Junkyard Heroes

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  She bent over his shoulder, hyper-aware that his chin was next to her hip. Yet she could see, now. She batted the bulk of the chain out of the way and clipped the two ends together. “There.”

  “Don’t let go straight away,” Haydn warned her, pulling her back down again.

  She gripped the chain. “Why not?”

  “It’ll float over my head, if you don’t pull it down and tuck it inside my shirt.”

  That was a possibility that had not occurred to her. Haydn seemed to be a natural at zero gee movements. Had he trained as a tankball player when he was younger? Almost everyone played when they were children, each of them harboring dreams of becoming the next Quiver Sheenan or Kallon Crave, although other interests eventually superseded those dreams.

  Besides, tankball players didn’t have to deal with floating jewelry and loose hair.

  She gripped the medallion and pulled it until the chain was taut at the back of his neck. “Open your shirt,” she said, awkwardness making her cheeks heat once more.

  “I’m holding you steady,” he pointed out.

  Noa cleared her throat and slipped her fingers over the opening of his shirt and pulled it out, glimpsing smooth, pale olive skin. She stuffed the chain inside and let the shirt go. Her fingers felt as if they were burning.

  “Now you’re going to have to hang on to me, while I put my necklace on you,” he said.

  I can do this… The whisper sounded weak in her mind. She made herself reach around him. He was a lot wider than she and her arms barely made it around to his back.

  “That’s no good,” he said. “I can’t reach your neck that way. Wrap your legs around me, instead.”

  Noa let him go and glared at him. “You planned this,” she said, very quietly.

  Haydn’s smile was rueful. “I wish I had,” he said. “It’s really the only way to get this done. Look.” He nodded.

  She looked over her shoulder. There were four couples. Cai and Peter had Ségolène between them. Everyone was holding each other in unconventional and highly suggestive ways, all of them intent on completing the trial.

  It let Noa relax. She took a grip of Haydn’s shirt, then carefully lifted one leg after the other and wrapped them around his waist.

  “Hold tight,” he warned her, his hand on her thigh.

  Noa swallowed. “If I hold any tighter, you’ll turn into paste in the middle.”

  He let go of her back and brought his chain around to her chest and fumbled with the clasp, while Noa told herself to breathe normally.

  Haydn, of course, didn’t have to lean over her shoulder to see what he was doing. He was tall enough that he could just tilt his head and get a clear view of the back of her neck.

  It still brought him closer to her. She breathed in his scent, liking it. It made something deep in her belly roll with slow pleasure. Noa held still, waiting for it to be over.

  Haydn straightened up, caught the front of her coveralls with his big forefinger and pushed the medallion and chain inside.

  “Done,” he said softly. His gaze met hers again.

  Noa couldn’t look away. It didn’t occur to her that she could let him go, now. The task was done.

  “Finished!” Peter called triumphantly.

  It broke the moment.

  Down below, which was “up” at the moment, Anselm and the other viewers clapped and called out in delight, as Peter, Cai and Ségolène pulled themselves over to the ladder, clinging together for leverage.

  Haydn tapped Noa’s thighs again. “Let go,” he said, “and I’ll toss you to the other ladder.”

  She unwound her legs. Haydn gripped her waist once more and pushed her up and over his head. He held on to her waist. She reached out and gripped a rung of the ladder, then Haydn pulled himself up beside her and took the next rung for himself. “After you.”

  As Jenny had done, Noa hauled herself down the ladder, which felt like “up” to her right then. As she moved into the mid-zone, her feet rose up, swinging her over. She pushed them onto a rung of the ladder as the world righted itself. She blinked. She was now standing on the ladder, with her feet toward the real floor. Inside her coveralls, the necklace slithered down her skin to hang normally, the pendant swinging gently.

  Noa took a breath or two, as her heart hurried along. The re-orientation had been the strangest sensation she had ever experienced. It was also one of the most exhilarating.

