by Ann Aguirre
“Talk to me,” she said to Tam, who was inside one of the vehicles, banging around.
The spymaster stepped out, tools in hand. “I wish Ike were here.”
“Not what I meant.”
“Ah, so you’re done with nursing, and you want a progress report?”
“Something like that. Will this thing even fly? It looks incredibly ungainly.”
“The aerodynamics are a problem. Steering will be a bitch unless I can figure out how to streamline the design. With the tools we have available, it won’t be easy.”
Tam went over everything they’d accomplished so far, and it wasn’t nearly enough. But with limited supplies and personnel, it was amazing they’d come even this far. She followed him inside the makeshift craft, having to hunch over where the two vehicles connected.
“Are you sure the solder point won’t just break apart, the minute we launch?”
Tam proved he had a dark sense of humor. “Only one way to find out.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’ve reinforced it with struts here . . . and here. It’s the best we can do.”
“Then it’ll have to suffice. How’s the life support coming?”
Vost answered that, sticking his head in through the cargo doors in the back. “I’m working on the computer, but I’m having a hard time overriding the eight-hour limit. Since nobody’s supposed to be in here longer than a single work shift—”
“Have you tried a hard reset?” Tam cut in.
“That was the first thing I did.” The merc commander sounded disgruntled.
Dred smirked. “What do you think he is, an amateur?”
Tam smiled back. “Well, I am. Despite a rather colorful resume, I’ve never tried to cobble a ship together from this kind of junk.”
“This might be a last-resort option,” Dred said, “but maybe we could lift one of the life-support modules from the station and make it work?”
Vost shook his head. “It would be too big, even presuming you could cut it loose.”
“Then I guess you have to figure out how to change the eight-hour restriction,” she said.
“I’m working on it.” His scowl as he withdrew suggested he didn’t like Dred’s tone.
Ignoring Vost, she checked out the progress from stem to stern. In truth, the craft was strange-looking; in front, it was a two-seater, and the middle was completely open, cargo space converted clumsily to let people sprawl on the floor, then there were two seats at the back, from the other maintenance-rig cab. The others had done a credible job of fusing the machinery, but she didn’t know if it would hold during launch . . . and there was no way to perform a thorough, rigorous stress test.
“What do you think?” she asked Tam.
“It’ll be a miracle if we don’t all die,” he said.
“That’s what I thought.”
The spymaster hesitated. “But . . . I’d rather go out a free man than wait to be killed. I don’t have that kind of resignation anymore.”
She nodded. “And I’d rather die in vacuum than let Silence or another merc team finish me off. So let’s keep at it.”
Since Dred didn’t have any particular skill at shipbuilding, she left the others to it and went to the control room. Outside, there were five of Silence’s killers watching the door. What purpose that served, she had no idea, except to establish that Silence knew where they were. We can definitely take a squad of five, though, so it’s not even an impediment to our movements. As she was trying to figure it out, the men slipped out of camera view like dark shadows. That was somewhat eerie because there might be more—all the surviving assassins, even—hiding nearby.
As long as we can finish up in here, we don’t have to leave.
Dred wished she had a better angle, but she couldn’t figure out how to tap into station security from here. As far as she could tell, the systems were limited to the docking bay. Sighing, she picked up the handheld and skipped back to the first message. The date on the vid indicated these logs were forty turns old.
The same woman from before appeared, much brighter-faced and practically humming with enthusiasm. “This is my first long assignment. My father swears he had nothing to do with my Monsanto posting, and I hope he’s telling the truth. Nepotism is no way to start your career.”
Aw, how cute. She’s a little idealist.
She watched the rest of that vid, but it was mostly cheerful speculation about what the woman would be doing on a mineral-refinery station. The second log was a little more subdued, talking about the grim atmosphere on station and the lack of amenities. Yeah, reality has that effect on all of us. A random person’s life probably wouldn’t make for thrilling entertainment, so she set the device aside, marveling that it still worked after all this time.
A problem occurred to her then, and she rushed from the control room to the hangar floor. Tam popped his head out of the ship as Dred approached. “Something wrong?”
“Has anyone figured out what we’re eating on board?”
“We can make a lot of paste before we take off,” he said.
“We can’t install the Kitchen-mate?”
Tam shook his head. “It would weigh us down and take up too much space. The bottom line is, we could run out of food before we get out of this system. There’s no way to rig this thing with a grimspace drive.”
She sighed. “And even if we could, we don’t have a jumper.”
It was looking more all the time like this “escape” was just a different way to die.
• • •
WHEN Jael woke up this time, he felt both recovered and alert. He crawled out of his bunk and staggered to the san. Afterward, he found everyone else working on the ship. He’d seen shuttles, crashed escape pods, ships too beat-up to salvage. And this one was worse than any he’d ever encountered. There’s no way this thing will fly. Technically, he supposed it didn’t have to. Simple propulsion would guide it out of the docking bay, but then what?
He strode toward the work crew, answering their greetings with a raised hand. “How much fuel do we have?”
