by Tim Pratt
“Nassa prob.”
Elena decided to parse that as “no problem.”
“What ship found you?” Jana asked.
“The White Raven?”
“Ah ha ha, you crewed up with Callie then? She’s tough and tough but she’ll take good care. Won’t cheat you.”
“She’s been very kind. Do you know her well?”
“To say hi hello, some same friends, some drinks together at parties. Mostly she’s just known. Does security but freelance, not as sticky uppy as some who serve. Tells you true. Stabs from the front.”
“Ha. Right. She said maybe I should go to Ganymede.”
“Jovian Imperative, gateway to the galaxy. Not so quiet there, not like way out here on the edge. This is the place to go to get away, but that’s the place to be close in. You can go and be anywhere there. Maybe you stay here a little while, where it’s quiet, while you get used to it being so loud. You can come here any time. I like to talk when it’s not too busy to talk.”
“I will come back.” If I survive. Elena finished her drink. “Thanks for this.”
“Nassa prob. Say. You fancy a tumbling tumble? I’m off soon and you’re sweet to speak to and you have a shine.”
Elena blinked. “Oh. Do you mean… do I want to have sex?”
“If you want. Been five hundred years, eh? You’re cute as all, is all. No worries if no.”
“I… not right now, but I appreciate you asking, and so nicely.” She started to slide off the stool, then paused. “May I ask? Why is your tongue blue?”
“Nano-thing. Supertaster.” She waggled out her tongue, but not lewdly. “Good for making better drinkies.”
“Right. That makes sense. I’ll see you around, Jana.”
“Until and until. This is your great big beautiful tomorrow today, eh?”
Elena left the lounge. “That went well,” Shall said in her ear. “Excellent human interactions.”
“Excellent patronizing voice. Tell me, is it usual here for people to proposition others for sex that directly?” Thinking: I could just proposition Callie, if that’s how things are done. She felt a twinge of guilt at the thought, because not so long ago (in subjective time, at least) she’d fantasized about Sebastien that way, and now he was lost. She wasn’t wired to be particularly monogamous, and one kiss didn’t make Sebastien her boyfriend anyway, but she felt guilty thinking about sex at all, with anyone, when he was in danger.
Shall said, “Direct propositions are generally acceptable in that sort of bar, and at parties – if they aren’t business parties, but that line gets blurry at times – and in many social clubs, and in appropriate regions of the Tangle. Basically, you can ask someone if they’d like to have sex if it’s a place where you might reasonably expect to be asked that. Otherwise, no – we rely on the same flirtations and insinuations and speculations and sizing-up that were common in your time, based on my recent survey of your film and literature.”
“Ah. Good to know. I’d hate to find myself made prudish by circumstance.” Propositioning someone you’d hired to lead a reckless rescue mission was probably a social faux pas, though.
“Callie does respond well to directness, though, so–”
“Shut up shut up shut up.”
“I will, if you like, but Jana wasn’t wrong. It’s been five hundred years. And you’re going on a mission you might never return from.”
“Let’s change the subject, shall we, Shall? What’s Callie’s problem with you? Why doesn’t she call you by your name? Why does she seem really annoyed every time you talk? What is your secret history?”
A long pause. “Shut up,” he said. “Shut up shut up shut up.”
“Fair,” Elena said.
* * *
Callie departed the security office, comming with Ashok to let him know the ship was going to be fitted with new defensive and offensive systems, and letting him know he should coordinate with the engineers from security about getting it done promptly and well.
She made a few more stops – arranging for resupply since she wasn’t sure how long they’d be out, and grabbing fresh clothes from her quarters (including a couple of things she thought she looked especially good in, but definitely not for Elena, she just felt like dressing up). She met up with her friend Hermione, who’d been born out here and upgraded from the life of a rock-hopper to become a designer of expert systems, and had the single foulest mouth and raunchiest mind Callie had ever encountered. They caught up over lunch at their favorite halal cart in one of the inner rings.