  She climbed all the way down to the floor. Peter and Cai and Ségolène were already there, laughing and talking to everyone else, including Anselm. Above her, Haydn was following her down.

  Magorian came over to the edge of the training area and waited for her to step off the thick training mats that lined the bottom of the tank area. “That was very interesting,” he told her.

  “You should try it for yourself,” Noa told him.

  “Unfortunately, I have an inner ear imbalance. I never did get to play tankball as a child.” He didn’t seem to be upset about it, though.

  Haydn came up alongside her. Magorian nodded at him.

  “Anselm tells me this tank trial was your idea,” he said to Noa.

  “It seemed like a good idea to see who can handle zero gee,” she said. “If we had made a suit for Jenny and got her out on the hull and then she was sick, well….”

  “Yes, very messy,” Magorian agreed. “That isn’t actually what I find the most interesting about the test. You may have stumbled upon the perfect test, Noa.”

  “I did?”

  Magorian glanced at Haydn. “You realized it first.”

  Haydn nodded. “The only way to get the test done successfully is to cooperate with each other.”

  Magorian nodded. “Lone wolves will get cut from the pack before you get them outside where they will be dangerous,” he told Noa. “Tell me the next time you have a tank trial. I would like the Captain to see it.” He turned and left.

  Noa stared after him. “I can’t figure out if he’s upset or pleased that the test works.”

  “I think you just handed him a lot to think about,” Haydn said. He unclipped her necklace and held it out to her. “Here.”

  Noa pushed it into her pocket and reached for the clip at the back of her own neck.

  Haydn put his hand on her chest, right in the middle, where the medallion sat beneath her coveralls. “Why don’t you keep it?” he said softly.

  Noa let her hands drop. “You’re sure?” she said awkwardly, while her heart thundered. Her flesh under his fingertips was throbbing.

  “More sure than you, Doria,” Haydn said. He didn’t seem to be angry, though. He turned and walked away, leaving her standing with her mind stuttering and her body almost aching from the whip-saw of emotions and sensations she had been through in the last thirty minutes.

  When she got home that night, she finally had the time to spare and a mirror to inspect the medallion where it rested between her breasts. The medallion she had thought was a misshapen attempt at reproducing Ségolène’s pattern was nothing of the sort. It was a nearly perfect heart shape. Instead of the flower everyone else had formed with a metal punch and a mallet, Haydn had punched another heart shape, following the edges of the medallion.

  She was just a simple mechanical engineer, yet even she understood the symbolism of what Haydn had done. She let her fingertips press against the flat medallion.

  More sure than you, Doria.

  If he was so sure of his feelings, then why had he done nothing more than kiss her, weeks ago?

  Was he waiting for a sign from her?

  Or was it simply that they were far, far too busy with the project? Noa understood better than anyone else on the ship how much of Haydn’s self-esteem was tied up with the success of the project. Was he focused on that to the exclusion of anything else, including her?

  She was unsure enough that she had been reluctant to speak about it. The fear that he would laugh and tell her she had been imagining things was very real. There had been more than a few moment
s like that in her past and the humiliation that came with such rejection made her wary about trying again, especially because it was Haydn who would be rejecting her. That made a difference. That made the potential loss too high for her to risk herself. At least for now.

  She touched the medallion again. Haydn’s act of putting it on her and telling her to keep it changed things. Should she say something now? Should she wait? She didn’t know what to do, because she had never had a relationship that worked.

  In the end, she did nothing. She went to work the next morning and Haydn greeted her with the direct gaze and small smile he seemed to use only for her, then turned back to the helmet sitting on his workbench, as if it was just another day.

  Noa took his cue. She went back to the absorbing and fascinating work of developing and outfitting a team of engineers for outside work.

  She gave Ségolène her test necklace. “It’s shoddy, compared to what you make,” Noa told her, “yet you’ve given me so much jewelry over the years. This is my symbolic return.”

