerful blue overhead. Ethan sighed. If the pay were a little better, it would be worth being a parks and recreation officer just to have such a relaxing work environment. It sure beat having to breathe the canned, almost bitter air pumped out by shipboard recyclers.
The bridge wound slowly down into the gardens below, and soon Ethan was walking through the gardens at ground-level. He could reach out and touch the leafy greenery rising all around him. He stopped to admire a gigantic blue crystal flower. The petals were thick, and from what he knew, they were actually edible. Taking a quick look around to see that nobody was watching, Ethan snapped off a petal and popped it into his mouth. The flower fruit exploded in a burst of citric-sweet flavor that was a painful reminder of why freeze-dried rations were only for the poor grubs who couldn’t afford fresh. Nobody would willingly choose such bland garbage over this. Ethan snapped off another petal, and this time a tired mechanical voice berated him. “Please pay for your purchase.” The voice was loud, and Ethan looked around again to make sure he hadn’t drawn attention to himself. No one was watching, so he hurried off.
Ethan shook his head. I knew it was too good to be free. He eyed the scanner bar which ran all around the cultivated gardens. It was cleverly disguised as a railing, but now that he looked at it closely, it contained the telltale red glow of a sol scanner. If he passed his wrist over it, he had no doubt it would deduct the required amount from his account.