“Oh, is that so?” said Gunner.
“Yes,” said the man.
“Gunner,” said Calix.
Gunner didn’t see what the issue was. He wasn’t scaring these two off. They were determined to board the Swallow. It had been “foreseen.” He rolled his eyes.
The man mused. “If a destination is necessary, I suppose take her to—”
“Why don’t you let the lady speak?” said Gunner. He nodded at her. “Where do you want to go?”
The woman licked her lips, looking frightened. “You’re heading to the Nor system, right?”
Oh-ho, more tricks. They must have overheard the last passengers request that destination. Now, she was pretending to see the future.
“At least, I think the ship is supposed to get there,” the woman said, furrowing her brow. “I can’t be sure that it does.”
“Fine, fine,” said Gunner. “That’s your destination. But listen to me, lady, I don’t want any of that crap about seeing the future while you’re on my boat, got it?”
The woman looked startled. Then she lifted her chin. Her voice was even. “I’m sorry, captain. I suppose you don’t understand how it works. I have no control over when a vision comes to me.”
Gunner didn’t much like that response, and he didn’t much like her attitude. He was about to tell her to shove off and find another ship to get her wherever she was going. Then he remembered the four pounds of potatoes.
Damn it.
* * *
Eve did not like the captain.
She was sitting in her quarters, a small room only large enough to fit the bed that folded down from the wall. She had pulled the bunk down so as to have somewhere to sit, and now she was sitting and trying to gather herself.
They were in space.
She’d been frightened about the take-off, considering she’d never been on a ship before. She knew that launching could be fairly rough, and that they all had to strap in until they broke through the planet’s atmosphere. She hadn’t let on she was frightened, though. She had her pride.
If the captain had been a considerate man, he might have thought of her possible nervousness, however, and been kind to her. Instead, he only gave her a bucket and snarled at her not to let it spill if she vomited.
Overall, though, the take-off hadn’t been too bad, and she certainly hadn’t emptied the contents of her stomach.
She balled up her hands in fists, so angry that she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. She didn’t think she’d ever been so angry at a human being before. The captain was rude and he was awful.
Not for the first time, she wished she had more control over her visions. She’d seen a vision of meeting the captain, but it had been very clipped, only the part about him agreeing to take her on board. She hadn’t heard any of the horrible parts where he’d ridiculed the Cloister or ordered her around. If she had, she would have…
Well, she probably wouldn’t have done anything, considering she didn’t have many choices, but she still would have liked to know.
Maybe it wasn’t entirely the captain’s fault. She wasn’t only angry at him, she was also angry at something larger. She’d built up a giant set of expectations in her head surrounding the captain, and he was falling woefully short.
Sure, she was terrified of this future. Leaving home and embarking on a ship with a strange man was scary.
But she also had secret hopes about it all. Romantic hopes. She had hoped that the captain would be like some hero from one of the books she had read in the Cloister, and that he would be dashing and romantic, and she would fall madly in love with him. Of course, now that she thought about it, the captain didn’t feature strongly in her later visions. Most of those visions were of her and her son, no captain in sight. So, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be love. Maybe she was just supposed to get the captain’s, er, seed and then be on her way. She supposed that was all she needed from him.
Still, she didn’t see how she was supposed to be intimate with a man like that. The thought abhorred her.
Back in the Cloister, relationships between young men and women were not exactly encouraged. For her, they were especially not recommended. What if she fell in love with another man and didn’t want to go into space to create the champion of the human race? What if she got pregnant with another child and didn’t want to leave him or her behind to go create the champion? No, it was best if she stayed single and virginal.
But Eve hated being denied things. She wasn’t about to be told that she couldn’t have sex with anyone, and so she made it a point to have sex, just because.
But she had to admit the experience hadn’t been very exciting. It had been pleasant enough, but brief. Just when she thought it was starting to feel good, it had been over. Of course, Tane, who had been her partner in the deed, had never done it before either, and he seemed nervous the entire time.
In the end, though, she’d told herself that it had been lackluster because she was meant for the captain, and that when they made love, then she would understand what all the fuss was about. In her visions of the act, she could only see and hear, she didn’t have any sensations.
The visions weren’t abundantly reassuring, she thought to herself now. The captain was making a rather strange face in them.
Ugh. Thinking about being with him like that made her shudder. She couldn’t do this. She wouldn’t do it. Let someone else get pregnant with the champion of the entire human race. She would sneak off the ship at the next port and disappear.
Except that hardly sounded like something she wanted to do. Striking off on her own sounded dangerous and frightening. At least on the ship, she was safe. And at any rate, she had passage to the Nor system. She might as well stay on board until then.
* * *
Gunner closed the container on the cargo bay that contained the weapons they were taking to the planet Ganesh.
“Look okay?” said Pippa.
He nodded. “Yeah, they’re packed all right.” He had wanted to check since they hadn’t had time before take-off. Now that they had a moment to breathe, he wanted to get a good look at them. Badly packed weapons could be pretty dangerous.
