by Eric Vall
“But things did get worse,” I guessed, and the boy nodded.
“His used his fists more frequently, and not just his.” He gestured at Malik and Hames. “Those fuckers took some kind of sadistic pleasure in watchin’ me spit up blood. A few months back, I had enough, so I stole some of his money and tried to buy a ship with it.”
I blinked at the confession, and suddenly things all fell into place. “You were trying to leave,” I realized. “You were trying to escape Theron.”
That’s why he had tried to steal the Lacuna Noctis.
“Yeah, but Pops found out. He could have killed me then, but where would be the fun in that? Instead, he kicked me out on the streets and made sure that everyone on the station knew that if they helped me barter passage off this festering pit, they’d be takin’ a little trip out the airlock,” he explained.
I shook my head, not understanding. “Then why did you help me? Why did you have me bring this deal to him?”
Isaias didn’t respond for a moment, and his gaze roamed around the office he’d probably bled in countless times before. “Because,” he finally said at length. “After I was kicked out, I got to see how the rest of the people on this station lived, the ones not involved in drugs or money or sex. They’re starvin’, dyin’. My first week on the streets, I was diggin’ through the garbage for somethin’ to eat and I found a goddamn baby, dead, still with its cord thing attached.”
The boy shook his head, and true disgust and sadness showed in every line of his face. “A fuckin’ baby. It’s fucked up, it’s all so fucked up.”
“I always knew what it was like to be unwanted,” he went on. “And now I know what it’s like to suffer and I just thought … I thought I could do somethin’ to make things better. Then, you showed up, with your bright, shiny ship and your bright, shiny plan for the future … I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I thought maybe if we got these companies to come, even if Pops refused to share the money, I thought I could somehow funnel some funds to the people on the levels below. I didn’t really think much through beyond that.”
I stared at Isaias in complete surprise. Here I thought he was nothing more than the entitled son of a gangster. And yet, the boy was more like me than either of us realized. All that pain and suffering we had endured, and yet it didn’t turn us into monsters like Rosek. It had made us into better men.
“So, what now?” I questioned the boy when the silence stretched too long.
Isaias barked a laugh and then winced at the pain it caused. “Now, I wait for one of the guards to come in and blow my brains out for doin’ the same to Pops,” he said.
“Say I did it,” I blurted. The words tripped off my tongue before I even finished thinking them. Isaias looked up at me in shock, but I was already running with the idea.
“Say I did it,” I repeated. “That I killed him and the two guards. Be pissed about it, ask for my head, whatever. You said Rosek wanted an heir to his throne? Then become it. Take his place. You’ll do a hell of a lot better job than he ever did.”
I could tell that the notion had never even occurred to the boy. He stood there and I watched the wheels turn in his mind.
“I know it isn’t exactly what you wanted,” I added. “I know you wanted to leave here, but wasn’t your father the main reason behind that? He’s gone now. You have the chance to change things, really change things. You have the chance to truly help all those people that are living below our feet right this very minute.”
Isaias looked down at the floor as I said this and he stayed like that for a long moment. When he lifted his head, however, determination glinted in his eye and a smirk tugged at the corner of his scabbed mouth.
“You really are one persuasive son of a bitch, corpseman,” he said. I rolled my eyes at the moniker, but, somehow, it was starting to become an endearment.
“That’s why I get paid the big bucks,” I grinned.
Suddenly, Isaias’s brow furrowed as a thought occurred to him. “Wait,” he said. “If I tell everyone you killed Pops, they’ll be huntin’ for you within ten minutes. You’d have to leave, like, now. What about the mining Corporations? I thought you had to facilitate or whatever.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “I only said that to stall for time earlier,” I explained. “Rosek was right. Even if I’m not here, those miners aren’t about to pass up a contract like this. But, if it will make things easier, on our way out I’ll give them a call and explain what’s happened. At least the parts they need to know.”
Isaias nodded, and so quietly I almost missed it, muttered, “Thank you.”
I grinned, and because I couldn’t help it, reached out and mussed the boy’s hair. Isaias ducked out from under my hand to glare out me, but that only made me smile harder.
“Now,” I said as I clapped my hands together, and then flinched as my knuckles ached. “How do you propose I get out of here without alerting the rest of the guards?” I gestured at my disheveled appearance and the blood that splattered my clothes, hands, and face.
“Take the private elevator,” Isaias instructed. He turned and walked passed his father’s desk, well I guess his desk now, and straight to the back right side corner. He tapped at the wall there, and a moment later, the panel slid back to reveal an elevator platform big enough for maybe three people. “This’ll take you all the way down to the docks.”
I let out a low whistle as I walked over to join him. “Nice,” I said.
Isaias snapped his fingers. “Hold up a second,” he instructed me, and then walked back over to his desk. He stepped right over his father’s body without a second of hesitation and opened up one of the drawers there. When he came back over to me, he had a stack of credit cards in his fist.
“Here,” he said as he pushed the cards into my hands. “That should be what my father owed you, plus a little extra.”
