Jace beamed with pride as he showed me around. He couldn’t help it. Every thing he said, every move he made told me he loved that ship, with all her dents and bruises, her minimal power, her limited capacity.
And I knew why. The first time I went up in a ship, I fell in love with it. I’ve loved every ship I’ve ever been on, even the clunkers, even the ones where I had to work some shit job because that’s all they had.
I sat in the galley, drinking some of Jace’s cheap wine, fantasizing about how nice it would be to have your own ship, be your own boss. And studiously ignoring the ripped seat covers, the storage cabinets held shut with tape, the chips out of the table top — all the things that never get repaired when you don’t have money, because the money goes for engines, for comp repair, for bribes.
Jace stood in the head, trying to get my dinner out of his hair. “What did they put in this shit?“ he said.
“Damned if I know. I didn’t make it. I was just trying to eat it when you careened into me.“
“Careened? Somebody knocked me into you.“ He came out, toweling his hair dry. “I didn’t start the damn fight either.“
“Yeah? Well, you sure got into it. I figured I’d have to knock you cold to stop you.“
He tossed the towel back in the head, poured himself a little wine. “You mean you’d have tried to knock me cold. I was winning when we got so rudely interrupted.“
I shook my head. “Terrible thing to see delusions in a man. Anybody could see that I was going to kick your ass.“
He gave me a nasty grin. “I wouldn’t put money on that.“
“Why not?“ I said. “It’d be more fun with money on it.“
He laughed, and then he reached out, took my hand. I felt a little jolt. Lust, yes, but something more. Maybe connection.
Funny, but we sat there talking the rest of the night. And not about anything in particular, really. We kept teasing each other about who could beat up whom, told stories from our respective pasts with a lot of the details left fuzzy on purpose, every once in awhile said something kind of serious.
And every time we touched, the charge ran through me again. Lust, and something more. I wanted him; he wanted me. And neither of us wanted to hurry.
Felt weird. Spacers, we meet somebody stationside, we know we won’t have lots of time. So usually we just go for it. On ship it’s worse. You got to do it quick, because there’s so damn little privacy. Plus it’s sort of ship’s rule never to get really involved with another crew member. Jealousy can destroy the crew’s ability to function, and people can die if the crew doesn’t function. A quick fuck is fine; love, that’s for planetsiders.
Jace and I kept touching each other while we talked, though, and finally we just couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Then everything speeded up and we couldn’t do it fast enough.
Afterwards, we found ourselves lying in the square meter of open space. The legs from the galley table were digging into my sore ribs, and Jace’s feet were actually on the bridge.
“Can’t sleep like this,“ Jace said. He got up, folded the galley table into the wall to make some space, and pulled a couple of pallets out of the crew bunks. We built something that resembled a bed on the floor, and started over, taking time, a long, long stretch of time.
We’d have probably slept all day, if a com buzzer hadn’t gone off. Jace shot up like a man possessed, spent a few seconds shaking his head like he was trying to figure out where and who he was, and then dove for the bridge.
I listened.
“Demaine here... Yes... Absolutely... .No problem... Half an hour.“ He punched out. “All right! I’ve got a load.“ He looked at me. “I could use some crew. You want a job?“
He must have seen the hesitation in my face — even temp spacers don’t work short hauls on small ships if they have any chance of something better — because he added. “It’s just a quick trip, a one-jumper to Melpomene. If you can’t find a good post there, I’ll bring you back to Galatea.“
What the hell. I’d made good money my last trip. I could afford to work cheap for a month or so. And we could keep having fun. “Sure. Why not.“
We scrambled around to get ready to ship out. He cleaned up fast so he could go meet with the shipper. “Let me have your docs, and I’ll register you as crew.“
I handed him what he needed.
He started out, hesitated, and looked back at me. “These okay?“
“Yeah,“ I said. “You won’t have any problem with them.“ It wasn’t exactly a lie. I knew my docs would go through registration without glitches.
He looked closely at me, nodded, and said “See you.“
We spent the rest of the day loading the cargo — fancy foodstuffs for the Melpomenean gourmets. Watching Jace work, I discovered that his skinny arms concealed wiry muscles. He approved of my strength, too. “Damn, woman, I didn’t think anybody your size could lift fifty kilos like that.“
“Practice,“ I said. “Lots of practice.“
We shipped out as soon as we finished loading, even though we both could have used some sleep. The port gave Jace the choice of twenty-two hundred hours that night, or whenever they could work us in the next day. He took the first slot. Short-haulers can’t be picky.
I worked com and comp, while Jace piloted us out of dock. Rhea’s engines kicked in, and we broke free of gravity with more ease than I’d expected. Jace patted the console. “Good girl,“ he said. A planetsider might have laughed. I didn’t.