“So tell her you want to climb on,” Herm said after Callie had laid out her feelings about Elena (whom she described merely as a sexy time refugee, and not a survivor of bizarre alien interventions). “She hasn’t had so much as a sad solo orgasm in five hundred years? She’ll worship you like a god.”
“I like her. I don’t want to take advantage of her. And I think she’s carrying a torch for one of her crewmates anyway.”
“She’s got two hands, so she can carry two torches. Why not take advantage of each other? That’s healthy. That’s what I always do.”
“As always, your ethical guidance is the star that lights my way.”
“If you’re not going to climb it, point her in my direction. I’ll blow the dust off her properly.”
Callie threw a napkin at her.
By the time Callie got back to the hangar, Ashok was supervising the security engineers crawling all over the hull of her ship with torches and epoxy and rivets. He spun toward her and came bouncing over. “Cap! We’re getting so many new toys. We’re going pirate hunting?”
“Yes,” she said, for the benefit of anyone who might overhear. “Everything working out?”
“We’re getting new fancy guns, and some defensive systems that Drake and Janice are pretty excited about. It’ll take a few hours to get everything in place, and then we have some system checks and all that. Stephen is out visiting with his congregation, but he says he’ll be back by the next shift change.”
“Where’s Elena?” Casual, casual.
“Exploring the station. She’s got Shall whispering in her ear, so she should be fine.”
Callie covered her disappointment with an ostentatious yawn. “I should catch some rack time. I guess my ship is going to be a cacophonous nightmare of grinding metal?”
“The sweetest music in the galaxy, cap.”
“Right. I’m going to my quarters. When I get back, I want my ship all put together and pretty.”
“As pretty as me?”
“Maybe a little prettier, if you can manage it.”
* * *
Callie dreamed of Elena. Floating in space, her hair drifting, the zipper on her jumpsuit sliding down…
Oh, yes. She was in definite trouble there. Maybe they’d all die on the trip, and then Callie wouldn’t be alive to do anything to embarrass herself.
She sat up in her bunk and discovered a message waiting on her table from the station’s security AI: Salvage object tagged “Anjou” destroyed.
What? “Station, what’s this note about the Anjou being destroyed?”
The station’s voice in her earpiece was mellifluous and friendly because Callie was a sworn agent of the corporation, albeit in an on-call contract capacity. The station tended toward more brusque and harsh tones with strangers. Just part of the frontier charm of life in Trans-Neptunian space. “The transponder you left on the Anjou went offline several hours ago, and one of the recalled security ships detoured slightly on its way back to check the location. They found a debris field suggesting the ship had been destroyed by some sort of targeted energy weapon. Our working theory is that pirates looted anything of value and then destroyed the ship, probably because it was too old to be a worthwhile addition to their fleet. We’re sorry for the loss. Any recovered property will be returned to you, of course, minus expenses and fees.”
Callie grunted. “Thanks for letting me know.” There wasn’t much on the Anjou that was worth looting;
the ship itself had been the valuable thing, as a museum piece or historical oddity. Legitimate museums and weirdo collectors both would have paid a lot of lix for it, and any competent pirates could have disabled the transponder and hauled the whole thing away. Stupid pirates might have just thought “old weird ship” and blown it up in a fit of pique, though.
Now she had to tell Elena she’d lost her only worldly possession besides the bridge generator, which technically belonged to Callie’s crew now, and a few salvaged odds and ends on the White Raven. Like being a time refugee wasn’t hard enough already.
* * *
“Is everyone on board, ship?” Callie asked from her seat at a tactical board in the forward observation compartment.
“You’re calling me ‘ship,’ now?” the voice whispered in her ear. “That’s a step up from ‘computer,’ which was frankly a bit insulting. I’m as far beyond a computer as you are beyond a paramecium.”
“Would you please answer the question?”
“You said please! You are in a good mood today. Yes, Captain Machedo, the entire crew is currently on board, including Doctor Oh.”
