“So, there ain’t nothing getting rid of the heat?” Mira asked.
Kendal shook his head. “If there weren’t coolants,” he said, “then we’d burn to death. They’re here, they just don’t work the way they should.”
“Watch it,” Desmond said. “If you think it’s too hot in here, you might just be better off outside. We’re far from any star and it’d be mighty cold out there.”
“I’ll keep to myself,” Kendal said.
“No, no,” Mira said. “We all like Kendal. He don’t got to be all quiet.”
She stood up, pushing her chair back and leaving the table. “I’ll get ya’ll something to eat,” she said.
Mira fumbled around in the kitchen for a minute, before coming back with two plates and two cups. She separated them for Kendal and Desmond, and took a seat back in her spot.
Kendal looked at the plate. It had a gray-red slab on it, cut into slivers. A ration bar, the same as Mira had been eating.
“I haven’t eaten one of these since I was in training,” he said and poked one of the slivers with a fork.
“Then don’t eat it,” Desmond said.
“I wasn’t complaining,” Kendal said and took a bite. Ration bars had no flavor. They didn’t taste like chalk, or foam, or water. Just a blank mush in your mouth that feels like your saliva decided to solidify and you now have to break it back down with your teeth. “I really wasn’t.”
Mira had only given him a few grams, but it was more than enough. They were filling and could keep you alive as long as you had water to go with them. They were developed by the Union to be a ‘one size fits all’ food. They technically succeeded, but soon found that feeding them to soldiers on a regular basis threw them into fits of depression and suicide. People were meant to eat food, with flavor and imperfections, not tasteless bricks that gave us everything we needed to not die.
“Where are we headed?” Kendal asked.
“We shot off in a shit direction,” Desmond said. “Most of the core planets are the other way.”
“Are we still in Union space?” Mira asked.
“You don’t know much ‘bout space do you?” Desmond said. “Where we’re going it still part of the Union, but they don’t intervene much aside from the occasional troops to let everyone know they still exist. Basic terraforming, low populations, high crime rates. Shit for the people livin’ out there, but it’s just the kind of place we wanna be. Easy for someone with a ship to get work there.”
“Why doesn’t the Union step in more?” Mira asked.
Silence for an answer, with both Kendal and Desmond looking away.
Do I really have to explain space economics to her? Kendal thought, looking at the nearly empty plate in front of him.
Desmond cleared his throat. “It’s cause the Union don’t care as much about the planets they don’t got complete control over as the one’s in their vice.”
“That’s not true,” Kendal said. “The Union doesn’t have the resour—”
“Spare us,” Desmond said. “The Union only gives a damn about themselves. They control the Big Three, and leave the other planets to rot. Dek-Norman might not have been the smartest but they were doin’ something. Terraforming and all that. Now what’s left?”
“They’ve kept the system at peace, Desmond. Ever since they won the war.”
“What fucking peace?” Desmond was leaning over the table, roaring at Kendal.
Mira’s face turned white, her eyes wide and scared. “Boys…”
“A planet just crumbled all to hell and I ain’t even sure if it’s still in one piece,” Desmond said. “Where the hell was the Union during all of this? They gave us a couple ground troops and that’s it. Good enough I suppose. Ain’t like the Union could afford more than that. Reminds me of a rich bastard thinking that giving a few coppers to a starving man is some kind of generosity. Union sends a bunch of colonizers to the ends of the system with some terraforming and a few herds and saplings and they leave ‘em there without medical supplies or ships. How’s that right?”
Kendal started to answer, but Desmond didn’t let him speak.
“And don’t you say it ain’t true. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen it. It’s a shitty life. Work and danger’s all it is. You get a ship, and that’s an opportunity. People’ll kill for a ship. I’d know, cause I’ve done it.”
Kendal’s face rested at a frown. Desmond was staring, breathing hard as he waited for Kendal to retort. An uncomfortable silence lingered.
