"I hope this works." Dewey held onto the back of one of the chairs to brace himself.
Jake, still craning his neck to see toward the rear half of the ship, clenched his fist. "Yes! Got it."
Sarah dropped the front shields as Jake had directed her to do. They were pulling away from the asteroid even as it tumbled closer to the ship's hull.
Jake realized the ship wouldn't clear the path of the asteroid completely. "Oh, shit."
A massive boom sounded as the giant charged space rock struck the hull at the ship's rear. Flashes of light filled the window and lit up the bridge of the ship. The impact knocked Jake, Tiffin, and Dewey to the floor.
He glanced up to the viewing window and saw the asteroid swing into view. The force from the blow had pushed the ship thirty degrees around, but the rear of the ship was now clear of the rock's path. Jake, still on his back, watched the asteroid crackle with arcs of energy. The entire rock began to glow and flicker erratically.
"Oh, that's not good," Jake said.
Tiffin rolled over to see what Jake was talking about. "Why's it doing that?"
"The impact must've set it off," Jake said.
Dewey sat up and looked to the window. "What happened to 'ease away'?"
"I just put the shields back up," Sarah said. "But I don't think they'll stop the blast."
Tiffin turned to Jake. "The blast? What did you do, Jake?"
"Take it easy," he said. "There's a fifty-fifty chance it hops to somewhere else. Disappears, I mean."
"And if it doesn't?" Dewey asked.
"Then it explodes and we all die," Jake said, sitting up and shrugging.
"What!" Tiffin scooted a few feet away from the window.
Jake cocked his head to the side as he looked through the window at the surging asteroid. "Maybe it's more like sixty-forty." He watched the giant glowing rock for a few more seconds. "Dewey, any chance you're seeing the future on this one?"
"No," Dewey said. "But I'm pretty sure you're going to get us all killed soon enough, if this one doesn't do it."
The glow of the asteroid brightened.
Jake shielded his eyes with his hand.
"I guess this is it," Dewey said, staring at the floor.
The light dimmed.
"Yes! That's great!" Tiffin stood up.
"How can you say that?" Dewey asked.
Jake looked out the window and smiled.
The asteroid was gone.
He looked at Tiffin. "See. I told you to trust me."
Sarah's voice came through the overhead speaker. "Ugh."
Tiffin stared at Jake. She shook her head as she took a few steps back from him.
Jake reached out his arm toward her. "Tiffin!"
Reaching the edge of the control panels behind her, she leaned back against them. "What?" She sounded annoyed. She placed her hands, palms down beside her waist, against the controls.
Jake glanced at her left hand, which was over a toggle switch. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words came out. He hurried closer to the large crystal window and looked out. "Oh, no."
"Oh, no, what?" Dewey said. "I can't take this."
"The piece of the asteroid," Jake said. "I grabbed a chunk of it before it disappeared."
No one said anything.
Jake nodded toward the toggle switch Tiffin had inadvertently flipped. "With that robotic arm on the side of the ship."
"We could've died," Tiffin said.
Jake turned around and looked at Tiffin and Dewey. "I told you, that stuff's useful."
"She's right, Jake," Sarah said.
Jake grinned. "Can't blame me for being optimistic and trying to come out ahead."
Jake was met with silent stares.
"Well," Sarah said. "I think this is going to work out really well."
Chapter 6
"Hand me that. Would you?" Tiffin pulled her arm out from behind the metal tubes, her head and shoulders were still buried beneath them. She pointed blindly toward a pile of several tools on the floor beside Dewey's feet.
He glanced at them. "Which one?"
"The small bluish box with the torch part sticking out." Tiffin shook her hand, opening and closing her fingers as if grasping for the item."
Dewey knelt and retrieved the handheld torch from the pile.
"Here," he said, placing it into the palm of her hand.
"Thanks," she said from behind the thick metal tubing. She took the small torch into the opening of the wall along the ship's central corridor. A second later the small focused flame lit up the crawlspace.