All of the guns, plaspistols and blast rifles alike, were powered by cartridges of gas which was converted into plasma energy. They could be volatile if not stored properly. But these looked good. It had been difficult getting everything aboard the ship at the last moment. It always was. Trying to coordinate the passengers and the cargo, get all the crew in place, and get airborne in the short period of time they had while the Xerkabah weren’t looking was quite a feat. As it was, he’d barely had much time to consider what they were running.
“So, these weapons we’re taking, was there any pay-off to the shippers?” said Gunner. It was standard these days for the people shipping out goods to ask for a chunk of money from those doing the running of the product. Reason being that they had their own needs to see to, and it wasn’t as if the buyers could wire them money through the nets these days. The buyer then paid enough to the runners to make up for what they’d given the buyers and pay them for their time.
“No, they’re sending them out gratis,” said Pippa. “Said it’s up to us what we charge the buyers. Strongly hinted we should give ‘em away for just the price of our fuel and keep, though.” She shrugged. “That’s Resistance for you, though. Just trying to fight the good fight and arm the people.”
The Resistance was what remained of the human government, which wasn’t much.
“Shouldn’t have surrendered then,” Gunner muttered.
“True enough,” said Pippa. “Any other questions about the cargo for me?”
“Nope, that’s about it,” he said.
“Right, then,” she said, “going to head up to the kitchen and see if there’s any of those fried potatoes left.”
“There ain’t,” he told her.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You had the last of it, didn’t you?”
“
You had some yourself. I saw you with a plate of them,” he said.
“I bet you had three helpings. We all know how you like potatoes.”
“Go on,” he said. “There’s still some in the bags. You can fry up some more for yourself if you want.”
Pippa scoffed. “I don’t have the first idea how to use a skillet, captain.”
He laughed.
She smiled. She started up the ladder to the upper level of the ship. Her quarters were up there, near the cockpit in case there was trouble. The kitchen was up there as well. The lower level of the ship contained the rest of the quarters, the cargo bay, and the engine room.
He watched her go for a minute and then turned back to the crate of weapons. He closed the lid. It was all well and good for him to say that the humans shouldn’t have surrendered, but he knew that the problem ran deeper than the leadership. Truth was, troops were deserting left and right toward the end of the war. No one wanted to fight at the end. They just wanted it to be over.
Gunner himself had spent those last few weeks of the conflict escaping from a Xerkabah ship. When he finally got himself together and back looking for his squadron, it was over. They were calling it peace, but it wasn’t anything like that. The humans had signed a treaty that essentially said, We’ll go and squeeze into two planets and die on our own, so you won’t have to hunt us down and kill us.
Well, none of that for Gunner. He wasn’t planning on dying any time soon. Maybe he couldn’t defeat the aliens, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t fight for his right to stay free and clear, taking his ship from one planet to the next. If he and his crew didn’t need supplies, he’d stay out here in space permanently. But that wasn’t the case.
Today’s activities had left him bone tired. He was ready to turn in early. Before he did that, though, he figured he should look in on the human cargo they’d taken aboard—the passengers. He needed to make sure they were comfortable.
He left the cargo bay—hitting a button on the side of the wall that made a metal door slide sideways—onto a narrow hallway, and walked down to the passengers’ quarters. He came to the boy’s room first. He’d been introduced now, but he couldn’t remember the boy’s name…
Orion, he thought. Or Ororn. He shook his head and touched the rectangular query box on the outside of the door. Inside, he heard the faint echo of a chime, signaling he was there to talk to someone.
The door slid open, but it wasn’t the boy there, but the girl. Jinnifer. That he remembered. “Oh, captain,” she said. “Is everything all right?” She was wearing a long, white sleeping gown.
“I’m sorry,” said Gunner. “I thought this was Orion’s room.”
“Oh, it is,” said Jinnifer.
Orion appeared behind her.
Gunner nodded. “All right, then. Two of you are bunking up.”
“That a problem?” said Orion.
“Nope,” said Gunner. “Not a bit. I came by to make sure you’ve been able to find everything okay, that you don’t have any questions, things like that.”
“Can’t think of anything,” said Orion.
Gunner nodded again. “Good deal. See you in the morning at breakfast.”
“Good night, captain,” said Jinnifer, smiling.
The door closed.
Gunner backed away from the door, shaking his head. Those bunks were narrow. He didn’t see how two people could fit on one. He strode down the hallway a few more steps to the door of the Cloister girl, Eve. He touched the query box on her door.
He waited.
Nothing.
He was about to touch the query box again, when the door slid open.
Eve was still in her shapeless black dress, but she wasn’t wearing her bonnet and her hair was down. It was long and lustrous. It fell in soft waves down her back.
She was pretty, Gunner realized. Very pretty. Maybe he had been too hard on her thus far. She couldn’t help the fact that she’d been raised by those Cloister nuts. She’d probably never been out in the world at all, and the business about visions and stuff was all she knew. Hell, she’d probably been pressured to fake them or something. That was the way those weird groups were about things. They got everyone to believe something stupid, and then—when there was no evidence—they manufactured it in their heads and put pressure on everyone else to manufacture it too. He felt sorry for her.