“To be fair, Dess,” Mira said, cutting the silence with a knife, “Dek-Norman weren’t awful kind to me and my mom so it ain’t like they were so great.”
“You against me too?” Desmond said.
“I ain’t against no one,” Mira said. “And neither’s Kendal. Ain’t that right?”
Kendal nodded. He wasn’t against Desmond, yet felt like the Union needed defending. They had taken him in and given him a purpose. They were all he cared about until he met Nova. And then she was all he cared about. Then he betrayed Nova for the Union, and then the Union betrayed him.
“We heading anywhere besides space?” Mira asked.
“I’m ain’t that bad a pilot,” Desmond said, cracking a smile. “Jenny’s two weeks away on our course.”
Mira cocked her head. “Who’s Jenny?”
“A planet named Jennifer,” Kendal said. “About half the size of Nau Cedik. Near the smaller star on the edge of the system. Basic terraforming. A few settlers. Not much.”
“He knows his stuff,” Desmond said.
“But it’s Union based,” Kendal said. “They have bases there and do trade. We’d get caught.”
“You said you scrambled our code,” Desmond said. “Can’t trace the ship or nothin’.”
“I changed our frequency,” Kendal said. “But they still know who we are and what we look like. Mira’s the only one here they don’t have a file on.”
“You think they’d be lookin’ for us all the way out on Jenny?” Mira asked.
“I don’t know,” Kendal said. “They might be preoccupied with what happened on Nau Cedik, but they could be looking for us at the same time. We need out of Union space. To one of the settler planets on orbiting the Ven Star. Sintic’s close and still out of Union rule. We could try for there”
Mira looked like she wasn’t following. Poor girl’d never been off Nau Cedik a day in her life.
“We ain’t got the fuel to make it out there,” Desmond said. “Hell, we’d be pushing it on fuel just getting us to get to Jenny. I can keep the engine’s low once we get up to speed, just lights and whatnot, but then I gotta use the rest of the fuel gettin’ us to land.”
“But we’d be out of fuel once we get to Jenny,” Kendal said. “How’s that gonna help us?”
“We get work, we get paid,” Desmond said.
“How we know work’s there?” Mira asked, trying her best to keep in the conversation.
“I’ve been there once and I think I can squeeze some out of it.”
“What kind of work?” Kendal asked.
“The kind the Union wouldn’t like so much,” Desmond said, eyeing Kendal. “Lots of folk need a space vessel for somethin’ or other. Bounties, delivery, transport, and the such. Most often things they can’t get sent through Union post. They pay us half up front. We refuel and once we get done whatever it is we needa get done, we can try and make our way to Sintic and hope the Union don’t follow.”
“They won’t follow,” Kendal said and cleared his throat. “But I won’t do anything that hurts anybody. No bounties or stealing.”
“Then I’ll leave you on Jenny,” Desmond said. “You’ve had the Union’s fist up your ass so long you can’t remember what the world’s like. Union tries to pretend like everything’s all good and the like, but it ain’t. If you don’t wanna be working under their collar then you’re either a farmer on some backend settler planet like Jenny or Nau Cedik, or you’re doing stuff under their nose with a vessel like
this here.”
“It’s not right,” Kendal said.
“Then what is?” Desmond asked. “Working for the Union? You’ve been doing the right thing for what, twenty-somethin’ years? Look where it’s gotten you. If you really wanna do the right thing go back to ‘em. See what happens.”
Desmond pushed his chair back and stood up. He apologized to Mira, who’d been sipping at her water and trying to pretend she wasn’t there, and left the room. Kendal wouldn’t see him until the next morning.
“You two gotta get away from each other’s necks,” Mira said. She stood up and put away her dishes. “Last thing we need is for me to have to kill one of you.”
Kendal nodded and watched her leave. Once again, the silence of the empty room took over.
I should just learn to keep my mouth shut, Kendal thought as he rested his head on the table and sighed. Only two weeks until Jenny.