From their expressions, it seemed like he’d asked an astonishing question. Or maybe they were just shocked to see him back from the dead. On second thought, it was probably that. But none of them interrogated him about it. Just as well. He wouldn’t have answered. It was impossible to trust people with a secret like his, so they could wonder.
Vost answered. “Not much. Sixteen hours in the combined tanks. I haven’t been able to find any spare canisters.”
Jael nodded. “Makes sense they wouldn’t leave much. It’s expensive.”
“Even at top speed, that doesn’t get us very far from Perdition,” Martine pointed out.
“Then we rebuild the engines for greater speed and fuel efficiency,” Vost said.
Jael cocked his head. “Can you do that?”
“Not without some help. But we’re short on a design computer.”
“Could this help?” Dred strode toward them carrying the obsolete handheld they’d found in the dormitories.
“Possibly, depending on what programs it has. We can’t bounce an uplink for updates, but let’s take a look.”
Jael wished he’d spent more time studying and less time fighting. In salvage work, he hadn’t needed to be good at creating things, only breaking them down into component parts that could then be resold. Over the turns, he’d picked up some skill at demolitions and a little security, but none of that compared to the innate genius Ike could’ve brought to this project.
We need you, old man. Why’d you die for us?
Vost flipped through the directory, a frown building. “I wonder who this belonged to.”
“Why?” Dred leaned in, and Jael restrained the urge to pull her back. Anytime she got within a meter of the merc commander, his nerves went up in flames.<
br />
“There are all kinds of notes, as if an audit was ongoing. See here, someone’s analyzed the actual cost ratio, which didn’t match up with what officials were reporting.” Vost flicked the screen, and a green chart appeared in holo form.
Jael studied the numbers, neatly lined up in columns: actual costs versus reported. There was a significant discrepancy in almost every department. But that wouldn’t help them rebuild the engines to be more fuel-efficient. He wasn’t even sure why Vost had pointed it out.
Calypso rubbed a hand over her face. “Explain why I should care if the Monsanto admins were corrupt however long ago.”
“They might have hidden resources that could help us,” the merc commander explained.
Dred shook her head. “Unlikely. They would’ve taken everything with them.”
“But we found this handheld,” Martine pointed out.
“Have we searched the bay thoroughly?” Duran asked.
Jael couldn’t answer that. He’d been unconscious for like a week. So he glanced at the others, waiting to hear what they said.
“I think so,” Tam said, thoughtful.
Martine didn’t seem so convinced. “But we were looking for ship supplies, not for cred-sticks or hints of corruption. Maybe we overlooked something?”
A hidden cred-stick would feel like . . . a sign, Jael decided. A good omen, even. Because right now, it seemed so unlikely that they’d even get off station, and if they did, they’d probably die in a dead ship. Though he’d asserted otherwise, he didn’t have a lot of faith that he could cut free of this place and start a new life. Yet a cred-stick represented a tie to the outside world, where you needed money to survive, not just your wits or a sharp knife.
• • •
THEY split up to dig around the docking bay more thoroughly. Jael went to the dormitory and turned all the mattresses, then checked to see if anything was fastened to the bed frames. Nothing. It seemed likely that whatever the Monsanto execs had left behind would be in their quarters, not the shift workers’ area. Still, he kept looking, just in case.
Next, Jael moved on to the storage units adjacent to each bunk. They had obsolete, analog locks, but this, he could manage. After five minutes of tinkering, he popped the first one open. There wasn’t even dust inside, which spoke well of the airtight seal. The next three were the same, but the fifth one he opened still contained all the original occupant’s personal belongings inside it.
“Well, that’s fragging strange,” he said aloud.
“What is?” Dred asked.
“Have a look.”
She crouched beside him, hands braced on the edge of the footlocker. The interior of the lid still had a personal label affixed: Property of Rebestah Saren. Inside, there were three changes of clothing—Monsanto uniforms and spare underwear—along with all the small comforts you’d carry away from home. As a superstitious shiver flickered over him, Jael didn’t want to touch anything, but Dred had no such compunction. She rummaged around, coming up with expired snack packets and some kind of portable entertainment console. Next she picked up a framed holo like the one Vost carried of his son. This one showed a young woman hugging an older couple, probably her parents, he guessed. The loop only ran for three seconds, but it gave him chills when she turned to face the camera with her intense, dark stare. Strangely, he felt like he knew her . . . but that was impossible.
• • •
“THAT’S her.” Dred’s words came out sharp with surprise.
“What are you talking about?”
“We found her handheld a while back. I don’t think you’ve seen any of her logs.”
“Huh.” Jael wasn’t sure where she was going with this. It definitely wouldn’t help with the ship, which was his first concern.
Her eyes widened. “If she was conducting an audit, and all her gear is still here, then—”
“Rebestah Saren probably didn’t make it home.”
17
Competitive Thrust
“It’s interesting,” Martine said, half an hour later. “It really is. And if we had time to screw around, I’d say, sure, let’s look into this old murder. But—”
“She’s right,” Vost agreed.
