by A. R. Knight
“So tell me,” Cadge said to Vi’s back as she dug around the cabinets. “Your dad, he really have that much money?”
“He runs Galaxy Forge,” Viola replied, as though that answered the question.
And it did. Galaxy Forge, that was one of the big ones. Making ships, robots, whole space stations and scattering them around the solar system. Cadge had heard they were making a millennium ship, one of those big ones designed to go for years and years until they hit another star. Get that reward, Cadge could probably afford a ticket. Maybe even a little extra, once he informed Vi’s dad of the trouble the man’s daughter had brought with her. Bar fights, Davin taking a punch in the club.
Lotta different stories he could tell.
“So, let me get this straight, your daddy is mega rich, and yet you’re here with a few space jockeys about to eat some,” Cadge glanced at the packets Vi selected. “Powdered turkey and tomato basil. You thinking this is a good call? That you made the right choice?”
“No idea,” Vi said, giving Cadge the old straight stare. “Tell you this much, the conversation’s a lot more interesting here.”
Hey! What do you know. Vi can talk after all. But coming to the table doesn’t mean she could play the game.
“Mox, what one word would you say best describes what we do?” Cadge said.
“Dangerous,” Mox replied.
“Dangerous. Girl like you, easy to get hurt out here,” Cadge said. Turn up the heat, see if she folds. A volunteer run to Ganymede, coin in the pocket.
“What about Phyla, or Trina?” Vi said.
“They’re used to it. Grew up with this. You, you’ve got the golden ticket,” Cadge replied. “We could still change course, drop you at Ganymede?”
“I can’t go back yet,” Vi said. “There’s still so much more to see. Back on Ganymede, I’d be bored.”
For the first time, Cadge felt the grin slip. That wasn’t what she was supposed to say.
“Bored,” Mox said. “Worse than danger.”
Vi nodded. That was it then. No game set match here.
“Yeah, well, if you stay, then no whining,” Cadge said. “You want to play in space, you got to earn your right to be here. Starting now.”
Cadge finished the remark by pushing the last spoonful of shortcake paste into his mouth, staring at Vi as he chewed it. Just because they didn’t go to Ganymede now, didn’t mean he couldn’t get her there eventually. The coin would still be there. Might take a bit of time, but he’d been cruising the stars and bars for years already. He could wait a little longer.
31
Alive
On Earth, going through the repeated drills necessary to become a fighter pilot, Merc had his fair share of rough-and-tumble moments. Ejected once. Had a ship go dead more than a few times, leaving him stranded and staring at the blue marble until help arrived. Each one hurt, physically, emotionally. Meant he had to do better next time.
This, man, this was different. Opening his eyes took too much work. Coming back to reality meant dealing with the fiery claws ripping their way through his chest. Erick mentioned he was trying to blunt those rending tears. But sleep was the only real escape.
“Merc?” Opal’s voice plunged into his psyche. Kept him out of the darkness.
Merc opened his eyes and saw a hazy world too hard to interpret. Looking at him, a brown and black smudge that, after a few blinks, turned into Opal.
“Hey there,” Opal said.
“Hey,” Merc said. His voice raspy, rusted gears grinding into motion.
“Thanks for coming. For saving me.”
“Sure thing,” Merc replied. “Not like you needed it.”
“I was only cuffed and disarmed,” Opal said, her mouth quirking into a smile. “Still plenty dangerous.”
“Figured I could help out. Never get the chance to use those discs, you know?”
Opal slid her eyes lower. Merc couldn’t follow, his head too heavy to lift. Knew what she was looking at, though.
“I saw,” Opal said. “A lot of friends get shot on Mars. From sidearms, some recovered. Others took hits from rifles, from bigger things and never made it back. Thing was, that was a war. When things like that made sense. So I took it, for a while.”
“For a while?”
“They don’t go away. The ones who don’t come back,” Opal pulled Merc’s covers up, rested her hands on them. “I started to see their faces at night, and then during the day. I’d be looking through the scope and hear one of them beside me, talking. Sit at the mess and one of them is there, next to me. So I left.”
“That’s when Davin found you?”
“Booze is cheap in Vagrant’s Hollow. It didn’t make the voices go away, but they were easier to deal with,” Opal said. “Then he gave me something to do. A purpose that wasn’t quite so violent.”
“Sorry for ruining that. Didn’t mean to,” Merc said.
“It’s all right, because you came back. Erick works miracles.”
“Speaking of that, how’d I get back here anyway?”
Opal’s face brightened. He seen the same look on some of his friends back on Earth. Some who’d been to Mars, who’d been in other fights. Take them away from their souls for a second and give them a chance to tell a good story. Opal jumped right in, going through carrying Merc back to the bay doors, fighting the android, Mox breaking into the prison. Cadge in the body bag.
“… and Mox carried you into the ship. You should’ve seen Erick,” Opal said. “Doctor’s half-dead already, but has you on the bed acting like he’s ready for a twelve-hour operation.”
“Man’s a saint,” Merc replied.
