by David Ryker
I stayed where I was for the flight — it was a relatively short one in comparison to the last jaunt we did — only a few hours. When we got within spitting distance of our drop point, where we dropped out of hyperdrive, Everett appeared in the cockpit, her usual gray Federation fatigues replaced by a pair of casual jeans and boots, and a bomber jacket with a worn fur collar. Her hair was pulled back and braided under a woolen cap. Everyone stared at her as she came in, satchel over her shoulder and a pistol holstered on her thigh. She folded her arms.
Mac, as usual, spoke first. “Did I not get the memo about casual Friday?” He smirked, paused for a second, and then turned to Fish, who’d made a little noise. “No, I know it’s Tuesday — It’s a… You know, never mind.” He waved Fish off, and went back to Everett. “So, what’s with the get-up?”
Everett sighed and looked down. “We need to be incognito, MacCalister. We’re not supposed to be operating there, remember?”
“Yeah, so why are you dressed for ops?”
Volchec span round in her chair like a supervillain. “Because she’s running point on this one. She’ll be in the field with you.”
We all stared at Volchec. Everett stayed on the ship — that was her role. She was the showrunner.
“But why?” Mac didn’t like change, and deviations from plans meant that things were difficult to anticipate. He’d never worked with Everett in the field, none of us had. She’d always been on the ship, doing recon and keeping us alive. The closest she’d come to field work was heading to the spaceport on Telmareen — at least since she’d finished her stint in the ground troops before she was promoted on the Falmouth.
“Because,” Volchec said, “we’re headed to Notia, and it’s the station that Everett grew up on.”
I stiffened in my chair and looked at Everett, and then back at Volchec. She didn’t seem too perturbed by that idea, so I wondered how much she knew.
Volchec cleared her throat. “We’ve got to stay quiet here, and with the corruption going on in Telmareen, and with Notia’s municipal force turning a blind eye, we have to wonder how connected the Free are there — whether they’ve wormed their way into the Trading Collective. If we announce that we’re arriving and doing this op, ask for their help, then it could get back to Smith, and then he’s gone.”
“So what’s the official story?” Alice asked.
“That the Federation are respecting the wishes of the Trading Collective and leaving well alone,” Everett said.
“And the actual story?” I cut in this time.
“That we’re heading into Notia under the guise of traders. While the Collective won’t take kindly to Federation pilots coming onboard, they’ll welcome a new merchant with some rare goods to pedal. And it’s not uncommon for merchants to hire mercs as muscle, and especially not ones with Mech. I’ll pose as the trader, and you guys will be my guards.” Everett forced a smile. “We’ll get the lay of the land, and then, when we know where we are—”
“We kill Smith.” Volchec cut in, her voice grave. “If you can grab him without killing him, then we’ll see what information we can squeeze, but Smith does not leave Notia. You got that?” She looked at each of us in turn, not content until we nodded. “Everett’s going to be first off the ship. She’ll head to the Trading Collective office, register herself as a temporary merchant, get the documents we need to be there, and then come back. It’ll give us a good opportunity to see what we can see, too, get a feel for things there. Everett knows Notia, and if anything’s amiss, she’ll have the best chance of spotting it.”
Everett nodded. “Right. We’ve got to keep to ourselves, not rush this. If anyone on Notia knows realizes what we’re doing it’ll be a galactic goddamn incident.”
“It’s taken a lot of pull to get us this job, and we need it to go right. So none of the cowboy shit we had on Telmareen — no more fuckups.” Volchec looked at me as she said the last bit and I tried not take it personally, though it was hard not to. I vowed to prove her wrong, and not to screw everything up. Again.
“We stick to our objective, we don’t take risks, and when we see Smith, we report back, we get our heads together, and we tackle this like an actual unit of special operatives, alright? If anyone does anything without Everett’s or my say so, you’re out on your ass. You got that?”
We all nodded.
Volchec sighed. “Alright. We’ll be dropping out of hyper in a few minutes. The last thing — Everett’s got to go to the trade office, but we don’t send anyone anywhere alone. Someone needs to go with her.”
“I’ll go,” I said quickly, standing straight off the chair. I made a strangulated noise as the harness snapped tight around my chest and slammed me back into my seat, the hinged chair clapping straight again.
Everyone looked at me curiously. Everett rolled her eyes and sighed and Alice cracked a smirk before turning back in her seat to face front.
Mac laughed outright. “Smooth, Red. Real smooth.”
12
The ramp lowered itself, smacking against the steel floor of the hangar.
Everett stepped off just before it did, landing and springing forward at a brisk pace. I had to chase after her to keep up, drawing level only as she made up the steps towards the inner airlock.
She hit the pad with her fist so hard that it didn’t register the push. She growled under her breath and jabbed it with her knuckles instead. It didn’t take a detective to work out that being back on Notia had her on edge. She may know the place, but that didn’t mean she was happy to be back.
