by Patty Jansen
“With me being the way I am? You’re allowed to say it.”
“Can you just stop it for once?”
“But that’s what you were going to say, right?”
“Actually, I wasn’t. It’s hard for everyone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It is. I was eighteen when I joined. Those bastards take in the recruits and spend the next year making you feel as miserable as possible to get you to leave again.”
“I doubt that. They’re new recruits. They want people, right? They’re advertising for people. I’ve seen the ads at Cayelle.”
“What the PR department says is very different from reality. They only want people who are committed. It’s not easy to be in the Force. It’s boring. It’s cramped. Sometimes rations are low. Usually, they’re monotonous. The work is hard. Your colleagues can be nice, but they can also be extremely annoying. You’re away from home for years and you never hear from your family—”
She had to stop talking. The memories were too painful. Her ship had pulled into a station—she didn’t remember which—when the communications officer had taken her aside. On a grainy vid, her mother had informed her that her father had suddenly passed away. She’d missed his short illness and the funeral. Next time she went home, there was a massive hole where he used to be. She could see him in the shed whittling away at a woodwork project. She could see him in the garden dragging the hoses. She offered her mother to take leave for a year, but her mother had gotten word that she had been offered a position at the Perseus Agency, a job she knew Tina coveted, and had hated the thought that her daughter would give that up and then blame her old mother for missing the opportunity.
For what? The agency had used her and spat her out. She couldn’t stand the thought of her little baby going through that.
Rex met her eyes. He was young and didn’t understand any of that. When she objected to something, he thought it was always about him and his disabilities, and they would have a long argument about it. She was tired of it.
“If you want to go after you finish school and have your certificate, I can’t stop you. I can only tell you what my experience has been.”
“And you think it will be too hard for me?”
He met her eyes, and she couldn’t bring herself to say yes. She didn’t even know if she was right. Nor did he know that she was afraid he would learn a tough lesson. Maybe she was even more afraid he would do well, and she would be left on the sidelines, cheering him on from a very long distance.
That was it. She would be left. This was not about Rex. It was about her.
She shrugged, because there were no words that seemed right.
Rex continued, “I thought because we have no money for an exoskeleton—no, don’t say anything. I know we have no money and I’m not arguing about it—I could work and pay for it myself. The man I was talking to said that the Force employs people who wear harnesses all the time and that the Force has payment plans for them.”
“I’d hate for you to sign up just so that you can get an exoskeleton. I’ll look at it when you finish school. I mean it. By that time, we should be able to afford it. I’ve budgeted for it.”
He met her eyes again, knowing full well that if she used the money from selling the ship to pay off the owner, they couldn’t afford it, not if they also needed to eat, and it didn’t seem that would change any time soon.
She didn’t want him to join the Force. She wanted to spare him all the pain that she had suffered. The betrayal, the bypassing, the mocking, the bullying. The gradual hollowing out of her confidence. All because she didn’t agree with the direction the agency was taking.
No. Surely there had to be better places for him to work.
But a voice in the back of her mind said, You haven’t really put much effort into giving him options, have you?
And she knew how true that was, that she couldn’t expect him to want to look after a dusty shop in a dusty corner of a dusty planet and watch over all her dusty cactuses when she was gone. “You’re fifteen. We’ll talk about this once you have your senior school certificate.”
“It’s not about that.”
“Yes, it is. They only take people with good marks. So you better start studying.”
She didn’t know that bit for sure, but hopefully, he’d have forgotten about joining the Force by the time he finished school. And by the time she had done a better job giving him interesting choices for his future. If Jake thought she could work for his company while living at Dickson’s Creek, surely Rex could find some part of technology to produce or program that would make him money. She would buy him computers and scanners and 3D printers and whatever he needed.
She changed the subject. "Well, I got the keys to the ship, even if they wouldn’t give me a permit to fly it yet, but we can get started on cleaning it up so that I can put it up for sale."
They entered their room, and Tina retrieved the small bag that she had prepared with all the items that she might need. It included keys to the cupboards, controls and flight devices, but, in honesty, she should have packed a couple of mops and cloths to clean, because it would probably be pretty dusty inside. They would have to go past the shops and buy them.
Rex asked, “What's wrong?"
Tina walked past him to the door.
“I asked you something.”
"I'll sort it out."
But she was not two steps into the hallway, when he said, "We are here together. I can help you sort things out.”
Tina didn't really think that he could, but already he had changed so much that she should at least discuss it. "I’m just a bit cranky, because everything and everybody here is charging me money. They wouldn't release the ship until I paid up all the fees over the last fifteen years that haven't been paid. They came to quite a bit, and they sent all the reminders to your father. So I never got them."
“He didn't send them to you?"
That would've been the normal thing to do. But Dexter was never known to be considerate. On the other hand she had sworn not to go into the politics of their marriage in front of Rex. After all, Dexter had never even seen the boy.