  Ségolène gripped the chain, looking at the beaten, bumpy medallion and its shaky flower. “It’s one of the prettiest necklaces in my personal collection,” she said seriously. “Thank you.” She wore the necklace almost every day, sometime wrapping it around her wrist as a bracelet, sometimes twining it around her neck as a choker, yet she always wore it out in the open.

  Noa, though, kept her medallion hidden inside her coveralls. She didn’t know if Haydn wanted it that way or not. She wasn’t ready to wear it openly. Her fear was too great.

  Very quickly after the first public tank trials were completed, me-made necklaces began appearing in public, worn by men, women and children with a touch of pride. The more deformed and odd the hand-made necklace was, the more proud the new owners were to wear it. It became a minor status symbol to be given a me-made necklace and if there was no other way to display it, people would pin the medallion to their shirts, instead.

  Noa kept hers hidden. She would always know that Haydn had been the first to give away his necklace. So did he. That was enough.

  For now.

  * * * * *

  After Noa’s diatribe in front of the Bridge Gate, the threats toward Haydn diminished, which let her relax. It was only in hindsight she realized a part of her had been constantly braced, waiting to hear of yet another beating or worse.

  So when Peter was carried into the workshop by a trio of bridge guards, her stomach dropped and her heart lurched in a way she had almost forgotten.

  The team hastily cleared off a workbench and Barney, James and Vasen, the three guards, laid Peter on it.

  Peter groaned. “I’m fine,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Really. This fuss is ridiculous.”

  “You’re bleeding from the mouth,” Lizette pointed out. “We should get a medic.”

  Peter sat up on one elbow and wiped away the blood from his lips. “I’m bleeding from the mouth because that’s where they punched me.”

  Haydn moved to the bench. “Lie down,” he said curtly. “Let me look at you.”

  Peter laughed. “You’re a medic now?”

  “I’m a guy who has been through this more times than you.” He pushed on Peter’s shoulder. “Down.”

  Peter lay down again and Haydn pressed his fingers into his belly and his sides, in different places.

  “What happened?” Noa demanded.

  “It’s what didn’t happen.” Peter grinned. He was ridiculously cheerful for a man who had been beaten.

  Cai leaned against the bench up by Peter’s head. “The drugs,” he guessed.

  “Yep.” Peter rolled his eyes to look at Cai.

  “You’ve stopped making that shit?” Haydn asked.

  “Weeks ago,” Peter said. “They thought they could change my mind.” He looked around the workroom, which had once been large and echoing and was now a humming, busy place. “As if they could talk me out of this.”

  Haydn stepped back. “Minor scrapes and a good bruise or two, but that’s all.”

  “So now you can all stop looking like that and I can go back to work,” Peter said, trying to roll off the bench.

  Noa shook her head. “Let him go,” she told Haydn. “There’s too much to do for someone to lie down on the job.”

  Peter wiped at his mouth again and grinned. “Thanks, boss.”

  She scowled at him as he eased himself off the bench and straightened his clothes, irritated by the “boss” reference. More and more of the people in the workshop were using it.

  Peter went back to work, his cheer not fading, even though the threats continued. He and Haydn and Cai walked to and from the Bridge together each day. After Peter’s beating, Bridge guards who were on duty in the Wall district would often fall in with them and chat, until they reached either the train platform or the Wall.

  “It’s a remarkable coincidence that a guard just happens to be lingering near the Fourth Wall every morning when we leave,” Cai said. “I’m not going to say a word though. I’m coward enough that having the escort is worth any depletion of manhood that might be attached to it.”

  His gaze flicked toward Ségolène on the other side of the room.

  “There’s nothing weak about staying safe,” Noa told him. “It’s a sensible precaution. Besides, maybe it really is just a coincidence that there’s a guard near your Wall or the train every day and it’s someone you know. We know so many of the guards now.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself,” Cai said.

  It was Peter’s ability with chemical compounds that helped them find the solution to a problem that had not yet been addressed because the suits and training had taken nearly all their attention. It was a simple idea, one that changed everything. Peter invented goofy sandwiches.