The light danced out around the sides of the pipes and through the clusters of wires surrounding it. A few moments later, she flipped the switch on the top of the torch, turning it off.
She backed out of the space on her hands and knees, glancing behind her as her head cleared the opening where the wall paneled had been removed. She saw Dewey staring down at her, but his gaze didn't connect with her eyes.
"Dewey?" She said. "Are you okay?"
He looked at her face and shook his head slightly. "Oh, yes. Sorry."
She gathered the other tools and stood up, holding them in a jumble with both hands in front of her stomach. "Could you put the panel back?"
Dewey looked at the rectangular sheet of polished metal. "Yeah. No problem." He picked it up and placed it over the opening in the wall, pushing it inward until the corner clips on the inside clamped into place.
"Thanks," Tiffin said. "You wanna help me put these back?" She glanced down at the tools she held.
"Right," Dewey said. "Let me take some of those." He reached for the tools in her hands, but when he clumsily grabbed one of them he caused her to drop the others. "Oh. Sorry."
He bent down to pick them up, but so did Tiffin. They bumped foreheads.
Dewey stood. "I—"
"It's fine. You stay here. I'll go down to get them." She smiled and he averted his eyes erratically.
"I guess I'm clumsy," he said.
Tiffin stood up with the tools once again. She nodded toward the end of the hall. "Come on. You can get the door for me. I have the tools."
They walked down the ship's main corridor until they reached the tool storage room. Dewey let her in and stood by as she put everything back in its place. He leaned casually against one of the shelves, but somehow missed the edge of the shelf with his elbow as he tried to brace himself. He followed through with his head, striking his forehead on the shelf above.
Tiffin glanced over her shoulder and saw him rubbing his head. She turned away again to conceal her snickering. After repositioning a couple of items on the shelves to give him a few seconds to recover, she turned around. "All finished here. I'm going to check on Squeakers. Want to join me?"
Dewey stared at her for a second before answering. "He's in your room. Isn't he?"
"Well, yes. You don't think Jake would let him run around the ship. Do you? You're funny."
The blue of Dewey's face lightened. He looked uncomfortable. "I should… the bridge. Jake. Don't you think?"
Tiffin smiled and glanced away from Dewey for a second. "Yeah. Okay. Meet me in the lounge after."
Dewey nodded. "You're right."
Tiffin stared at him, but he didn't say anything else. She held up her hand, implying a goodbye wave.
Dewey stood perfectly still as Tiffin walked out of the room.
Chapter 7
Tiffin stood in front of the wall of clear reinforced crystal taking in the view of possibilities. "There's so many." Growing up on the space-station city of Eon, she'd heard of distant planets and far flung systems from travelers, passers by on the streets she called home. Seeing them now, knowing she might visit any one of them before too long—to make a cargo delivery with Jake—made her wonder what sort of places they were. "Sarah."
"Yes, Tiffin?"
Sarah had been keeping her company while Jake dealt with something on the bridge and Dewey, who was supposed to meet Tiffin, had been called
to help. Sarah didn't say more when she relayed word to Tiffin through the comm speaker in the lounge.
"They're not all...like Eon, are they?"
"No," Sarah said. "Some, sure...but out there, well, it's vast. There are all kinds of places."
Tiffin tried to imagine what they might be like, but all she had ever known was Eon. She pictured some of the different visitors to Eon she'd seen over the years. The space station metropolis served as a cross-roads of sorts, bringing hundreds of distinct intelligent—or semi-intelligent—species into its port every orbital cycle, but despite seeing them walking the streets and doing their business in the city's markets or the shadowy back alleys, she realized she knew little of their respective cultures. The fact that she mostly kept to herself, a necessity to survive on Eon as a young girl with no one to look after her, never gave her much of a chance to learn what life was like beyond the underworld-heavy city in the stars.