I took the cards and placed them in the pocket of my coat. “Thank you,” I told him. Then, a thought occurred to me. “I hate to ask more of you, kid, but could I ask one last favor?”
Isaias raised an eyebrow but nodded for me to continue.
“Akela,” I started. “Her mother …”
“I’ll make sure she’s taken care of,” Isaias promised. “Don’t worry. No one will fuck with her, and she’ll always have food on her table. Tell Loric that, will ya?”
“I will,” I said with a smile.
Isaias stepped back and keyed in the code to shut the door and start the elevator. “You’ll have maybe fifteen to thirty minutes before I have to send men out to look for you,” he warned me. “I’ll make sure there’s an open door and that the harbor master doesn’t give you much grief, but that’s all I can do.”
I nodded in understanding.
Before the doors shut, however, I couldn’t help adding one last parting word.
“You’re ten times the man your father was, Isaias,” I told him honestly. Then, I flipped him a data card that I had pulled from another pocket in my coat. “If you ever need anything, there’s my info. Give me a call.”
Before the boy could respond, I gave him a wink, the doors slid closed, and I began my descent back to the docks.
It actually took me twenty minutes to reach the ship, since the elevator didn’t drop me off in a familiar spot. Omni, the little eavesdropper, already knew what had occurred and had taken it upon himself to do the pre-flight checks before I even made it up the loading dock.
When I entered the bridge, I found Neka and Akela already waiting for me, Neka standing by my chair, and Akela sprawled across her own co-pilot’s chair to the left.
“What’s goin on?” the mechanic grumbled. Her hair was mussed and she rubbed at her eyes as she yawned. “Omni woke us up and said to meet you on the bridge.”
The mechanic glanced over at me, irritated exhaustion in her eyes, but she caught sight of my appearance the same moment Neka did.
“What the hell happened to you?” the mechanic exclaimed as she bolted upright.
I leaned forward and smacked a kiss against the top of her head. “Never better,” I told her. “I got our money, so now it’s time to get out of here. O, how we doing on time?”
“We are ready for take-off, Colby,” the AI informed me.
“Wait, wait, wait a second,” Akela said as she stood from her chair and walked over to me. “We can’t leave! The repairs—”
“Are completed,” Omni finished for her.
The mechanic frowned. “But what about—”
“Everything’s taken care of,” I promised her as I laid my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll explain everything on the way, but we gotta leave now.”
Perhaps it was the urgency in my voice or the blood on my face, but the silver-haired woman finally acquiesced with a nod. I gave her an encouraging smile and then slid passed her to collapse into the captain’s chair.
“Alright, ladies,” I told my crew. “Buckle up.”
The ship rumbled to life beneath me as the engines ignited, and despite the pain and the shock of everything that had just transpired, or perhaps because of all that, I felt my heart skip a beat in exhilaration.
“Proxima V, here we come.”
Chapter 8
“Hey.”
I looked up as a knock sounded at my door. Akela stood in the open threshold, her shoulder leaned casually against the doorjamb with her arms crossed in front of her. She wore her usual uniform of black cargo pants, combat boots, and a tank top that originally had been gray or black, I couldn’t tell. There was grease smudged in the hollow of her throat, and her fingernails were onyx crescents.
It had been a week since we had left Theron, and it was still an adjustment period. It was strange to have someone else aboard the ship full time. It had just been Neka, Omni, and I for so long, our own weird little family, I had forgotten what it was like to live with a stranger. On the first sleepless night that I had wandered into the kitchen in nothing but my boxers to grab a snack, I don’t know who I had startled more: myself or the mechanic who had been sitting on the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of cereal and rehydrated milk.
“Hi,” I replied. I straightened up from where I had been hunched over a computer display I had near my bed. “What’s up?”
The mechanic shrugged and blew a piece of silver hair out of her eyes. “I just finished my rounds with Omni,” she said as she gestured with a thumb over her shoulder, “and I wanted to check if you had anything else on the ‘Later List.’” She put air quotes around the last word, and I rolled my eyes with a shake of my head.
Usually, when Omni made suggestions about ship upgrades, they weren’t exactly necessary. But sometimes they were, and in the past, I had made sure to get those implemented whenever we next made port on a Terra-Nebula planet.
For the nonessential work, however, I would just tell the AI we’d get to them later. Hence, the ‘Later List.’ It had apparently grown pretty long, and ever since the AI had brought it up to Akela, the mechanic had steadily been working through it.
“What did you get to today again?” I asked while I rubbed my chin. It was hard to keep up with the mechanic. She had an insane work ethic. Before we had even left Theron, she had already managed to extract the communication tech from our old flight suits and modified it to be remote and independent. We could now use them no matter what clothes we wore.
“Today was the mini-drones,” she replied. “We managed to extend their range to about eight kilometers. We still haven’t found a way to make them all-terrain, but I also haven’t finished looking through the supplies in storage.” She shrugged. “There might be some extra parts we could use there.”
I let out a low whistle. “Eight kilometers? That's pretty impressive,” I told the mechanic, but she only scrunched up her face. She was her own worst critic. “And I don't know what you'll find in the way of parts in storage, but you're welcome to look.”