“Know what he said to me, after you passed out the first time?”
“The first time?”
“Oh,” Opal pressed her hand to Merc’s forehead, gently. Like she was feeling him for a fever. “You haven’t really been awake for a while, have you?”
“Nothing since taking the hit. What’d he say to you?”
“That fighter pilots never stay down long, because they never like believing they’ve been hit.”
“I didn’t get hit. Here on the ground? That doesn’t count.”
Merc tried but couldn’t keep his eyes from blinking closed. His mind wanted to say awake, but his body couldn’t handle the idea.
“Whatever you say, Merc,” Opal said. “I should let you sleep. Erick wouldn’t be happy with me keeping his patient awake.”
“It’s good,” Merc said. Those fiery claws were falling away as Merc fell deeper into dreamland. Couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to stop it. He felt Opal’s hands wrap around his own, warm gloves. They were nice.
“Goodnight, stick jockey,” Opal whispered.
“Goodnight.”
32
Wanted
“What’s the charge?” Davin said. They were sitting in the cockpit, the Sun a distant spot far, far in front of them. Jupiter loomed, but it was behind the Jumper as it sped towards the interior of the solar system. A few days coasting up to speed, then a few days slowing and they’d be at Miner Prime.
Phyla was scrolling through news on the pilot’s console. Every tap she made followed by a lag, sometimes only a few seconds, sometimes minutes. A stream of satellites, running on solar power, chained the routes from Earth to Saturn. Soon to Uranus and Neptune. Each one cached data, building up wads of text from companies, news agencies, and other sources.
The most common stories were locally stored and sent fast, deeper queries required hours as satellites bounced the search to and from comprehensive databases on Earth and Mars.
Pictures, movies were non-existent. Too much data.
“I’m looking through today’s database,” Phyla said. “There’s more than charges than usual.”
“They’re learning they can abuse this thing.”
The Free Laws. No sovereign body in space, so here’s this loose set of rules to keep people in line. Including a lovely section where any interested party could pay to
list a wanted person, and a reward. The ones with real motivation paid to send an android after you, either catch or kill. Getting a bot to murder a target required approval from a council of judges, but they were all corporate stooges. If you wanted to live in space, you stayed friends with the big companies.
“They waited till people invested out here. Now they’re turning the screws,” Phyla said. “There’s a couple in here for failure to pay on time. Really? You’re going to send an android after someone late on a bill?”
“It’s their playground, they can make the rules. Anything on us?”
“Here,” Phyla said. She swiped on the article, bringing it up on the cockpit glass. With the Sun glaring through part of it, the display adjusted the text color, the blue words flipping to white on the black background of space.
“Pre-meditated murder,” Davin muttered, reading. “The Wild Nines, a mercenary group formerly employed by Eden Prime, is accused by same of plotting to eliminate two inspectors.”
“It says there’s video evidence, but we can’t get it out here.”
“What’d they record?”
“More like, what did Marl make?” Phyla said.
The rest of the piece was commentary about how the Wild Nines were dangerous, unpredictable, blah blah blah. Same stuff could be said of any mercenary outfit. The real question was why Marl wanted this whole thing done to begin with? Why not just cancel their contract if she wanted them gone?
“I have an idea,” Phyla said.
“That she wanted the inspectors dead,” Davin said.
“You stealing my thoughts again?”
“Only when there’s something useful in them,” Davin replied. “Doesn’t happen too often.”
“Watch it, captain. I can still turn this thing around.”
Davin looked up from the news, out through the window. Took another deep breath of that recycled air. A few people he’d met, from Earth, said the stuff had a tang to it, a taste that lingered in the throat. Body’s way of saying it wasn’t natural. Davin hadn’t ever felt that. Then again, he’d never breathed real, pure air.
“Our parents came from Earth,” Davin said. “Went to Miner Prime. Started families. They knew they could’ve gone back home if they ever had the money.”
“They didn’t.”
“But they could’ve, Phyla. You look at this,” Davin glanced back at the console, the murder charge. “We’ll never be able to land. They’d shoot us on sight.”
“That’s why you’re upset? Cause you can’t get to Earth right now?”
“Guess you think that’s a stupid reason?”
“Not if you have more behind that. Like not getting killed by androids. Or starving because nobody’s going to hire us.”
“Phyla, that’s why you’re the pilot,” Davin said. He leaned back in the copilot’s, the captain’s chair. “Lets me be the dreamer.”
“You always were,” Phyla said.
Davin closed his eyes. A few more days till they reached Miner Prime. A murderer’s homecoming.
33
Space Work
A couple weeks in space felt like an endless span of time. Viola kept herself busy, or rather, Trina, Davin and Erick kept giving her things to do. The doctor, impressed with Viola’s stitching abilities, grabbed Viola whenever he saw her and go over how something worked. Erick’s favorite, and an apparent necessity of a frequent space-farer, was the DNA Restoration machine, or the D-NAR.