We took it easy pulling away from Galatea. I familiarized myself with the comp functions, so I could do fast calcs for jump. Jace ran through some maintenance routines, the kind best done while moving. Once we’d traveled far enough from the station, Jace called up the automatic pilot and waved me back toward the bunks. “Get some sleep,“ he said, reclining the captain’s chair. “We got a long time before the jump point.“
Exhausted as I was, I lay awake awhile, wondering what I was doing, working on an independent. Jace probably saw me as a bonus: crew he could fuck. Well, hell, I was getting paid to play around. I’d get a real job when we got back to Galatea, I told myself firmly as I drifted off to sleep.
The next watch, as we came up on jump point, Jace took a look at my numbers. “Dead on for Melpomene,“ he said with approval.
“You know the coordinates by heart?“
“I’m from there. But don’t worry. I’m not taking you home to meet my mother.“
Jump. It’s hard to explain to someone who’s never been through it, and most planetsiders haven’t. Passenger liners give travelers drugs, but spacers take pride in their ability to deal with the time shift. No real spacer takes drugs for jump.
We don’t talk about what happens there much, even with each other. It smells of religion, of dreams, of the occult, of a hundred things a cynical spacer would prefer not to believe in. But we do believe in it.
Jace pushed the buttons that sent us into hyperdrive, reached over, touched my hand, and time... changed. I was aware of Jace beside me, but I also saw another Jace, another me.
They floated in a pool of water, these others. Jace’s eyes held innocence; they had not yet seen the evils of the world. Mine were bright with anticipation of things I might yet do someday. Laughing in the water, we explored each others bodies. And minds. I saw Jace before he lost his parents and had to finish raising himself; he saw me before I joined the Corps and made the last stand for Atropos. “I think I love you, Ane,“ he said, and then we came back to normal time.
And started pushing buttons to figure out if we had indeed ended up on the edge of Melpomene space. Not to mention figuring out whether all of Rhea’s systems had survived jump. One thing about an old ship: FTL flight tends to stress all the working parts. But we’d made it in clean, this trip.
Jace put the system on automatic, and we grabbed packets of revitalizer out of the cabinets in the galley. He gave me a funny look as we both gulped them down, trying to replace a couple of weeks’ lost energy
reserves.
“What’s your name, really?“ he asked. “Lia or Ane?“
I flinched. As much as I’d enjoyed the jump visions, I’d kind of hoped he’d had different ones. Clearly he hadn’t.
Lying wouldn’t work. He knew. “Ane,“ I said. “Ane n’Mara.“
“Thought you told me your docs were okay.“
“They are okay. They’re fucking better than okay. But...“ I shrugged. “I’m from Atropos, Jace. I fought in the resistance.“
“I figured it had to be something like that. So the Confederation has your name on a list.“
I just nodded.
“Fucking stupid, the Atropos resistance. Anybody with any sense could see you didn’t have a prayer against the Confederation.“
“Yeah.“
“You ever wish you hadn’t done it?“
I kind of grinned. “I often wish I hadn’t had to do it,“ I said.
“That’s not the same thing.“
“Oh, hell. I was nineteen, and the bastards wanted my home. A little planet, orbiting a minor star — not really important to anyone except for all its damned tserinium. Now it’s just another satellite, a little piece of the Helian Confederation. And I don’t have a home.“
“Oh, come on Lia... Ane. The Confederation’s not all that bad. They just want to run the commerce and stuff. Otherwise, they don’t interfere much with the way the planet’s run. It’s not that big a deal.“
I didn’t get mad. I’m long past getting mad. “Maybe it’s not. Maybe they even run the place better. But we didn’t want them there, don’t you get it? It was our planet, and we wanted to be left alone. Why couldn’t they have just left us alone?“
Jace didn’t have an answer for that. He looked at me for a long time, then said, “Your docs — are they really that good? I’m not going to run into some kind of customs fuck-up?“
“I’ve worked spacer jobs for the past seven years, Jace, and never had a problem. Individual planet customs never give me any trouble. Long as I don’t come up against heavy Confederation security, somebody who can get past the mind barriers, I’ll be okay. I didn’t just buy phony papers.“
He nodded.
“And if I get caught, I’ll tell them I lied to you. No reason they wouldn’t believe it. It’s my problem, Jace. It doesn’t have to be yours.“
He just nodded again. Then he reached out, took my hand, and ignited all that hunger one more time. We barely got back to the bridge in time to begin docking when we got close to the station.
On Melpomene, Jace got a quick consignment bound for Bellona. He didn’t kick me off; I didn’t look for a better job. We got to Bellona, and another order fell in our lap. Another one came along shortly after. After a few months, neither of us questioned that I was staying on.
We had lots of time to tell each other stories. Rhea had originally belonged to Jace’s uncle. A couple of years after his parents had died — killed in a robbery at the store they had run stationside — his uncle had shown up on a run to Melpomene, and taken Jace on as crew.
It was hard work: margin running, short hauls. His uncle had bent all the rules just trying to survive. Jace had already learned a few tricks living on the streets, and he learned more from his uncle.
