by George Ellis
“Your brother was way more optimistic than you,” she replied, raising an eyebrow. “Shorter, though.”
Then she looked at the soldiers strewn about the deck, and smiled.
* * *
“I always told myself I’d never be caught dead in one of these,” I said, tugging at the collar of the federation uniform as we zigzagged our way toward the airlock. It was a bit tight around the shoulders and neck.
“Let’s hope you never are,” Batista chirped. She seemed to be enjoying herself.
Me?
Not so much.
The day had definitely taken a weird turn. I’d been looking for information about my dad and brother since their disappearance, hoping to punish anyone even remotely responsible. I spent the first six months after their deaths following scores of rumors and I came up empty every damn time. Space was a big place (infinite things are like that), filled with a lot of bad people who got away with murder on a regular basis. And when the two people killed are just some wreckers from the lunar quadrant, nobody cares. Especially not the so-called authorities.
So, I spent half a year chasing dead ends all over the solar system, encountering some of the worst humans the universe had to offer, and all I got for my troubles were some nasty scars and a near-zero credit line.
I followed Batista from one corridor to the next, wondering how much she actually knew about what happened at Missura. And why had she bothered to contact me? There had to be easier ways to get off a federation ship. Or maybe not. Generally, you had to enlist for 10 years, and the feds didn’t take kindly to people skipping out on them. Desertion was grounds for execution.
By helping her, I’d pretty much sealed my own fate, too. Which meant that she better know something or I just became an intergalactic fugitive because some mechanic needed a free ride off her ship.
Batista dispatched another crewman who got in her way and we ducked into an engineering shaft. 405’s were filled with them — tight passageways that ran between sections of the ship, giving the engineering staff access to the ship’s systems. I turned sideways and edged along behind her until she opened a hatch and climbed out. As I did the same, I realized we were right next to the airlock. Batista gave a roundhouse kick to a female soldier’s head, and the coast was clear.
I pulled the lever to depressurize the 15-foot bridge between the 405 and the Stang. Then I opened the door.
Batista was about to step in when I blocked her path. I half-expected her to kick me in the head and steal my ship, but instead she looked right in my eyes and nodded.
“Deal,” she agreed.
“Deal?”
She stuck out her hand. “If it turns out I made all this up just to get off this ship, you can space me,” she said. “Well, you can try anyway. But I’m not making it up and we should hurry before they get here.”
When she put it like that, I had no choice but to trust her. I welcomed her onto the bridge and shook her hand, searching her eyes to see if she was impressed by my grip. It’s one of my best qualities after all. Her eyes went wide. She was either extremely impressed or…Jeffries and two soldiers had arrived, guns drawn. Yeah, it was the second thing.
“Almost, but not quite,” Jeffries sneered.
Batista turned and backed into the bridge alongside me.
“Another step and it’ll be your last,” warned Jeffries. He and the other two men entered the airlock. “I can’t say I’m surprised, Boyd. Though I can say I’m pleased. I’ve never liked your kind.”
“ “People that are taller than you?” I mused, nearly getting a snort out of one of the soldiers.
“Independents. Aka deadbeats,” he hissed. “You think you’re better than the system. But in the end, you’re just a nobody.”
“Kill this particular nobody and who will fix your ship?” I asked.
“That’s a good point,” he admitted. He shot Batista in the leg, sending her tumbling to the floor. “Either you undo whatever she did, or I let your new best friend bleed out. Your choice.”
Batista shook her head, urging me not to give in, but I couldn’t just let her die.
“I guess I only have one thing to say to that,” I replied. “Holy fog, Batman.”
Everybody looked at me, confused.
“What’s a bat man?” Jeffries asked.
I cleared my throat. “I said holy fog, Gary!”
Just as the feds realized I was making some sort of move and not having a mental breakdown, the light in the airlock disappeared. It went pitch black and I could hear the desperate clicks of the soldiers’ weapons, which had been rendered useless by the EMP.
“What the hell?” Jeffries shouted.
The air vents hissed loudly, instantly fogging the room. I counted the thuds as all three men dropped to the ground, unconscious.
“Which part of holy fog did you not hear the first time?” I barked.
“I was asleep. If you think about it, it’s kind of ironic that you programmed me to go to sleep and then me being asleep almost comes back to kill you,” said Gary. “Classic goose-gander situation.”
“What?” I replied, confused. “Lights.”
The auxiliary lights switched on. Like the feds, Batista was also knocked out. Only she was bleeding.
Chapter 3
When it comes to fixing engines and mechanical systems, there’s nobody better in the galaxy than me. I don’t have the same touch with the human body, which left Batista in a tough spot. I’d seen enough injuries to know hers was bad. Like, she might only have minutes left to live, bad.
As the captain of my ship — yes, even a ship with only one crew member and a cat technically has a captain — my first priority was the safety of everyone aboard.
Luckily, once we undocked from the stalled 405, we were able to make a clean getaway. It couldn’t exactly follow us. Given the fact the crew tried to kill me, I wasn’t too worried about the ship’s fate. Still, I knew if things got desperate, they could jettison the escape pods and survive long enough (probably) for federation help to arrive.