Chapter 10
The hallway was serene. A tranquility flowed through Tayla as she walked towards Nova’s room. She was she was certain she wouldn’t feel this again for days and let herself enjoy it. No sounds or movement aside from her own footsteps and breathing. Even though she was moments away from meeting with the commander, and might very well be killed in her anger, Tayla knew how to live in the moment and let the upcoming uncertainty rest in the future where it belonged.
She stopped at Nova’s chamber, standing between the two mindless guards stationed on both sides of the door, and took a deep breath. She cleared her throat and straightened her blazer and skirt. No one else aboard would be permitted to dress casually, and she took advantage of such. Her appearance still struck of authority, yet she could feel proud looking in the mirror in the morning. Miles ahead of the tacky uniforms the commander had put together for her officers.
Without wasting another second, she knocked on the door.
A moment passed. Commander Nova never answered her door on the first try.
Such a terrible habit, Tayla thought and knocked again. Nothing.
Another knocking, then another, and soon the door shot open, making Tayla’s heart jolt.
The commander stood in the doorway. She was tall for a woman. Thin as a skeleton, and eyes dark and cold despite their green tint. She kept her head shaven, and insisted on wearing plain sleeveless shirts instead of a uniform.
Nova reminded Tayla of no one she’d ever known. Nothing about her was familiar, like being on strange world or seeing a color no one had ever seen before.
“You’ve been crying,” Nova said. She stepped aside to let Tayla into her room.
The room was pretty. The wall at the end was curved with a monitor that took up the whole of it, looking like a dome to the outside world. They were away from Nau Cedik, in the orbital path of Planet Two and heading back away from Union space to regroup.
“I was putting on my make-up and jabbed myself in the eye,” Tayla said, giving her best embarrassed smile.
“I’m sure,” Nova said. She sat at the couch in the corner of the room and opened a drink. “You were worried I would be livid about what happened on Nau Cedik.”
“Perhaps,” Tayla said, trying to keep her voice from wavering. Nova wasn’t one to tolerate failure, and despite Tayla having built more karma with her than she’d ever had with anyone in her life, there was this lingering fear that she wouldn’t live past this encounter.
“You told me it would work.” Nova was practically crushing the drink in her hand, and her voice had lowered to a growl. “You told me, and they told me, and you both lied.”
“It wasn’t a lie,” Tayla said, as quick as possible. “The machine worked flawlessly. It was an outside variable that got in the way.”
“And what variable was that? A person? The Union?”
“The planet wasn’t as dense as we assumed,” Tayla said. “No one has dug into Nau Cedik before, and everyone had assumed it was useless rock. We now know that the planet has many hollow caves and the ground collapsed before the machine could inflict the damage required to take the planet with it.”
“But what of the town?” Nova asked. She stood up and approached Tayla. “How is Benith Town?”
“It’s gone,” she said. “South Port only lost a few buildings, but there’s nothing left to Benith Town but a canyon.”
“Then it’s not a complete loss,” Nova said. “The point of the Nau Cedik disaster was to instill fear in the Union and make the people realize how weak they truly are. I have done neither of those, yet I’ve learned more about that machine than any of my scientists ever could have from their lazy analysis.”
Tayla tensed up and felt her mind slip. “You’re not going to kill the scientists, are you?”
Nova chuckled, yet a smile never crossed her lips. “I’ve never killed anyone,” she said.
Not with your own hands, you psychopathic fuck, Tayla thought before catching her true thoughts and suppressing them. “I understand.”
“We have one of those machines left,” Nova said. “And we going to use it. Tell the bridge to re-route the fleet to U4.”
“What?” Tayla said, immediately catching herself before she let too much slip. Don’t break, she reminded herself. “It’s too soon.”
Nova gave her a curious eye. “They won’t expect an attack so soon,” she said, noticeably put back and staring at Tayla in a new way.
Tayla knew she crossed a line. Nova was too smart for even the smallest slips. “I’m not sure I understand the strategy behind this, is all,” she said, trying to undo the damage she’d caused.