“I came of age in spacerville bars,“ he said. “Learned all my fighting there and on the docks. Learned how to drink there, too, the hard way.“
“Saw the inside of a few jails?“ I asked.
“Like I told you once, I used to be young and stupid.“
Rhea became his after his uncle died. Rhea, and a bunch of debt. He’d gotten desperate enough to consider selling her once or twice, but he never could bring himself to do it.
“I’d rather die,“ he said. “I ever get in so deep they try to take her for my debts, they’ll have to kill me to get her.“
Sounds melodramatic, I guess, but I understood it. I watched him when we were in port, saw how he glowed when they addressed him as Captain Demaine. He loved Rhea and he loved being his own boss.
In jump we saw other things about each other, things we couldn’t always put into words, things we might not have been willing to admit to ourselves. We always seemed to have a shared vision, even if we weren’t touching. He saw me blast a man as I found a way off Atropos after the resistance crumbled. I saw him stab a man to death on a deserted dock. Two people capable of killing for their own ends, two people who didn’t forget their enemies.
We connected so strongly in jump that I began to think we’d become that strangest of all contradictions, two spacers in love. We were happier than either of us had a right to be.
We were doing okay, for folks on the margins, getting regular work. Rhea’d only needed a couple of minor repairs, and Jace had paid me twenty-five percent of the net — good money for a temp on a short-hauler.
We sat in a spacerville bar early one evening, before the chaos took over. Jace said, “You know, I like having you around. I’d be willing to make you permanent crew, give you a stake, if you want one.“
I didn’t answer right away.
He said, “Course, I’ll understand if you want to get a real job here. Risky, hanging out with me. Economy’s pretty good right now everywhere, so there’s lots of business. Come a downturn, I’ll be sitting in dock, piling up fees, wondering where a job’s going to come from.“
“It’s not that,“ I said. “We’re better off if I stay temp crew, stay way in the margins. Easier to convince security you didn’t know about my past if I get caught.“
“Yeah, well, fuck it. Life’s risky.“
I shook my head. “Safer for me, too. Security’s less likely to look close at me so long as I’m a temp.“
He nodded, finally, and we left it like that.
Nothing crashed down on us right away, but trouble started chipping away at us. Rhea’s com system broke down, and we depleted savings to replace it. Work started drying up. The economy took a downturn on Cybele, the lead Confederation planet, and markets throughout the five solar systems followed.
We sat in the dock in Bellona Station, running up fees, next to nothing on our chits, nothing even close to a job in sight.
Jace fussed around the ship while I looked for work. Obviously he couldn’t sign on to another ship. And by port rules if he’d taken a job stationside, we’d have had to move off Rhea and pay rent in addition to dock fees. You can’t live on ship and work stationside. Just another way the system sticks it to the small independent. It didn’t matter about me; the rules don’t apply to temps.
I tried to sign on with a long-hauler, figuring to make some money for both of us, but even the big ships hurt for business. No one was hiring. After I gave up on spacer jobs, I spent a week on the stationside docks, looking for any kind of work. No jobs there either: if the ships aren’t going out, there’s not much call for port crew.
Jace was going over the books when I came back after the last frustrating day. He took one look at me, and knew my news was bad. “Fuck it,“ he said, and left abruptly. If you could slam a door on a starship, he would have done it.
He came back ten hours later. I pretended I hadn’t been worried. He didn’t look happy. “Ane, I’ve cut us a deal, something to haul.“
“But?“
“But I don’t want to tell you what it is. That way you can play dumb. You’re temp crew, you don’t know what we’re hauling, you can’t get in any trouble. It won’t be your responsibility, on your conscience.“
“Fuck it. Whatever you’re in, I’m in.“
He shook his head adamantly. “No. Hell, no. This one is all on me. We get caught, something comes up, you had nothing to do with it. Nothing.“
“Jace, we can’t have this between us. You have to tell me.“
“Listen, damn it. I’m doing this to keep Rhea, okay? I’m doing it for me, for my own selfish reasons. Let me carry the weight. Please.“
He wore me down, eventually. Maybe because I was scared to find out just how far he’d go. Or
even worse, just how far I might go.
So I got lost while he dealt with the cargo. It didn’t take long. Had I already guessed the cargo was human? Honesty compels me. Even in a bankrupt economy, some of the rich can still afford the luxury of buying other beings. I figured we’d sunk into slave-trading. I tried not to think about it.
Jace didn’t tell me our final destination. We didn’t talk much on the couple of days it took to get from Bellona Station to the nearest jump point. I guess we both feared what might get said if we spoke. The silence didn’t affect our communication; we ran the boards as smoothly as ever.
When we reached the point, I plugged in coordinates for Melpomene, and slipped... into... jump. For a time, we sat and stared at boiling clouds, chaotic in their movement. And then they faded away, and we saw ourselves.
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls Page 5