The silver-haired woman nodded but didn’t say anything else. We stood there for a moment and stared at each other. Then Akela cocked an eyebrow at me expectantly and I suddenly realized she was waiting for her next task off the Later List.
“Oh!” I mentally scrambled. “Uh … I can’t remember anything else off the top of my head. Did you check with Omni?”
The mechanic shrugged again. “Yeah, he said we had finished everything, but I just wanted to talk with you to be sure.”
I felt my eyes go wide. “You finished the whole thing?”
Right before I was terminated, Omni tried to get me to focus on the list by reading every single item on it aloud as I was trying to sleep one night. I could’ve sworn the thing went on for ten kilometers.
“Yup,” she replied.
I just stared at the silver-haired woman in awe. “Wow. That’s…thank you, that’s amazing,” I told her sincerely.
The mechanic smiled, an easy and friendly expression that made my heart skip a beat. “Isn’t that what you’re paying me for?” she teased.
“Well, yeah, but I’m starting to think I got the better end of this deal,” I laughed, and Akela’s smile widened into a full out grin.
“Oh, you definitely are. But…” She paused and her grin faded into something more serious. She dropped her eyes and kicked at the threshold with the toe of her boot. I could tell she was uncomfortable with whatever she wanted to say next.
“I should be thanking you too, ya know,” she muttered to the ground. The ship’s lights reflected off the top of her head, making her hair seem to glow like starlight. “For getting me off Theron. For saving Theron. For trusting me with this job. You could have picked anyone, there were more than a few decent mechanics in the station. You didn’t have to choose me, a foulmouthed woman from the wrong side of the station, but you did so… thank you.”
I pressed my lips together tightly. “Akela,” I said after a moment and waited until she lifted her gaze to mine. I made sure to look her right in the eyes as I added, “You were the best and most qualified person on that station. You deserved the position.”
The look in her amethyst eyes was vulnerable and awkward. The mechanic wasn’t used to relying on other people. We had that in common. When she saw the honest sincerity in my eyes, she blushed and her eyes skipped away from my face. I smiled and decided to lighten the tension a little.
“Besides,” I chuckled. “I don’t know if you should be thanking me so soon.” I turned back to the display I had been studying when the mechanic walked in. “We haven’t even made it to our destination yet.”
I heard Akela step over the threshold of my room and walk across the floor, the clip of her boot heels especially loud in the small space. I felt her come up behind my shoulder, so I toggled the display to zoom in on the image.
Proxima V looked small and unassuming rendered in grainy, blue-washed 2D. It was a world made of water, blue oceans covering ninety percent of its surface area. There was only one large landmass centered along the equator like the Pangea continent on Earth millions upon millions of years ago. What few reports there were regarding the planet stated that out of that continent, only half was actually habitable, the other half being lethal, scorching deserts and freezing cold mountain ranges. This wasn’t even to mention the roiling, tumultuous oceans that, affected by the gravitational anomalies of the wormholes surrounding the planet, tended to turn into giant, eddying whirlpools hundreds of miles across.
Akela reached out and tapped the screen, bringing the continent more into focus. “What do you think we’ll find there?” she asked, and there was a little trepidation in her voice. I felt a little guilty that her first trip planetside wouldn’t exactly consist of walks on the beach and tourist attractions.
“Reports of Proxima V aren’t very thorough,” I said with a shrug. “Most of the observations listed were made from orbit or low atmosphere fly
bys. I know that Terra-Nebula and Nova-Sol are the only two mega Corporations to have touched down on the planet, but they were both rebuffed by the native population. They’ve since been trying to find a new angle to deal with the natives.”
“Why don’t they just… take the planet?” Akela asked with a confused expression. “We both know Terra-Nebula has the means and the manpower to just colonize the planet, with or without the natives’ consent. It must be costing millions of credits to remain in orbit while they try to figure out a workaround.”
“Ah,” I said as I raised my finger. My Corporation history lessons rose up to the forefront of my brain. “Terra-Nebula, and all the mega Corporations for that matter, have to maintain the illusion of law and order. When the intergalactic law was written, and the Corporations established, clauses and provisions were made to prevent them from gaining too much power.”
The mechanic snorted in derision, and I smiled thinly in response. “Well, they weren’t foolproof, and the Corporations have whole departments dedicated to finding loopholes in the law, but the law still stands: a Corporation may not take a planet by force for the interest of profit, and must obtain consent from the governing authority of the land,” I recited as if from a textbook.
Akela frowned and turned back to the display. She clicked on the scarce file of Proxima V, and a few bullet points of information appeared beside the planet’s image.
“And what’s the governing authority of this planet?” she asked. “Do we know?”
I leaned over her shoulder and pointed to one line of text. “All we really have is the name and a cursory description of the native species. No one’s been able to get close enough to figure out if they even have a government.”
The mechanic squinted at the words on the screen. “The Almort,” she read. “An amphibious species. Grayish-green skin, large, dark eyes, webbed appendages and ‘possibly’ gills.” She leaned back and let out a low whistle. “Wow, so we really don’t know shit, except that they’re fish people?”