The other bit of luck, as far as Batista was concerned, was that the Stang’s systems had encyclopedic knowledge of medical procedures. Gary might not be able to physically perform surgery, but even an AI as quirky as him could guide me through, say, repairing the femoral artery. That’s the big one in the leg, Gary explained.
“I think if I had a choice of being shot in the leg or the arm, I’d choose the leg,” said Gary. “You can always limp around, but good luck trying to get dressed with one arm.”
“You don’t even wear clothes!” I shouted.
“I did at one point, theoretically,” he mused. “I wore a lot of white sneakers. They were big at the time.”
“Her leg, damnit. What do I do?”
“Well I’m no doctor, but I think we should stop that bleeding.”
I gritted my teeth, ready to disconnect Gary for good, when he began walking me through the process of trying to stem the blood flow.
I cut away Batista’s pant leg to get better access to the wound. The bullet was still in there, but I knew enough not to try and remove it. Dark blood was pulsing from her thigh onto the floor of the cargo bay, where I’d placed her after carrying her in from the airlock. Crimson filled the small grooves in the metal lattice work of the floor. I applied pressure to both sides of the gunshot and held firm, hoping the blood would clot enough to wrap Batista’s leg.
It was a nice leg. I tried not to think about it, but there I was, admiring her muscular thigh and toned calf.
“Having a good time, are we?” Gary chimed in. I scowled back at the camera and kept pressure on the injury, trying not to notice her thigh again. I stayed that way for the next few minutes until the blood flow stopped. I looked around for something to wrap her leg with, eventually realizing my t-shirt was the best option. I removed my jacket and shirt, then snugly fit the shirt around her leg. For the final step, I ran to the med kit and grabbed a sterilization shot. I returned to Bati
sta and jabbed it into her leg. The bullet was not coming out by my hand. But if I was lucky, the wound would stabilize and the bullet would, I dunno, be fine in there. I’d heard of it happening before.
Once the shot was done, I sat back on the floor and relaxed, watching for any seepage of blood through the shirt wrapped around her objectively gorgeous leg. After about 60 seconds, I was satisfied the bleeding had stopped.
“Her vitals aren’t the worst I’ve seen,” Gary said. “Your blood pressure is still high as usual, but that’s the deal we make with salty snacks. Not as good as the deal I made with the federation that you and your girlfriend absolutely ruined, but –”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I replied.
“Yes, Denver, I am aware,” he said. “I know you don’t date.”
I laid back onto the cool metal deck of the cargo bay and closed my eyes. I just needed to rest for a few minutes.
I awoke to find Batista looking down on me. She had a knife to my throat. The blade was cold on my skin.
“Morning,” I said, trying to move my neck away from the serrations. “That’s a hell of a way to thank me for saving your life.”
“There’ll be time for thank you’s later,” she said. “First, rules. Rule number one: This may be your ship and you may even fancy yourself a captain, but I’m not part of your crew.”
“Got it. Not part of my crew.”
“Rule number two: You want information on your family, I’ll give it to you. In return for taking me to Jasper Station.”
“That’s more of a deal than a rule, but okay, I can agree to it. What’s on Jasper Station…aside from the God fearers?”
Jasper was home to the largest colony of Believers in the galaxy. What could she possibly care about that place, I wondered.
“Rule number three: My business is none of your business.”
Batista pulled back the blade, pocketing the weapon in her pants. Which were actually my pants. That she’d taken off me. Luckily I’d been wearing clean underwear. Ish.
“It was only fair,” she said, admiring her new pants. “You ruined mine. And now we’ve both had a good look at each other.”
“That doesn’t really feel fair to me,” I countered, a bit self-conscious.
“He’s not used to visitors, especially attractive ones,” said Gary.
Batista looked at me, then the camera. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear she already understood my pain when it came to Gary’s quirks.
A few minutes and a new pair of pants later, and we were sitting across from each other in the galley, drinking what passed for coffee when I was running low on supplies. The bitter insta-brew didn’t seem to bother Batista, nor did the general state of disarray on the ship.
“Pretty daring plan to get me aboard the fed vessel,” I offered. I slid the note she had left for me across the table. Its message was simple: I know what happened to your family at Missura. Get me off the ship and find the truth.
She nodded. Sipped her coffee. I waited for some sort of response or explanation, but none came. I wasn’t sure what to make of her. I sensed a weight had been lifted from her shoulders…or maybe she was always this laid back.
“There had to be an easier way to commit treason. One that didn’t involve making me a fugitive,” I said.
Pirate jumped onto the table and flipped down in front of Batista, looking for attention. She obliged. Traitor, I thought, shooting him an annoyed glance. He didn’t even notice and was laying it on pretty thick with the purrs.
“Shadow,” Batista finally said. “I miss that guy.”
“You knew Shadow?” I asked. He had been my brother’s black lab. He died about a year before my brother was murdered.
“That dog used to pee the floor every time Avery walked into the room,” she remembered, her eyes glistening ever so slightly. “Loyal to a fault.”
“Avery,” I muttered. It had been a long time since I’d spoken my brother’s name aloud. It felt foreign, strange.