The truth is that Tayla was only a persona. A construct created by a Union officer who had been assigned to infiltrate Nova’s fleet and break them down from the inside, as well as submit intel back to the Union on a frequent basis. For any of this to work, Tayla had to convince herself she wasn’t part of the Union. She had created a persona to use around Nova, and spent months practicing it until she was almost convinced that she really was Tayla.
She had served under Nova every day for the past two years, gathering intel and pushing back to the current fleet admiral, and trying her best to push the odds out of Nova’s favor. Tayla had gained access to Nova’s personal chambers, but more than that, she had gained Nova’s trust. Tayla had almost constant opportunity to murder Nova, but the Union had yet to clear the order. Nova’s army was too devoted and strong to be toppled by one person. Tayla knew this, and the Union knew this. Tayla had gained enough trust after the first year to recruit new members into Nova’s army. Union members. A high percentage of Nova’s army was already Union, including one of the guards who stood outside Nova’s doorway, but it wasn’t enough. They needed to take on the fleet, and Tayla had been desperate to put Nova in such a scenario.
Being Tayla had started to become a strain. Cracks in her persona. Slips in her dialogue. All too risky for such an important assignment.
During the last week, since the Nau Cedik attack, it had become harder and harder to keep her true self buried when in the presence of Nova. She never cracked at the easy parts, such as pretended to care about her appearance, or pretending to care about Nova, or pretending to be scared of her. But others were difficult. Tayla felt the restrains crack as she watched Nova order her guards to beat incompetent officers to death in front of her. Tayla had struggled to keep the anger from her face. She kept reciting, ‘you are Tayla, you are Tayla’, over and over again in her mind. After hearing the news that thousands were killed on Nau Cedik, she had to hold back tears until she returned to her room where she put her fist through her bathroom mirror. She was only lucky that Nova never noticed that Tayla was wearing gloves for the first time in the two years they’d known each other to hide the cuts on her knuckles.
Nova got off her couch and walked over to Tayla. This was an appropriate time to show she was terrified. Nova’s walk was slow and careful, ending with her standing inches from Tayla and looking down at her.
“You must be exhausted from the events on Nau Cedik,” Nova said
, brushing a strand of hair out of Tayla’s face and tucking it back behind her ear. “Normally you’re far more clever than this.”
“I’m sorry,” Tayla whispered, and tilted her head to let Nova fix her hair.
“Too soon is the perfect time,” Nova said. “We would have to be insane to attack the Union while their forces are still together and on edge. We’d have to be irrational and terrible strategists. And, if I know what the Union knows of me, then they know that I’m not irrational, nor a terrible strategist. The idea won’t even cross their minds. They probably haven’t even considered it a possibility.”
You clever bitch. “It’s perfect,” Tayla said.
“I’m glad you agree,” Nova said.
“Yet, how do we avoid the same mistake as Nau Cedik? U4 is similarly hollow as well.”
“What mistake? Benith Town was completely destroyed. We put it down in the capital and the Union will become a body without a head. Desperately flailing until it keels over and dies.”
“Then the system will be free,” Tayla muttered, letting out a smile that came too easily for her own comfort.
“Exactly,” Nova said and turned her back to walk away. “Now go. Let the bridge know of my orders.”
Tayla nodded. Nova laid down in her bed and didn’t pay any mind as Tayla left the room and shut the door behind her. She wanted to scream. She wanted to go back into Nova’s room and stab her in the neck. Instead, she went to the bridge and ordered an attack on the city where she had grown up. The city where her parents, and her brother, and her daughter, and her husband, still lived.
Chapter 11
Nau Cedik nights were shorter than the nights on the ship. Mira stirred in her bed during the late hours of the night, trying to keep herself asleep. Part of her insomnia was nerves. They’d be landing on Jenny that day and Mira couldn’t keep her thoughts quiet.
She spent the remainder of the night trying her hardest to sleep until she heard the beeping that signaled morning.
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