Tiffin glanced at the camera on the ceiling, knowing Sarah could see her through it. "The deliveries...are they mostly to...safe places?"
Sarah audibly exhaled, before answering. "I think most places are a mixed lot. If a person is careful, takes care of business and tries to avoid any trouble, cargo drops can be reasonably safe."
"So, Jake doesn't have trouble that often? Things got pretty serious on Eon."
"I know," Sarah said. "I can't thank you enough for helping him out of there."
Tiffin smiled at Sarah's camera, but then shifted her gaze to the panoramic view of space again. "I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for him." She shuddered as she recalled how she felt hiding in the alley on Eon as Hyde looked for her, threatening her in a way she'd never heard a man do.
"I'm glad you're here, Tiffin. Are you..."
Tiffin wiped a tear from the edge of her eye before it had the chance to stream down her cheek.
"Are you alright?" Sarah asked.
Tiffin swallowed, pushing the emotion back a little. "I'm fine."
Neither one of them spoke for a few moments, then Tiffin said, "I want to help him, not just here on the ship. I've never been away from Eon. It would be amazing to see what other places are like."
"I think he'll let you go, at least on some of the stops. He'd probably enjoy the company. And it would be nice to know someone was with him. Might keep him out of trouble."
"So," Tiffin said, "Eon's not the only time he's been in danger on a cargo run?"
"No. Definitely not. It seems to find him."
"Oh." Tiffin didn't like hearing that.
"I'm not saying you'll ever need to use it, but..."
"But what?" Tiffin asked.
"It might be a good idea if you carried a blaster on those runs. With Jake, I mean. Do you know how to use one?"
Tiffin looked at the camera. She was surprised at Sarah's suggestion, but the idea did make sense to her. "I...I think so. Do you think Jake would be okay with that?"
"Honestly? No. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have one anyway. Don't get me wrong. He'd look after you."
Tiffin nodded. "I know he would. He did on Eon."
"But a girl needs to be able to look out for herself too," Sarah said.
"Yes." Tiffin turned to the view outside again. "I suppose you're right."
"Good. Then it's settled. You can use one of the spare blasters we have on the ship."
Tiffin looked at the camera.
"He probably hasn't told you where we keep them, but I can. We have a lot. Old shipment. The buyer never paid, but..."
"But what?"
"Well, the seller wasn't available for the return."
"Why not?"
"He, uh. Someone took him out shortly after we took receipt of the cargo. In retrospect, the deal was a little iffy. We had nothing to do with what happened to the seller. Just so you know."
"I wouldn't have thought that you did."
"Jake may not be crazy about giving you a weapon, at least not for a while. So...keep it under wraps for now. I'll tell him later, when the timing is right. He can be a little moody sometimes. Okay?"
"Yeah, okay." Tiffin stepped back from the window and looked at Sarah's camera. "Thank you." She felt comforted knowing that Sarah seemed to really be there for her. First Jake, she thought, and now her. I'm so lucky I found you guys. She smiled. And Dewey.
Chapter 8
Jake turned his blaster from side to side, looking into the crevices between the components. He'd been cleaning the weapon for the last twenty minutes. Aside from the large scratch on the right side, it looked pristine now. He held down the black button on the side of the pistol until the green light lit up on top of the blaster. The light was dim.
"Low," he said to himself. He pressed his lips tighter and drew them in. Better replace it. Don't want to run out of juice at the wrong time.
He fumbled through the pocket on the inside of his brown leather jacket, looking for a spare energy crystal. Nothing there.
"Oh, yeah." Never grabbed another after this morning's recreation shooting.
He recalled the last bit of this morning's activity. He thought of it as target practice—shooting the distance of the longest wall of the secondary cargo bay into a heap of debris at the far side of the massive storage room. Truth was he rarely bothered to aim at anything in particular in the pile. The sport was something he did every week or so to let off steam. Blowing something to pieces made a guy feel warm inside, he thought. This morning he got a little carried away, firing his blaster over and over again into the stack of discarded shipments until the flying debris littered the floor between him and the pile of junk forty feet away.