“Systems check?”
“All the non-organic bits check out. The new weapons and defensive systems are fully integrated. You and Ashok have direct control over the weapons, Janice and Drake have the defenses on their screens, and of course, you can ask me if you need things done right.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Open a shipwide channel.” She cleared her throat. “Ready check. Comms and navigation?”
“If there’s anyone to talk to, we can talk to them,” Janice said. “And, yes, I know the way to Ganymede.”
“Pilot?”
“I have nothing but green lights,” Drake said.
“Engineering?”
“Everything’s zip-zip and zoom-zoom down here, cap,” Ashok said.
“XO?”
“I’m strapped into my acceleration couch,” Stephen said. “Wake me when it’s over.”
“Doctor Oh?”
“Hi.”
Callie turned her head, and there was Elena, still in her White Raven jumpsuit. She’d found some lipstick somewhere – or, no, she’d probably had a ziggurat in the Spinward Lounge. The cocktail reacted with the skin of the lips and made them turn dark cherry red, which was the mixologist’s preferred shade on women. Callie had never considered herself particularly vulnerable to lipstick femmes, but, yes, there was a definite reaction. Oh Oh Oh, yet again. “Yes, Elena?”
“I don’t have anything to do, and I didn’t like the idea of being strapped into the jump seat in my quarters, so Shall said I might be able to keep you company up here?”
Callie inclined her head toward the amorphous blob of a jump seat freshly extruded from the wall on her left. “Sure, strap in.”
Elena took her place in the squishy white gel, which conformed to her body’s shape perfectly. At that moment, Callie rather envied that jump seat. Elena adjusted the webbing of straps, then nodded. “I think I see how it works. This will protect us from being hurt by sudden acceleration?”
“That’s the idea, but we won’t be pulling too many Gs this trip. It’s just a little jaunt.” She looked at the tactical status board, which was happy and green. “All right, we’re ready to go. Drake, tell the station we’re off.”
“The station says ‘Happy hunting,’” Drake said.
The ship lurched as the conveyor belt carried it to one of the station’s many ship-sized airlocks, the inner door sealing behind them and the outer door opening. The station’s manipulator arms picked up the Raven as gently as a mother cat carrying its kittens and deposited it outside, and the reaction wheels whirled to point them in the right direction. They floated weightless against their straps, and Callie shared a smile with Elena.
“Comms are secure,” Janice said. “They aren’t listening to us on the station anymore.”
“OK,” Callie said. “We have to be plausible about this. The official story is we’re taking Elena to Jovian space, dropping her off to start a new life, and then going on to wipe out the pirates on Glauketas.”
“Wait, what?” Elena said. “Pirates?”
“I had to tell the station security chief something so we could get the good guns,” Callie said. “I’m not going on a rescue mission to an alien space station armed with our standard hardware.”
“I approve of us becoming more heavily armed,” Stephen said. “But won’t we be expected to actually capture the pirates at some point?”
“We’ll be expected to try. And if we survive this rescue trip, we will.”
“Hurray,” Stephen said. “If we manage to cheat death, we’ll give death another sporting chance.”
“Let’s take off like we’re heading to Jupiter, Drake. You’ve got the coordinates to pick up the canoe, and it’s on the way. Once we have the generator on board and plugged in, we’ll find a nice quiet bit of space, and… well. We’ll see if this supposed bridge generator actually generates any bridges.”
“Off we go,” Drake said. The ship accelerated, pressing them back into their jump seats hard, but the body-molding gel made it an issue of pressure rather than discomfort. They moved at high speed for a while, then decelerated. “Matching velocity with the canoe,” Drake said. A few moments later: “Picking up the canoe.” There were distant clunks as the smaller vessel was grabbed and tucked into the Raven’s belly. “Resuming acceleration.”
After a while they settled into a steady pace of acceleration, and the ship said, “Ding. Feel free to move about the cabin.”