It turned green and the door chugged across, revealing a box beyond. We stepped in, listening as the rusted door squeaked on its runners. Stepping into anything that wasn’t Federation owned was a culture shock. When we’d dropped out of hyperdrive, I was expecting to see a shining structure with droids buzzing around it like insects, keeping the paint pristine and the façade clean. Notia was a different sort of place altogether. When we came up on it, I didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t one station, but fifty, all bolted and sewn together, a Frankenstein’s monster of space junk, old repurposed ships, satellite parts, and everything else that could be used for living space. It was circled by a halo of trash — old discarded bits of debris that had been jettisoned but were light enough to remain in its gravitational field.
We pushed through the outer section of that debris field, watching as bits of frozen fruit splattered on the windscreen, as well as pieces of plastic and other flotsam.
Though, despite all its charm, Everett still looked pissed as hell.
The door groaned closed behind us and hissed, forming a seal.
I swallowed. “So…” I said nervously.
She scoffed. “So?”
“Hey, look — I just want to say that, whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.” I stepped forward and turned towards her, trying to catch her icy stare. “If this is about Alice—”
“You honestly have no clue, about anything, do you?” She glared at me now.
I sighed and pulled my lips into a line. “Not really, no.” I tried to look sincere, because I was being it. “I didn’t grow up around people — around girls. Genesis wasn’t exactly a Federation academy, and neither was it a trading hub — it was a spit of dust in the middle of nowhere, filled with broken-down droids and bio-farmers who wanted nothing to do with the offspring they reared. You know a computer screen taught me to talk, and read, and—”
Everett’s face softened and she looked at me with something akin to pity. A pang of self-hatred sprang up in my throat. I wanted her to understand, not to think I was pathetic.
“Red,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Jesus, it’s not that. I know you’ve got the social skills of a potato. I knew that from the moment I met you. Hell, most tubers are the same — no offense.”
“None taken.”
“But what you have over every other one I’ve ever met—”
“Yeah?” I started smiling.
“Is the total inab
ility to see past yourself. You’re so wrapped up in this woe is me routine, so fixated on how everyone else thinks of you, whether they like you, that you end up shitting on everyone that actually does.” Her voice wasn’t harsh. It was soft, sweet, like she was delivering a truth she knew would hurt — and it did.
I swallowed the lump in my throat but it wouldn’t budge. It was like someone had the heel of their boot pressed to it. “I’m… What did I do?”
She rubbed her eyes, looking up at the progress bar above the door as it moved slowly toward achieving a full seal. The hydraulics here were ancient, the seals worn through practically. “Last night — I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen, because I’m glad it did. I’ve known you a year now, and I know who you are — who you really are, and I don’t just do that with anyone — you know that. We’ve been living under each other's feet for the entire time we’ve been on this crew. And I don’t do things impulsively, either. It was right, and the time was right, and it’s not something I regret—”
“Me either.”
“Don’t cut in, Red—”
“Sorry.”
She scowled. “This is what I’m talking about. You think you know what people are saying, what they’re thinking, before you’ve got the whole story. You need to start thinking — stop jumping in before you know where you’re landing.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Mostly from my own voice inside my head, but I wasn’t going to say that.
“This morning, I got up and left — I thought, for a second, that everything would be fine. That you wouldn’t need telling, but when I started to think about it, I realized that the risk was too great. So I came back in and wrote that note.”
“The risk of anyone finding out?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” I said. That hurt a little.
“Why do you think that I didn’t want anyone to find out? Why do you think I don’t?”
I swallowed. “Because you’re embarrassed of me?”
She laughed a little. “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You know fraternization between squad-mates is against Federation military law, don’t you?” She arched an eyebrow. “They don’t mind us finding each other from across battalions or in different corps, but when it’s in your own…” She shook her head. “It’s a distraction. The bylaws say that there’s an undue risk to disregard orders in order to aid the person that you’re close to. You know what they do if they find out you’re having relations with someone on your squad?”
“Uh, ejection?”
She screwed her face up. “What? No, they don’t kill you for being in a relationship. Jesus, Red, they’re strict, not deranged. No, they move you to a different squad.”
“Oh.”
“Oh is right. So if it gets out, that means one of us is getting booted off the team. And, considering that I have seniority…”
“It’ll be me.” I sighed. “Shit. I… I didn’t realize.”
“You never do,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not embarrassed of you, or ashamed of what happened. I’m glad it did. But you need to get out of your own goddamn head. We need to keep it quiet, because if we don’t, then you’re out on your ass, and back to insurgency with the Mech Corps.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“And one last word of advice, Red.”
“Yeah?” I wasn’t sure I could take any more life lessons.
“Leave Alice alone.” She stared at me for a few seconds, the progress bar finally creeping up to full seal. “I’m not saying that out of jealousy, or anything like that, okay?” She lowered her head to make sure I was looking her right in the eyes. “Don’t mistake this for anything other than what it is—”
“An order?”