  “If we replace all the steel sheeting on the hull with plasteel, we’re not solving the problem of getting holed. We’re just putting it off for another couple of centuries,” Peter explained when he presented the idea and a scaled down sample to Noa and Anselm. “Sooner or later, a piece of junk will be big enough or moving fast enough to break through even plasteel, because we just can’t build it thick enough to resist everything.”

  “Plasteel is lighter than steel,” Haydn said, making Noa jump. She hadn’t seen him sneak up behind them. “Only, that’s relative. It’s still damn heavy. If it’s too thick, it’ll be heavier than the steel and that sets up all sorts of mass-speed problems.”

  Anselm held up a finger. “Except you’re forgetting that the ship is a closed system. We’re making the plasteel out of elements already on the ship. The weight doesn’t change.”

  Cai wandered over to see what they were looking at. So did the others, one by one.

  “Weight changes relative to gravity,” Haydn said flatly. “Out here in the junkyard, we’re surrounded by gravity wells.”

  Anselm nodded. “The Institute is doing the math,” he said quietly. “It’s a mild effect.”

  “It’s still drag,” Haydn replied. “You can’t ignore it. The scoop would compensate.”

  “Scooping material out of space would add to the mass,” Anselm pointed out.

  Everyone groaned.

  “Someone change the subject, fast,” Cai begged. “I really don’t want to listen to round three thousand and one on this.”

  Peter held up a finger. “I think I might have the ultimate answer to their argument.” He tapped the plasteel sheet Noa was holding. The sheet was divided into four panels.

  “Each panel is plasteel, top and bottom,” Peter said. “In between is goofy gel.”

  Anselm tapped one of the panels. “If we put this on the hull, then if we’re holed, it will heal. That’s what you’re thinking?”

  Peter nodded. “I’ve heard Haydn talk about this enough times to make me want to stick an awl in my ear and twist, too. So I know that weight, mass, whatever you want to call it, is an issue.”

  “There is a difference,” Anselm said mildly.

  “Whate
ver.” Peter pointed at the sheet. “With the gel in between, you don’t need super thick plasteel to ward off meteors and crud. If we’re holed, it will seal instantly. Here’s another thing.” He pointed to the seal between the four panels. “More goofy gel. This time, exposed and hardened. Yet even dried goofy gel will bend.” He held his hand over the top of the sheet and curled his fingers into a fist. “Hold it still a moment, Noa.”

  She held the edges of the sheet.

  Peter drove his fist down onto the sheet slowly enough for everyone to see what he was doing. The sheet bent in the middle as his fist pushed into it.

  Then it bounced back.

  Anselm sucked in a sharp breath and looked at Haydn. “There will be a golden ratio we’ll have to figure out.”

  “The ideal panel size,” Haydn said, staring at the sheet.

  “The best sheet thickness, too,” Anselm said. “We’ll have to consider weight and mass offsets.”

  Peter held up his hand. “Before you two go off and drool over your equations, there’s another factor you’ve overlooked. The goofy gel is made up of any material that can be spared, which is great and all—specially since most of the ship has donated their recyclables for the suits. Only, think about how much gel we’d need to replate the whole ship. We’d have to cannibalize the inside of the ship. We’d be down to bare metal plating and hull walls.”

  Anselm shook his head. “The steel we take off the hull will be recycled. That will provide a lot of the elements.”

  “But not all of them,” Peter said. “Add the calculations to your list of math problems to solve.” He grinned. “Haydn might be right. A space scoop would give us all the raw material we need to make the plasteel and the gel.”

  “And the extra mass would slow us down enough that we might never reach Destination,” Anselm said.

  Peter shook his head. “You guys are missing the point. I actually listened to both of you, the first dozen times or so. Isn’t nitrogen the most common element out in space? Wouldn’t we be sucking in a ton of the stuff along with all the dust and crud we’d use for the gel?”