We’d been close as kids, at least as close as any two brothers could be when raised separately. Our parents had divorced when I was four and he was seven. I went with my mom, while Avery lived with my dad, as he was actually my half-brother, one of three kids from my father’s previous marriage to a woman I’d never met. The only thing I knew about her is that she worked at a casino for a few years after they’d been married, and when the marriage fell apart, she’d taken their two daughters and left Avery.
Avery and I were based only a few thousand miles apart, on different stations just beyond Mars atmo, but we may as well have been at opposite ends of the galaxy as far as I was concerned. Avery was off on wild adventures with my dad while I was with my mom reading books and learning to play the guitar. I was a bratty kid, so I treated my mom with more contempt than she deserved. In reality, I’d had the better end of the bargain. I learned later my brother spent most of his youth being raised by the various women my father dated over the years. None of the relationships ever stuck, partly because of my dad’s job as a wrecker, but mostly because of his proclivity as a drinker.
Avery and I stayed in touch the best we could, talking on the com-link often, until the weekly chats turned monthly and eventually faded altogether. We were finally reunited when I was 14, legally of age to travel on my own. My mom gave me her blessing to pursue the only dream I’d ever had — to be a wrecker like my dad and brother — but I know in her heart she wanted me to attend university and do something important with my life. It didn’t take long for my dad to see I had a natural gift for doing things with my hands, combined with an innate sense of how machines worked. He quickly pitted me against my brother. That was the old man’s way. We were the only teen boys on the crew, and became de facto partners in crime as a result. Often literally. We’d both spent time in fed lockup on multiple occasions.
“I’ll take you to Jasper, but I’m not gonna sit here and talk about my brother’s dead dog,” I snapped, maybe a bit too harshly. I was tired of the random scraps. I wanted the meat of it. “How do you know my family and what can you tell me about their deaths?”
Batista regarded Pirate for a moment, as if looking for a sign from the cat to give me the info I wanted.
“Silver Star,” she said, in a matter of fact tone.
“My dad had nothing to do with them.”
“That was the problem. For the last two years, Silver Star has been eliminating the competition,” she explained. “Dig a little deeper and you’ll see a handful of other independent wreckers have been put out of commission under suspect circumstances. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t got you yet.”
Silver Star was the federation’s preferred wrecking company, in no small part because they were run by ex-fed officials. Rumors of kickbacks for fed contracts had been swirling for years, but who was going to investigate? The oversight system was a joke. With more than 28 ships in their fleet at last count, Silver Star had nearly 90 percent of the wrecker crews on float. They were open about their disdain for the independents, but that still didn’t square with taking out crews like my father’s. Besides, I’d already looked into Silver Star and found no connection whatsoever. Even a whisper of a lead and I would’ve been all over it.
“Why now?” I asked, unconvinced. “The verse is a big place and even if they don’t like us stealing small pieces of the pie, the fact remains they’re still just small pieces. Hell, they’re crumbs.”
“I didn’t say I knew why they did it, just that they did,” she said. “Believe me. Don’t believe me. I don’t really give a damn.”
“Sure you do,” I corrected her.
“Really?”
“A smart person like you, you could’ve found a million ways to get to Jasper if you wanted to,” I said. “But blaming Silver Star is easy. First place I looked. So unless you tell me how you know it was them…”
She hesitated. For the first time, I saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes.
“Like I said, believe me,
don’t believe me. It’s up to you.”
I realized then that she wasn’t bluffing. She also didn’t want to tell me the truth. But she didn’t have to — she already had me and she knew it.
“Okay, let’s say I did believe you, what then?” I asked, pulling Pirate into my lap. I didn’t like Batista having all the advantages. If she had the information, I was at least going to have the cat.
“What then is you take me to Jasper,” she repeated. “And if you get me there in less than two weeks, maybe we both get something out of it.”
I pride myself on driving a hard bargain, but in this instance my hands were tied.
“You don’t touch anything, especially the engines,” I warned.
She smiled and kicked her feet onto the galley table. “Damn boy, I’m retired. Good luck getting me to do anything besides sleep and catch up on all the movies I missed while I was in uniform.”
Like I said, she was holding all the cards.
“Well played,” Gary teased in my earpiece. “It’s always impressive to see your negotiating skills in action. Wanna know the deal you messed up with your little stunt?”
“Shut up,” I snapped.
Batista looked at me, eyebrows raised. “What did he say this time?”
Chapter 4
The trip to Jasper would take about 11 days, giving us a few days to spare if Batista’s two-week deadline actually mattered a damn. I still wasn’t sure it did. She could’ve just wanted a free ride to the station. Hell of a weird way to score that ride, but who was I to judge?
Jasper, though.
Jasper and Silver Star. I’d never heard the two names connected before. The Believers didn’t venture off station very often. Most of them were either born in the 13-square-mile city or spent their lives and fortunes traversing the galaxy to get to the central hub of Theism. It was a rigid, God-fearing society. The last bastion of the righteous, if you believed the Believers. I mostly thought they were loony zealots. Even if I was interested in what they were selling on a spiritual level, the fact that alcohol was forbidden by the religion made the prospect of conversion a non-starter for me.
