Lady Luck

by K. C. Cross

  Which is a pretty adorable combination.

  “Where the hell are you going?” he asks.

  “I was going to talk to Baby ALCOR but he won’t talk to me.”

  Luck stops in my autocook in the kitchenette and starts pressing buttons. A few moments later I smell brewing coffee. “Do you like him?” he asks.

  “Who?”

  “The Baby.”

  “I don’t know. Should I like him?”

  “I kinda like him. I think he’s doing a decent job. It wasn’t his fault all those people died when Real ALCOR left.”

  “Left?” I say.

  “Died,” Luck amends. “Whatever.”

  “Hmm.”

  He plucks two mugs of coffee out of the autocook and walks over to offer me one. I take the mug and he smiles at me. “Do you think he’s really dead?”

  “Real ALCOR?” I say, squinting my eyes at Luck.

  “Yeah. Because if what you say is true—that information can’t be killed, and he was nothing but information—then do you think that’s what Tray and Valor are doing inside the Pleasure Prison?”

  Wow. This is some deep thought for first thing in the morning. “I don’t know, Luck.”

  “But aren’t you curious?”

  “Do you need Real ALCOR anymore? I mean, you have the Baby, you have the Asshole, and you’ve got all those security beacons out in space. What’s the point?”

  Luck considers my question thoughtfully. Takes a sip of his coffee. “He’s one of us. I guess that’s the point. And if I were missing, or Serpint were missing, or Valor, or Tray, or Jimmy or Crux… he’d come looking for us. I know that for sure. He’d never stop until he found us.”

  “Draden’s missing,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Luck says. He sinks down into the cushions of my couch and stares at the mug in his hands. “So’s Beauty.”

  “Beauty,” I say. “Your old bot.”

  “Our old partner,” he says, glancing up at me with a little heat in his eyes. “And Ceres, too.” I don’t know who Ceres is. The name is familiar, but I can’t place it. So Luck adds, “Serpint’s old partner. Died with Draden.”

  “Well, either people can die or they can’t,” I say.

  “Right,” he says. “But I kinda hope that’s what Tray and Valor are working on in the Prison. Because it would be nice to get them all back.”

  I want to… I don’t know. Agree with him. Or even build on that dream he’s dreaming and get behind it. But I can’t. Because it’s not logical. Or helpful. For him or anyone else who’s lost someone they love.

  So I say, “I don’t think that’s what they’re doing.”

  “Can you find out for me?” he asks.

  We lock eyes for a moment. His are sizzling. Little flickers of pink underneath the violet.

  “That’s… number six.”

  “Six what?”

  “Six things I need to think about today. You want a lot of things, by the way. You want to know why Tray and Valor are hanging out. You want to know what they’re up to inside the Pleasure Prison. And now you want to know if people really die?”

  “It’s really just one thing, Nyleena. It’s all related. So what’s one through five?” he says.

  “Same as yesterday,” I reply.

  “Right,” he says, sighing. “Your quest to get a ship.”

  “I know you think it’s stupid and—”

  “I don’t think it’s stupid, Nyleena.”

  “You don’t?”

  He shakes his head. “In fact, I had an idea last night. Would you like me to show you around Lady Luck? So you can understand what it takes to be responsible for something so powerful?”

  “You’d do that?” I ask, surprised at the offer.

  He shrugs. “Whether you stay or you go, either way you’re part of me now. And Lady is part of us. So you need to know her the way I do.”

  “Hmm,” I say.

  “What?”

  “That’s just very nice of you. Should I fuck you in return?”

  He smiles, then frowns. Looking down at his cocks. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Doesn’t look that way to me.” I laugh.

  “I can jerk off,” he says. “I’ve been waking up to this since I was a teenager. I can deal alone.” Then he stops to stare at me. It’s a long, concentrated stare that starts to make me uncomfortable when it lingers. “That’s not why I like you around.”

  “You sure about that? Because you’ve told me it is dozens of times over the past few months.”

  “It’s convenient,” he says. And not as a joke because he’s not even smiling. “But lots of things are convenient and you can still live without them. You…” He shakes his head again. “I don’t think I could live without you anymore.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - LUCK

  My little declaration feels wrong.

  Inevitable, for sure. But a little premature, maybe. Nyleena and I are bound together whether we want it to be that way or not. And I’m not sure this is just something you can walk away from.

  My life before Nyleena is over. That’s very clear. And if she leaves I will miss her in a way I don’t fully understand yet.

  “Let me clarify,” I say. Because she’s just staring at me with this what-the-fuck look on her face. “I’m not saying I love you or anything. I barely know you. But you’re here, and I’m here, and we’re together now. We are part of something now. So that’s what I mean when I don’t think I can live without you anymore.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she hums. “I see.”

  “I’m not gonna stop you if you do manage to get that ship and leave. That’s why I’m gonna help you. But even if you do leave I don’t think you’ll stay gone long.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you need me.”

  She smiles, looking down at my rock-hard cocks. “I think you need me more than I need you.”

  “Like I said. Having you around to take care of my needs is convenient. But not necessary.”