The high doses of radiation coming in from the outside world required the occasional extraction, repair, and then injection of small nano-bots that swarmed damaged cells and put them back together. Then a beacon in the waste system collected the bots. Erick would bring them back to the D-NAR to be reset for the next person.
Trina gave Viola things more in line with her classes. Keep the engines primed, monitor the systems if Trina was asleep. Clean the Viper of any atmospheric gunk Merc got on it during his flight on Europa. Trina said the pilot would normally do this himself, but seeing as Merc was barely awake these days, that wasn’t happening.
Davin was the worst, though. The captain found the most menial tasks. Shunt the trash out into the void. Inventory the food supplies so Phyla could restock on Miner Prime. Still, the work was better than endless textbooks and articles. It was real. Tightening the bolts on a loose vent was something Viola was actually doing. In space! Going thousands of miles per hour! Even drudgery, in space, had a tint of wonder. And when Phyla announced over the intercom that they were making their approach to Miner Prime, Viola took a long breath. The vacation was ending.
“You might be sad,” Puk said. “But I could use some new surroundings. This place is claustrophobic.”
“That’s literally something you can’t feel,” Viola said.
“Says you.”
“So tell me about where we’re landing?”
“Miner Prime,” Puk said. “Fantastic place. Like if you took a can, packed a bunch of people in, then told corporations they could buy needles to jab into it and create offices. Set the whole thing spinning to get yourself gravity, stick it close to some asteroids full of precious metals, and you’ve got yourself the richest, largest home in space.”
“Sounds like something I should see,” Viola said, heading towards the cockpit.
Ships larger and smaller than the Jumper buzzed around the station. Some were floating boxes with mechanical arms that allowed them to haul ore from asteroids back to Miner Prime for processing. A few large ovals floated apart from Miner Prime, small shuttles whisking passengers back and forth from the transports. The decals covering the sides claimed they were cruise vessels, carrying their passengers from Earth in a loop through the solar system on a cruise that would last over a year.
Viola even saw a ship from her father’s company docked at one of the spindly outreaches of the station, the orange and red logo giving it away.
“Pretty cool, right?” Davin said to Viola as they stood in the cockpit.
“I think it’s so ugly,” Phyla said. “Except it works, so nobody cares.”
“It’s huge,” was all Viola could think of saying.
“When we land, you’ll get the chance to see just how big,” Davin said. “I’ve got to meet a friend down there, get a little more information.”
“And I’m coming with?” Viola asked.
An awkward pause, Phyla wore a bemused expression, as though daring Davin to say more.
“I think Mox’ll show you around,” Davin said finally. “The less you’re involved with us, the better.”
“What do you mean?” Viola said.
“I’m saying that things are going to get messy,” Davin said. “You’ll be able to find a ship that’ll take you back to Ganymede down there. Probably a better ride than what you just had. Though I wouldn’t tell them who you are.”
“Why not?”
“You tell your father when you see him that putting a big reward for his daughter’s return is a good way to attract the wrong kind of attention.”
“So, I’m not going with you?”
Viola caught Davin’s quick glance at Phyla. Heard his sigh.
“We're labeled murderers, Viola. We'll be hunted. You don't want that,” The captain said. “Mox’ll get you to a ship that can take you. I’m not gonna have a kid get shot trying to play mercenary in my crew.”
For the first time, Viola heard Davin’s voice and thought of her father. The same tone, that Viola’s own choices were his responsibility. But look at Merc. Look at how he nearly died. At how bad Erick was. Viola looked at her hands, remembered the sticky feel of Erick’s blood on them as she stitched up the wound. Why would she ever want more of that?
“He’ll show me around first?” Viola said. “Just a quick tour. Then I’ll hop the next shuttle back.”
Davin nodded, looking like a thousand pounds came off of his shoulders. Twenty years old and Viola still got people so worried about her.
34
Vagrants Hollow
Vagrant’s Hollow was twenty stories high, its ceiling a changing screen approximating Earth’s sky. Here and there malfunctioning plates stood out, black dots punching holes in the illusion.
“Hasn’t changed much, has it?” Davin asked Phyla, standing next to him in the lift.
“I don’t know if it’s changed, but it feels sadder, somehow,” Phyla replied.
“Because we used to see all this and wonder where it came from. What it was. Now, it’s just a pile of trash.”
One house near where the lift landed was a prime example. Whatever its original shell, the place was made out of an entire ship, broken into chunks and leaned against each other. Style wasn’t important here. Having a home was what mattered.
“I suppose,” Phyla said.
They looked out the windows at the rapidly approaching lift station. The trench that served as Vagrant Hollow’s main drag laid beyond the exit stairs. Like Eden Prime’s boulevard, but with none of the sterile attempts at class. Tables and tents full of clothes, food, junk, and bots for sale along the sides of the meandering path. Dilapidated homes erected on top of and attached to each other leaned over it, people hawking wares or making something out of nothing beneath the misshapen overhangs.
Even though the lift filtered out the smell, Davin’s nose sniffed his memory and came away with the ozone sting of burning electricity, a hint of char from cooking food.
“Does she know you’re coming?” Phyla asked.