“I’m not ordering you to do anything. Take this as solid advice from a friend who’s been down this road. She’s a different kind of animal to you, Red — to us — and you’ll be better off getting over this fixation you have. You guys need to have each other's backs, and you need to have your mind on the mission. You can’t do that if you’re thinking with something other than your head.” She took a breath and set her jaw, waiting for me to confirm that I got all that.
“A friend?” I asked.
“What?”
“You said advice from a friend — is that what we are, friends?”
She sighed. “That’s what you got from what I just said?” She shook her head and swore under her breath. “Yeah, Red — when we’re not working, we’re friends. When we are, I’m your superior, and that’s all there is to it. So get your act together, because this whole lost pity-me act you’ve got going isn’t what I want covering my ass when the bullets start flying.” The door squealed open and she stepped through it and took off at a brisk pace.
Notia was huge, and not unlike the Athena, if it’d been built out of old bits of scrap. The central section was a long and wide column of space. The ground floor was filled entirely by a shanty town of shops, bazaars, cafes, bars, and a few establishments that would have interested Mac. All around the walls, habs were stacked on top of each other, connected by a maze of catwalks suspended on cables angled off the walls. Floating buildings nestled between the paths that crisscrossed over the huge space like a huge spider web. The whole place was buzzing with energy and hundreds of thousands of bodies, humanoid and otherwise, moved like a constant sea, seething through Notia.
We came out of a corridor on one of the lower levels and stopped at a large raised promenade that ran around the column’s outer edge, about thirty meters over the packed makeshift town on the ground floor. The smells of a hundred street food vendors rose upward, the lines of stream dissipating as they rose. High above, I could see that the top floors were packed out with greenery.
Everett followed my gaze. “All the hot air from down here rises,” she said, almost nostalgically. “The ceiling is a translucent polymer, but it’s not a great insulator. The steam collects at the top and condenses against the surface, creating moisture. Combine that with starlight and you get algae, moss — there’s a lot of hanging gardens up there where merchants cultivate some of their own crops. The quality doesn’t rival that of what you can get down here, brought in from dedicated farms, but when you’re going hungry, it’ll more than do.”
I knew she was speaking from experience, but I didn’t say anything about it. I wondered how it felt for her to be back, especially considering the pretenses that she’d left under. Was she dreading it? Happy? Her lineless face was like a mask, impossible to read. There was no doubt that Volchec knew this was where Everett was from, but I didn’t know if she knew the truth, or whether Everett had given her a story. Hell, I didn’t know if she’d given me one. There was no way to tell, but I didn’t think so. She had her knuckles around the flaking rail, white with the strength of her grip. I thought about putting my hand on top of hers, but decided against it. We were friends. Colleagues. And she’d said not five minutes before that I needed to be less impulsive. I guessed that started with not doing everything that popped into my mind the second it did.
“You ready to go?” she said, pulling her eyes from the network of catwalks above.
I nodded. “Sure, lead on.”
The Trading Collective’s headquarters was off the main column and was accessed via a wide corridor that would have been comfortable accommodating a Mech or Wint. Everett had said that Notia was largely inhabited by humanoids, but that several colonies of larger species used it for trade, too. It was centrally located between three nearby systems and was along the hyperdrive paths that linked a few more distant planets and stations, too. As such, there were all shapes and sizes passing through. More than you could ever imagine, she said. I didn’t doubt it.
The route there was blocked by a security checkpoint that everyone had to pass through before they were allowed in, and we funneled into a line of people funneling through a security gate. People had to empty their pockets and put their stuff on a conveyor
belt before stepping through a screening tunnel and collecting it on the other side. Two Notia guards with pistols on their belts, a Polgarian and a droid dressed in navy jumpsuits with the Trading Collective logo on their shoulder, a golden spiral, were pulling people out of line and wanding them over, asking for ID.
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked ahead at it, feeling my Arcram pressing against my ribs under my jacket.
“What is it?” Everett asked, turning half on, trying to look casual and not draw attention to us.
“I’ve got an Arcram strapped to my ribs,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
She pulled open her jacket. “Me too. I’m a merchant, and you’re my escort. We’re fully licensed, don’t worry. Carrying’s not illegal… so long as you’ve got the right permits. ”
“I don’t have a permit,” I mumbled, trying not to catch the eyes of the guards.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve got them, dumbass. You think I’d trust you to get your own?” She laughed a little and shook her head. “Come on, we need to get this done.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and followed her toward the gate. She unstrapped her pistol and took off her jacket, putting them in a tray before pushing them down the belt, flashing a signed certificate at the droid, who nodded back.
I followed suit and stepped after her into the tunnel.
She took one step, and it lit up, flashing.
The Polgarian was on her, his fist around her collar, pulling her out of line.
“Hey!” I yelled, trying to go after her. The droid’s hand found my chest and it was like getting hit with a hammer.
Everett waved me off and the droid pushed me back into line.
The Polgarian ordered her to stand on an ‘X’ taped to the floor and get her arms out. She shot me a glance that told me it was fine, and the droid shoved me into the tunnel. I grabbed my pistol, and Everett’s, and stepped around the tunnel to see what was happening beyond the barrier.