“Hi there,” said Gunner.
“Did you need something, captain?”
“No, I was actually coming by to make sure you’re settling in all right. But, listen, I wanted to apologize.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Really?”
“Yeah, I’ve been a bit hard on you, but I realized it’s not you I’m disgusted with, it’s those crazies at the Cloister that you’ve lived with your whole life. They’re the ones who I can’t stand. You’re just an innocent victim.”
Her expression hardened. “Is that so?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. Oh, hell, maybe that hadn’t been the best way to say it. “Look, all I’m saying is that you’re free of them now. You don’t have to pretend to have visions or be important to the future or whatever that guy said.”
“You think the visions are pretend?”
He sighed. “Well, okay, I guess they got you believing in them.” It made sense, he supposed. He could easily imagine things, whole scenes with people and animals and everything else. If everyone around him said those imaginings were visions of the future, he’d probably think they were real too.
“Captain, I have seen visions of you since I was a small girl. You, and that meeting we had at the spaceport, and this ship. If they were pretend, how would I have seen such and heard accurate things?”
He wasn’t sure what to say to this. The girl was pretty far gone then, extremely delusional. She’d convinced herself not only that she’d seen a vision of the future, but that it had come true. He made his voice gentle. “Look, it’s not possible to see the future. We’d all like it if we could, but—”
“I can see the future.” Her voice was steel.
He shook his head. “Yeah, all right. Well, you see any visions while on my ship, just keep them to yourself, okay?” There obviously was no point in trying to argue with her. She was committed to her delusions.
“Sure,” she said. “Is there anything else? Or did you just stop by to insult me and call me crazy?”
He sighed. “I didn’t mean to say anything like that. I really… never mind.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’m very tired. I’d like to go to sleep.”
“Sure,” he said. “Is everything okay here, though?”
“Besides the fact that you’re nothing like what I had hoped, and that I don’t even know how I’m supposed to do what I’m fated to do, it’s fine. Perfect.” Now, she was sarcastic.
He furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”
“You,” she said. “All his time, seeing visions of you, I thought you’d be a decent human being. But you’re…”
“Me?” He pointed at his chest. “Look, I haven’t done anything to make you mad.”
“No,” she said, still sarcastic, “not a thing.”
“Is there something wrong with your room? Did you not enjoy dinner tonight? You got any complaints about the service on this ship?”
“Ever since you met me, you’ve treated me like I didn’t matter.”
He was flabbergasted. “What do you expect? You’re a passenger on my ship. You think I’m going to treat you like royalty?”
“No, just some common courtesy, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m so very sorry, princess,” he said. Now, he was sarcastic.
Her nostrils flared.
“You know,” he said, “maybe it’d be better if you steered clear of me for the rest of the voyage.”
“Yes, maybe so,” she said coldly. She hit the button on her side of the door, and it snapped shut in his face.
CHAPTER THREE
“Resistance g
uns, huh?” said Mac Non. His face filled one of the screens in the cockpit. He was the buyer for their weapons, at least that was what they had been told. But now that they were in orbit around Ganesh, and that they’d made contact with him, he seemed to have no idea about it at all.
“We understood you were expecting these weapons,” said Gunner. “That not the case?”
“Well, interplanetary messages don’t always get through these days,” said Mac. “Maybe they thought they gave us a heads up and we never received it. What did you say you’ve got there?”
“Look to be mostly Jorkin Plas-powers and Cheetahs,” said Gunner.
“F68s?” Mac said, sounding pleasantly surprised.
“Those are the ones.”
“Well, we could find some use for weapons like that,” said Mac. “You set down your boat and we’ll have a little talk, see if we can’t work out a deal.”
“Sure thing.” Gunner smiled at the screen. “See you planetside.” He disconnected the transmission and then turned to Saffron. “Well, that’s a bit disappointing.”
“Because he’ll be less likely to pay top dollar for guns he didn’t necessarily want?”
“Exactly,” said Gunner. “But our only other choice is to take the weapons and go flying off looking for a buyer. Who knows how long that would take. This’ll be money, and we could use it.”
“That is true,” said Saffron.
Pippa spoke up from the other side of the cockpit. “How close you want me to set down the ship, captain? Right on top of them or near the outpost?”
“There’s an outpost here?” said Gunner.
“Don’t you remember?” said Saffron. “Got a tavern and everything.”
“Hmm.” Gunner raised his eyebrows. “Set us down near the tavern.”
“Nice,” said Pippa.
Gunner pointed at her. “Now don’t you be going in there until the deal’s done. Things might go south, and the last thing I need is a sloshed pilot.”
“Oh, captain.” Pippa rolled her eyes.
“Promise me.”
She turned and gave him an exaggerated salute. “Yes, sir.”
Saffron raised her eyebrows. “You think things are going to go south?”
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