“I’ve appealed against those fees, especially the electricity charges. I was never here and never used any. They could see that and are considering it. They gave me access to the ship. I have the code. I want to get started as soon as possible. This place is costing me an arm and a leg, and I’m nervous about that.”
Chapter Twenty
Tina and Rex made their way through the maze of corridors of the station to the docking areas. First, they came to the modern main hall, a hive of activity with people going in all directions to the docking berths. Each section had a number. A lot of tourists with luggage stood crammed in front of the Sector 3 lift. Only a handful of military officers waited in front of the Sector 2 lift.
Tina and Rex got into the lift to the A sector, where no one else was waiting.
The lift took them through the weightless centre of the station.
The door opened into a much older hall with dated creamy yellow lino on the floor. It was not nearly as busy as in the first hall, or, for that matter, all the rest of the station. Next they needed to find the way to number 614.
They walked through the passage, Rex’s heavy steps thudding on the metal floor. As they went, the tubes grew narrower, and the structures older. Tina tried very hard to remember this from when she had come here but could not. She only remembered how down and exhausted she had felt. She remembered going into the Port Authority office, but little else.
"It looks like no one’s been here for ages," Rex said.
Yes, it felt like the ships behind the access tubes had been dead for years, a kind of lost-and-found collection in space. "This is the way they build these space ports,” Tina said. "They insert the new sections of the port in between the body of the station and the docking port’s extension arms, which means they just let out the walkways further."
She was t
rying to sound upbeat, but she was beginning to have a very bad feeling about this. This area of the station looked downright abandoned. The floor felt dusty underfoot. People had scrawled on the walls. Not all of the lights worked. Here and there were signs that people lived here, people with no homes, who had piled all their possessions into little heaps of tattered clothes and discarded boxes.
Homeless people were a problem in the civilian stations. When you were cast out of a ship, had no work and no money, and no ID, what else could you do?
"Here. I think this is it." The number on the side of the docking tube entrance matched the number on her access key: 614. If the Port Authority woman was to be believed, this was the spot she had left the ship, and it hadn’t been moved for fifteen years. The port had simply grown around it.
The access tube was short but shrouded in semidarkness. A light switch on the side of the tube didn’t work.
The door at the end was closed. A control panel beside the door was turned off. There were signs that the door had been forced open, with the area around the lock damaged.
Her heart sank. "Somebody has gotten in before us."
Why had she gone through the effort of paying that much money if some person could just get in? It would be scandalous if, for the money they charged, the Port Authority didn’t even make an effort to keep the ship safe, or to keep on the power that they charged her for.
Maybe she should take the ship out in protest. Cut off the cables and leave.
But it would need to be refuelled. Also, flying the ship out and detaching it from the station would bring out all kinds of people with weapons. Better play by the rules.
When she tried the access code that the Port Authority had given her, the door only opened half the distance, revealing the ship’s dark interior. "It's jammed."
And that meant Rex couldn't get in with his harness. "Wait here. I'm going to have a look to see if I can open the door fully from the inside.”
Tina squeezed sideways through the opening, wondering whether Rex would be able to get in at all. She didn't remember the accessway being this narrow, and she imagined docking the cargo bay would be another fee on top of the one she had already paid as well as embarrassing for him.
It was very dark inside the cabin of the ship. It smelled of… staleness, like the contents of a bag of clothes that you hadn’t worn for many years. There was also a faint scent of cold food.
Phooey. A good cleanout was definitely in order.
That smell of food worried her. It was probably why the door had shown signs of having been forced open. She looked around in the darkness. No one was in here right now, were they?
“Are you all right?” Rex asked from the door.
She could see his silhouette backlit by the light in the passage. “I think so,” she said. Where was the light switch in here again?
The control console, the emergency lights and projection screens that would normally provide a low level of ambient light in the cabin were off. But a tiny light was on at the far end of the control panel, and by its glow, Tina could see the familiar benches and tables and a cupboard that held equipment, and the navigation module and the pilot’s seat.
Memories flowed back to her.
A soft sound came out of the darkness.
Tina froze and listened. That had been much closer than the groans of the station constantly moving, the clicking of expanding and contracting metal and the clanging of ships docking. "Hello, is anyone here?"
She stood still for a while, but heard no further noise. So she crossed the cabin and turned on the light. True to his word, the young man had restored the power to the vessel.
But my, it was such a mess in the cabin. Apart from layers of dust, she saw clear signs that someone had lived here at some stage. Tattered and dirty blankets lay in a heap on the floor. Someone had been using the couch as a bed, and discarded food containers stood on the table. Those looked fairly recent.
Again, she heard a noise.
"Who’s there?" she repeated. "I am the owner of the ship. If you are here unlawfully, please come out. I won’t do anything to you, but you will have to leave."