  She scowls. “Well, that’s romantic.”

  I hold up a hand. “I’m just saying… I want you around because we’re a team. Not for the sex.”

  “So you don’t want to fuck me right now?”

  I stand up, walk towards her, then continue right past her. “I’m gonna take a shower. I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “By the way,” I say, stopping in front of her autoshopper on my way back to the bedroom. “You didn’t even notice your delivery.”

  “What delivery?”

  “Xyla’s closet,” I say, then take a sip of my coffee while she gawks at the autoshopper stuffed full of clothes and boots.

  She looks at me and smiles.

  “See, I can be romantic. Order me some clothes, will ya? I don’t feel like going home to grab some. You might go off and do something crazy if I don’t keep my eye on you.”

  Then I wink and walk off.

  It’s nice having Nyleena around to have sex whenever the need calls. But I’m being honest when I say that’s not the best part. Maybe it was a few days ago, but ever since she started this whole mission to leave things have changed.

  Is it because I’m afraid she actually will leave? Or is it because she has a new spark to her and I’m kinda included in this spark?

  I think a little of both.

  When I get out of the shower my hard-ons are gone. I told her I knew how to take care of myself and I do. But she did pick me clothes. She even laid them out on the bed for me.

  Dark blue tactical pants. Dark blue t-shirt—probably a size too small, but it shows off my muscles, so who’s complaining? She even got me socks.

  We take the private elevator down to my docking bay where Lady Luck lives when we’re on the station. She’s a sleek yellow bombshell of a ship and I love her. Everyone laughed at us when she got the new paint job, but we just smiled. Yellow says, Here we come, motherfuckers. Get ready.

  “Well, she sure i
s bright,” Nyleena says as we pull on envirosuits to enter the vacuum in the docking bay.

  “Out in space she’s so small in the grand scheme of things it hardly matters.”

  Nyleena stops tugging on her suit for a moment to stare through the window. “Yeah,” she finally says. “We’re very small out there, aren’t we?”

  “Practically meaningless,” I reply. “Lady is not moody like Booty,” I tell Nyleena. “Or driven like Dicker. She’s a very calm ship. She likes words and emotions. So everything about Lady comes down to feelings. I like that about her. Her voice is interesting and her opinions unique.”

  “What do you do?” Nyleena asks. “Out there?”

  “Why? You trying to picture yourself as a salvager?”

  “Maybe,” she says.

  “Put your helmet on and I’ll show you what we do.”

  I help her with the snap tabs and then she helps me. That’s not something Valor and I ever did.

  It feels intimate and nice.

  We cycle through the bay airlocks, walk over to Lady, then climb the stairs and wait inside her airlocks until the door security lights finally flash green, indicating there’s enough atmosphere to breathe, then we help each other take the helmets off.

  “Wow,” Nyleena says. “This is quite fancy.”

  “Thank you,” Lady says, her voice very soft and feminine for such a practical ship. “I designed it myself.”

  “I like it,” Nyleena says.

  “Lady, this is my princess, Nyleena. Nyleena, meet my queen, Lady.”

  Lady chuckles. So does Nyleena.

  I want them to like each other, I realize. Lady is very important to me so her opinion of Nyleena counts. It counts a lot.

  “I’m showing Nyleena around,” I explain to Lady. “Because pretty soon she’ll be the proud owner of her own sentient ship.”

  “Exciting,” Lady says. “Have you ever been responsible for a ship before?”

  “No,” Nyleena says a little stiffly.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I promise. This isn’t a set-up to talk you out of it. It’s just a crash course in everything you need to know.”

  “OK,” Nyleena says.

  “So… ask her anything.”

  “Well…” Nyleena looks around. The interior of Lady isn’t anything like the interior of any other sentient ship I’ve ever been in. It feels like a home, not a salvage ship. The walls are all painted a very pale yellow and the trim is white. Even the cockpit has this color scheme. The chairs are soft leather and the console is silver. There is nothing dark about my Lady at all. Everything is bright and cheerful.

  Not a manly ship, for sure. But she’s not a man, is she?

  Why should she give up who she is for me?

  “OK,” Nyleena says, her wits gathered up enough to ask a question. “What’s it like to work for Luck?”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Yeah. I want to know. Because how your partners see you is important. Is he moody? Or easy-going? Does he yell? Or talk softly? Is he fair? Or unreasonable?”

  “He’s all of that,” Lady replies.

  “Thanks a lot.” I laugh.

  “At times,” Lady continues, “Luck is just… big.”

  “What do you mean?” Nyleena asks.

  “When he’s in the room, he’s the only mind in the room. Even when Valor was with us, Luck’s opinion mattered more because his picture is big.”

  Nyleena shoots me a confused look.

  “Yeah,” I say. “She’s not a very straightforward ship. Believe me, she runs a million possible word combinations through her brain before she decides on a sentence. So you really have to ask the right question if you need a quick answer.”

  “I don’t need to say much,” Lady says. “I mostly run in the background and it’s very easy to forget I’m here. So when I do speak I like to make you remember me.”

  “Hmm,” Nyleena says. “You’re a poet.”