Fortunately for the maintenance of his hobby there seemed to be at least one or two loads of abandoned cargo every two or three months. After pulling out the more valuable bits from those loads, he always dumped the remainder onto the heap at the back of the secondary cargo bay to replace the chunks he'd blasted out of it.
The way the Galactic Shipping Agency distributed shipments and the fact that Jake ran G.D.S.—his Galactic Delivery Service business—as an anonymous courier, untraceable in the Agency's system, made it impossible to return undeliverable cargo directly to the sender—whether paid for or not. So, when he was stiffed on a payment or the intended recipient of the cargo turned out to be dead or gone without a trace, Jake tossed the cargo into the secondary storage bay. Regs only required he keep the goods for a month to see if anyone made a claim. After that, it was space junk—or something solid to shoot his blaster into when the mood hit him.
With two more people onboard than he was used to, the mood had hit him hard. Thirty minutes of firing his blaster had drained the energy crystal which usually powered it for more than a month.
He rose from the metal bench in the small room where he often sat cleaning his blaster or just taking a few minutes away from the bridge or any other part of the ship where Sarah had eyes and ears. Aside from the restrooms and shower facilities, this small room down the corridor from the secondary cargo hold was the only place he could be certain he wouldn't be disturbed. Even his private quarters had an audio comm connection so he and Sarah could get ahold of each other. Though he did draw the line at no camera in his room.
After that discussion came up years ago, he felt guilty when the talk was over. It wasn't as if Sarah hadn't seen all of him many times over. But he couldn't deal with it under the new circumstances. Besides, she didn't remember that far back. He decided the situation was best avoided now.
He holstered his blaster on his right hip and pressed his hand against the scanning panel to the right of the door. The metal door slid open with only the faintest sound. He exhaled audibly before stepping out of the room.
As he approached the end of the corridor Sarah's voice came through the speaker in the ceiling where the passage joined the central hall of the ship. "I've been looking for you, Jake."
He feigned a glance toward the speaker, knowing there was a camera beside it. "Really?"
"Well, I knew wh
ere you were, but I've been waiting for you to come out from your little room."
"Had to clean my blaster."
"I figured."
"So, you were looking for me. Why?"
"Uh. Well. Tiffin and Dewey were asking me what the plan is."
"The plan?" Jake said.
"You know. Are we going to fly around space aimlessly? Or…"
"Yeah. I know," Jake said. "I promised Dewey I'd drop him somewhere decent. Probably need to do the same with Tiffin too."
"Jake," Sarah said.
"Yeah?"
Sarah didn't respond. Jake kept walking.
"Okay," Jake said. "I know. I said she could tag along for a while."
"She's been getting some things fixed. Some things you've had on your list for a while."
Jake grinned as he looked up to the next camera down the hall.
"Oh, good," Sarah said. "I'm glad to see you're giving this a chance."
"It's been you and me for a long time," he said. "That's comfortable for me. But…"
"But?"
"But maybe it'll be a nice change to have a couple more hands around to help out."
"Yes," Sarah said. "I think you're right."
"Tell 'em to meet me in the lounge in twenty minutes or so. I've got to get a new charge for my blaster first."
"I hope those two things aren't related."
"As of today, no," Jake said. He stopped and grinned to the next camera. "End of the week, who knows."
Sarah sounded humored by Jake's playful implication. "I'll tell them to head to the lounge. We've got to take it a day at a time. Don't we?"
"Only way that works," Jake said. "Only way."
Chapter 9
Jake walked into the lounge, charged blaster holstered on his side. Dewey rose from his seat at the far end of the room, near the large window. Tiffin remained seated across from Dewey.
"Glad to see you two are here," Jake said.
"Hi, Jake," Tiffin said. "Sarah said you want to talk with us."
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