Again, she got no reply, but she still sensed someone here. So she went to the sleeping cabin door, and opened it.
An avalanche of rubbish cascaded over her feet: boxes, bottles, broken equipment, dirty rags.
Tina swore, and Rex, who was looking in through the door said, “Are you all right?"
"Someone has used this to store rubbish." Obviously she would not find anyone in here.
The next door was a panel that slid aside and that, in flight, would fold out into a tube that led to the habitat module, attached to the bottom of a tube that swung around to create a semblance of gravity. When in dock, that tube was stowed, so there was no space behind the panel.
So she opened the door to the cargo bay. She turned on the light and was met with an explosion of squawking, honking and flapping.
Two large and furious balls of orange feet, beaks and feathers rushed towards her.
Tina slammed the door shut and leaned with her back against it, while the door was being attacked from the other side with much honking and hissing.
“What was that?” Rex asked.
“Geese.” Seriously, who was keeping geese in her cargo hold? She waited until the animals calmed down.
The cupboards on the right hand side of the hallway held space suit liners and other supplies. The hard suits themselves—if they hadn’t been removed—would be in the hold with the geese. But Tina guessed the suits would be gone, sold off to whoever had paid the most money for them.
She went back into the cabin, and realised there was one place she forgot to check out: the navigation bay. And she remembered that in the navigation bay was a hatch that provided access to the engine compartment, at least to the part accessible during flight. It was a tiny cubbyhole with, at the bottom of a narrow ladder, a number of panels for fine-tuning the engine and other ship processes. The room was not big enough to sleep in, but would be perfect for hiding. She yanked the hatch up, and shone a light inside.
It hit the face of a girl.
She was in her early teenage years, very skinny, with skin so pale it seemed translucent, and with dirty short hair that was coarsely hacked off close to her head.
She screamed and held her hands above her head.
“Whoa, whoa. Don’t panic. I’m not going to eat you.”
"Please, please, don't hit me!"
“Calm down.”
“Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me. I will pay.”
“Shut up!”
“Don’t hit meeeee!”
"Did you hear what I said? Shut up.”
The girl fell quiet. She glanced through the gap between her arms.
“See? I won’t harm you. Now come out, and then take your animals and leave the ship.”
"Please, I have nowhere else to go."
"I need the ship. It’s mine, and I think you broke into it."
"Please, please?"
"Is that the only thing you can say? What is your name?"
Tina had to repeat the question three times before the girl lowered her arms, uncovering her face. She was a mousey, skinny thing with huge eyes. Her pale skin was marked with red rashes from her chin down. Her arms were thin as sticks. One of them bore a black tattoo of a rune-like mark.
She looked like a child, but her budding breasts made her about the same age as Rex.
“See? We don’t bite. What’s your name?”
"Rasa."
“How old are you? Where are your parents?”
“I’m fifteen. My ma didn’t want me because her boyfriend didn’t like me, so she left me here.”
“Did you come here on a ship?”
She nodded.
“Where did you come from?”
“I don’t know. My ma is crazy and never told me. We lived on ships that went around until she decided she had enough of me.”
“When
was that?”
“When I was ten.”
“And you’ve lived here ever since?”
“Yes. I wanted to find my brother.”
Tina wondered how in the world she survived for all that time. "Well, Rasa, you can't stay here. I'm sure there are a lot of other places in the station where you can set up your cubby. Just get out now, and I won't tell anyone that you were here." She reached into her pack, and retrieved the packet she had brought for lunch. "Here, you can have this. Just take your things and animals and leave."
The girl climbed out of the cubby, took Tina's offer, gathered up a blanket but not the other things, and left for the cargo hold. When she opened the door, the geese waddled out, still honking indignantly.
There were five of them, big and white, huddled together with their heads held up high, regarding Tina with their beady eyes.
Rasa herded the animals through the cabin.
She had to walk past Rex at the entrance, and she took a step back and shuffled against the wall.
"He doesn't bite, you know."
The girl continued very carefully, eyes wide and fixed on Rex, until she was past him, and then she ran into the passage and disappeared around the corner. The geese waddled after her.
"What was all that about?" Rex asked.
"I'm not sure. Some kind of squatter."
"What does the ship look like?"
"I haven't looked at the vitals yet." Tina turned back to the pilot’s seat.
When she sat down, her mind went many years into the past. When she had last come here, she had been broken and tired. After flying a long way from Pandana, she had been on the ship alone, and that was not ideal because you had to sleep sometimes.
She remembered how glad she had felt when the ship was safely in dock, and how much she wanted to leave that world behind. She had put the ship up for sale at first, but she had received one laughable offer, so she decided to keep it in dock, and go down to the planet to have some time to think.
Who would have expected how quickly that time would grow into fifteen years?