  If Lady had a face she’d be smiling. “Yes. I like that word a lot. I’m a… poet.”

  “I hope I get a poet,” Nyleena muses.

  This hurts a little. I can’t explain it because I wasn’t lying when I told her that this visit isn’t about talking her out of owning her own sentient ship.

  “There are no other poet ships,” Lady says. “I’m the only one.”

  “I like that answer a lot,” I say.

  We spend the next few hours going over the Lady’s parts starting with the cockpit. I can’t teach Nyleena how to fly a ship in one morning, but I can give a general idea of what to do if something goes wrong. That mostly involves tapping the emergency life support tab on the screen. I teach her how to send and receive messages, especially neutrino waves. Because that’s how the important ones come in.

  I show her the salvage units, and the water generator, and the autocook. Then we go through weapons systems and I explain the necessity for a bot or a borg.

  Nyleena stops me to ask a lot of questions about this. “What if I just want to go alone?”

  “You want to go out there alone?”

  “I’ll have the ship. Won’t that be enough?”

  “Do you think it’ll be enough?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she admits.

  “Forget about liking the bots or the borgs. What if you don’t like your ship?”

  “Hmm. I guess I didn’t think this through, did I?”

  “You’re not leaving tonight, Nyleena. Even if you do solve Crux’s problem and he keeps his end of the bargain. You need to think this through very carefully. Forget about how great things will be once you have the freedom of a powerful ship like Lady and instead think about how horrible it could be if you and the ship don’t respect and like each other. Imagine floating out there in the deep dark, just you and this ship. And you hate each other’s guts.”

  “Will it kill me?”

  “It could kill you any moment of any day. And sure, there would be consequences, but it doesn’t change the fact that you place your life in the hands of a powerful being when you take responsibility for a ship like Lady.”

  “You’re trying to talk me out of this.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “I promise. I’m just giving you a little reality check.” I take her hand and hold it. “I want you to be safe. That’s all.”

  “So I need to interview bots.” She frowns. “How do I pay them?”

  “Well, what will your mission be?”

  “To kill people, of course. Bad people, to be clear.”

  “Unless you find a bot or a borg that has the same mission you do, you have to have a real job. Like salvaging. We go out, find parts for the station, and we get paid when we get back.”

  “You own this place, it’s different.”

  I shrug. “I still work, don’t I?”

  “I’m not calling you lazy, Luck. I’m just saying… we’re different.”

  We stare at each other for a moment. Locked in a realization of sorts.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” I say. “But I have two good reasons for that. One, we’re partners now. If you leave, you should leave with me. And two, I’ll worry about you, Nyleena. I will. I’ll never stop worrying about you.” Then I pause. Because I have one more thing to say. “Come with me.”

  “Come with you?” she asks. And she makes a face. “To rummage through junkyards? I’m not saying your job isn’t important, I’m just saying… I’m not sure that’s how I see my life.”

  “Fair enough,” I say. “But I was taught how to survive out there by the best. Real ALCOR spent years training us to leave the station. We started when we were teenagers. It was almost a decade after we came here to live with him before he thought we were ready. You have had no training, Nyleena. And there’s no one in charge of you. No one who can say, ‘That’s a bad idea. Don’t do it.’ Not anyone you’ll listen to. How long will it take you to learn to trust your ship? And then how long after that before you decide it gives advice worth listening to?”


  “You make good points,” she says, sighing. “But… I just don’t see myself as part of your team, Luck. I’m sorry.” She looks around at Lady’s interior. “This is your life, not mine.”

  “You don’t even know what I do,” I say.

  “I know enough. That’s not my plan. I know that’s not a great answer, but it’s true.”

  “Then what is your plan? And don’t say kill people. That’s dumb. You can’t live a life based on revenge.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just told you. It’s dumb.”

  “You’re dumb,” she snaps. “I can do whatever I want. I’m a goddamned silver princess.”

  “What does that mean? Exactly?”

  “It means I have power. That’s what.”

  “Power to do what?”

  “Whatever I want.”

  “To kill people?”

  “Lots of people,” she says. Then lifts her chin up in royal haughtiness. “I can blow up worlds if I want to.”

  “And kill yourself in the process.”

  “Sometimes it’s worth it.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know yet. But they made me this way for a reason, didn’t they?”

  “To blow up places like Harem Station, Nyleena.”

  “I’m not going to blow up Harem Station,” she huffs. “Now you’re the one being dumb.”

  “Whatever,” I say, standing up. “You ready to go then? Because I am.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be what you want. I’m just… my own person now. I spent my whole life waiting for this kind of freedom. I’m not ready to give it up to scour junkyards with you.”

  “Right,” I mutter. And head to the ladder to climb back up to the main level.

  Because that’s not what I do.

  But I don’t say that out loud. What’s the point?

  Nyleena has a plan and even though I think it’s a lot more than just killing people for revenge, she’s not interested in building a partnership with me.

  Bringing her here was a mistake.

  And asking her to join me… an even bigger mistake.

  If she doesn’t need me then fuck it.

  I don’t need her either.