Callie unstrapped, and Elena followed suit. There was light thrust gravity, enough to keep their feet on the ground without weighing them down. “I’ve got some bad news, Elena,” Callie said. “Someone decided to play target practice with the Anjou. It’s gone.”
Elena frowned. “Is that sort of thing common here? Like people going to the junkyard and shooting at old cars on Earth back in my day?”
“Not usually. Especially not at a ship tagged with a TNA transponder. The corporation takes such things seriously, and there will be an investigation. We assume it was pirates, but they weren’t very bright, since the ship itself was the main thing worth scavenging. I’m sorry. I know the Anjou was important to you.”
“In a way,” Elena said. “It was my home for centuries, after all, but on the other hand, I only spent a few days there, conscious, anyway. I’m honestly already more at home on the White Raven.”
That gave Callie a little thrill she didn’t bother to analyze too closely. “I’m glad to hear that. You’re very welcome here.”
“You’ve made me feel nothing but. I guess the loss of income is a problem, but not having any – what do you call it? lix? – seems like the least of my troubles right now.”
“Maybe we can work something out, after all this is over.”
“What, I can swab the decks?”
Callie grinned. “Or something. You’re paying way over any reasonable rate by giving us the bridge generator. I might feel so guilty I cut you in on my share of the proceeds. See if we can help you, and your crewmates once we rescue them, get your feet under you.”
“You’re so nice to me, Callie. Thank you. I hope I can repay you someday.”
Callie tried not to think about what such repayment might entail. “So. Want to meet the rest of the crew?” Callie said. “Since we’re going into the wild mysterious black together?”
Elena nodded. “I would have gone around and introduced myself earlier, but Shall said everyone was quite busy.”
“They were busy, but we also wanted to, ah, ease you into the modern era a bit. I guess you probably saw some pretty unusual people on the station, though.”
“I’m only sorry I didn’t get to see any of the aliens. Terrible timing for the Liars to leave – I’m supposed to be a xenobiologist, and I’ve never even observed any xenobiology.”
“You didn’t encounter anyone too alarming on the station, though?”
“There were plenty of… well, posthumans, from my point of view, anyway. Augmented, upgraded, and genetically engineered. I did find it a little overwhelming, but it was the crowds as much as the variations. The only people I’d seen before that were you and Stephen, and you seem much like the baseline humans of my day.”
“Mostly, though we’ve both had some work done under the hood – mine in the womb, Stephen when he was a boy. Little tweaks to make long-term travel in space less physically damaging, adjustments to our metabolisms, disease resistance, things like that. We both come from pretty conservative backgrounds, though. Ashok’s appearance is a lot more radical, probably stranger than anything you encountered on Meditreme. It might be a little shocking.”
Elena shrugged. “I’m a scientist. I can observe without audibly gasping.”
“I’m sure you can. He won’t care if you gasp though. He’ll assume you’re just impressed. After that I’ll take you to meet Drake and Janice. They’re… a little more sensitive.”
* * *
Elena followed Callie down the corridor. The captain walked with an easy bounce in her step, moving with a self-assurance and confidence that Elena envied. It would take her some time to get her bearings properly in this new world… if she lived long enough.
Callie went down a ladder, and Elena followed, and then they wound through a narrow corridor and emerged into the machine shop, a square room full of workbenches covered in clamps and inscrutable equipment, with diagnostic information spooling across screens on the walls. Webbed nets on the walls and ceiling held tools and parts, and neatly labeled drawers under the benches promised more of the same. The room smelled of oil and hot metal and, Elena had to acknowledge, farts.
The bridge generator sat in the middle of the biggest table, a fat cable emerging from its top spliced into a cable of a different color that snaked off into the wall. A short, stocky man stood with his back to them. He was dressed in a dirty gray coverall, the back of his head half bare brown scalp and half shiny metal plate, curved to fit the original contours of his skull. Elena wondered what kind of accident he’d been in, and why they couldn’t have disguised the repair better. Cosmetic surgery had been capable of that kind of correction even in her day.