Calypso added, “What good would it do? We can’t do anything for this woman. Didn’t you already get in trouble doing vigilante work?”
Dred sighed. “It’s not the same. I wasn’t planning to kill anyone over her. I’d just like to know what happened.”
“That’s because you’re bored,” Duran said.
“Huh?” Dred stared at the merc.
“You’re not good at mechanical work. Nobody needs you to boss them around. So you’re looking for something to do.” This time, the short man didn’t even take a step closer to Calypso as he occasionally did when he felt threatened.
Silently, she admitted that might be true. “Then nobody will mind if I go over her logs to see if I can find anything out.”
Vost shrugged. “You might learn something useful about the station in her recordings. But probably not.”
“You don’t need me on construction anyway,” she muttered.
She’d already passed out the dead woman’s clothing. Martine and Calypso were both happy to get a change of clothes; Dred was pretty chuffed about it, too. These uniforms hadn’t been washed in a bucket with minimal soap and hung up to dry in a room that reeked of unwashed bodies. No, this fabric smelled . . . unspoiled in a way that was hard to describe, turns of being safeguarded in an airtight container.
“True,” Duran said cheerfully. “So stop interrupting the rest of us.”
Keelah followed her away from the bustle of shipbuilding, back into the dormitories. The alien’s eyes were bright with interest or sympathy or possibly both. “You’re not alone in your fascination. It’s rather marvelous that we have the breathing room to . . . care, isn’t it?”
Yes.
She didn’t even know that was what she felt until Keelah articulated it. “We’ve done nothing but fight for so long. It feels miraculous that I could take an interest in something else, something—”
“Esoteric. You can’t eat it or mate with it, but you’d like the answer to feed your soul.”
She shied away from the spiritual response. “My mind, anyway. Rebestah was here, trying to do the right thing. It was her first job, and something awful happened to her.”
“You feel moved by her plight, and you’d like to put her ghost to rest.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds crazy.”
Keelah’s whiskers twitched. “Truly? It only makes sense when I consider it that way. Otherwise, it’s a pointless exercise in curiosity when you have more important matters to attend.”
“Like what?” she muttered.
During her time on merc ships, she’d mostly cleaned, so that didn’t offer much value in technical work. Beyond that, she was good at hunting and killing. Again, not applicable.
“Precisely.” Keelah sounded sympathetic.
“I don’t understand.”
“If there is nothing more pressing, why shouldn’t you grant this specter peace? Even if her ghost haunts only you.”
She’d almost forgotten the concept of doing something just because she wanted to, but they did have breathing room. Silence can’t get to us. The others don’t need me.
Keelah headed out then, presumably to work on the ship. With a grateful smile, Dred kicked back on the bunk with the handheld and started the third log. It seemed to have been recorded in a different room, definitely not this dormitory. The walls were brighter and the furniture more elegant.
“Something is wrong here,” Rebestah said. “I’m supposed to be working with the administrator, but he rarely leaves his quarters, and I can’t get his assistant to give me a straight answer. She seems . . . frightened, actually. The vice president of oper
ations does nothing but drink. He hinted he’d be happy to ‘show me the ropes,’ but then he grabbed my ass, so I kicked him instead of accepting his offer of on-the-job training.”
Dred smirked. “Good for you.”
The holo went on, “Since they won’t cooperate, it’s making my job harder. I’ve been sent as an independent auditor, and once they pass the check, I’m supposed to join the accounting department as a supervisor, two turns in deep space. But so far, I haven’t seen one financial document, and I’ve been here four weeks.”
She had the sense that Rebestah had made these logs because she was lonely. If the higher-ups put the word out that nobody should associate with her, she probably ended up in deep isolation without understanding why. To Dred, it seemed obvious. The execs had been stealing from Monsanto for turns, inflating operation costs and pocketing the rest. Now that their theft was being addressed, they were scared shitless.
“But how did a green girl like you end up with this mission?” Regardless of what Rebestah’s old man had claimed, Dred suspected he must’ve pulled some strings. Otherwise, wouldn’t someone more experienced be assigned? It only made sense.
“I won’t give up,” Rebestah was saying. “Even if it’s hard.”
A man swept into the room, obviously weaving, and Rebestah set down her handheld. Dred couldn’t get a good look at his face, but he seemed to be middle-aged, medium height and build. This must be VP of Operations. The angle was a little awkward, but the intruder didn’t seem to realize he was being recorded. This was the closest thing to actual entertainment she’d known in forever, made more compelling by the fact that it was all true.
“Administrator Levin will see you now.”
“Really? That’s wonderful.”
“I hope you’ll be understanding. He has been . . . ill. The medical officer has treated him, and he’s no longer contagious, so you shouldn’t worry.”
“Let’s go,” Rebestah said brightly.
They went out together, leaving Dred with an empty room and a strange feeling. All her instincts said nothing good would come from this meeting—it was probably a trap—and yet she couldn’t warn the girl in the holo. Whatever had happened forty turns ago, the damage was done.
