by Maggie Allen
People think space is silent—and it is, mostly—but spaceships make little noises in a constant chatter. The hiss of the smaller verniers firing was an old friend as Dodger navigated the ship through the rocky ice orbit, searching for the lost ship.
A faint “sput”-like noise and then hissing took Olivia by surprise. She scooted across the main cargo hold like a spider toward the sound as the smell of ammonia started to grow. From her kit she found and slapped on a breather, and she bent to study the lines leading from the tank. With magnified vision, she located where a main line had a tiny but unmistakable pin hole. She pinched it with gloved fingers when an impact against the side of the ship sent her rolling to her knees, tools flying. A moment later the hold lights flickered and went out. Ten seconds later she felt as much as heard the hiss of air circulation fade.
“That’s bad,” Olivia whispered to herself, thinking over the systems and how they connected. “If we lost engines and life support, that means spin could go next.” Now deeply suspicious, she scuttled toward one of Dodger’s hidey-holes normally used for hiding cargo during Federal inspections. She had just reached the grate when, true to her prediction, the control-motion gyroscope lost power. Another impact on the ship shook the hull, stopping the spin.
With some effort, she pulled herself inside just as Dodger’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “All hands to the life support pods and launch! We’ve got a huge prob—!” The microphone cut off abruptly as two alarm systems started to blare warnings. Along the catwalks, Olivia heard the sound of feet and shouting as Mattie, Bongo, and the others helped Blink and Paris from the sick bay into the life pods and closed themselves in. Watching through the grate, Olivia wondered if her suspicions were going to get her killed. Her hands were cold with fear and a growing sense of betrayal.
James Gold appeared on a catwalk within her field of vision perhaps two minutes later, toting a limp Dodger over his shoulder. Olivia felt sick to her stomach, watching Gold check each of the hatches to be sure the pods had launched before pushing the boy into an empty one and punching the launch button for him from the inside.
The girl gritted her teeth as she watched Gold moving like an old hand in zero-gee, launching across the cargo bay straight for the faulty RCS line. He uncoiled a new line out of his pocket as he flew. He landed and with expert speed replaced the hose before pushing off again through space to the bridge door. He disappeared inside, and in moments the alarms cut off, and engine noise (and gravity) returned.
Olivia went into waiting mode, leaving her breathing mask on for now. As she waited, she felt and heard the verniers fire as the ship navigated through the ice chunks in the rings. To herself, she was willing to admit that Gold might be a smoother hand at the helm than Dodger. Sorry Dodger, she mouthed in apology for the unkind thought.
The ship shivered through an hour’s little hisses from the verniers before there was a gentle thump, and through the grate Olivia watched a light above the docking aperture go from red to green. From above, Gold descended the catwalk again down into the main hold toward the docking iris seal. He looked it over, then with a few stabs of his finger opened the iris to show the dark hull of an unfamiliar ship on the other side.
After a long moment of checking the registered atmo readings, Gold pressed the other ship’s control panel, and the iris of the connecting point expanded for him. Olivia wished for all her might for some kind of space kraken to reach out and tear him limb from limb, but all she heard was his faint, pleased whistling as Gold disappeared farther into the darkened ship like he knew the way.
Olivia counted a minute slowly to herself before easing out of her hiding place. She dashed to the connection tunnel between the two ships to peer in, but she couldn’t see Gold. Her first instinct was to close the connection and go pilot the New London away from what she presumed was the Gloriana, but a lack of information made her pause. She didn’t know whether the Gloriana had any kind of weapons or might be in a condition Gold could use to hurt her ship.
Hefting a large wrench, Olivia crept across the connection and paused to listen, but she heard nothing. The new ship’s docking bay was smaller than the London’s, barely large enough to fit a small runabout. And scrupulously clean. A faint noise sounded to the right, and Olivia stepped carefully out of the bay into a hallway with her wrench held high.
A door opened, bringing her face to face with a stranger—a woman, much older than Olivia, though almost as thin. The two were nearly mirrored in clothing, as the stranger also wore a pair of overalls, stained with use and smelling strongly of recycled cleaning products. Small plastic bits dangled from knotted strings about her neck, like an exotic necklace of shells that weren’t shells. She was toting a hammer raised in her hand, mirroring Olivia’s wrench. The stranger was taller by an inch or two, mostly in the torso, though her arms were much longer. Her legs, Olivia had time to notice, were only slightly bowed outward with the tell-tale twisting of too much time in space. Olivia jumped to the only conclusion she could. “Wow. You’ve been marooned here.”
The other woman jerked slightly, stopping herself from a hammer attack. She hesitated, then lowered the weapon. “Are you here to rescue me? Do you have any chocolate? Or coffee?”
“Not this minute.”
“Then what are you doing here? Are you a hallucination?”
Well, it’s complicated.” Satisfied that she wasn’t in immediate danger of being struck with the hammer, Olivia placed a hand on the other woman’s shoulder and pushed forward to get them both out of the corridor as she whispered. “I’m not a hallucination. And there’s a guy with me here who is up to no good. Well, he’s not with me. He just came on our ship. But he’s trying to steal from you then use my ship to run away so he doesn’t have to share the profits.”
The stranger blinked slowly once, twice. “No coffee, then? I ran out of coffee a year ago. Took weeks for the headaches and shakes to stop. Weeks! But I want them back again. I miss the caffeine shakes.” She hugged her hammer to her chest, looking at Olivia with pale green eyes. “You can live on a ship full of protein. But it’s not really living without chocolate. I’ve dreamed of chocolate. Lonely, lonely chocolate dreams. And when I dropped the coffee beans the ship swept them up. Swept them all up in minutes. I lost the magic beans!”
Olivia had the feeling that the other woman wasn’t all there. Space did that to people when they were left alone. It’s why there were so many kids in space. No one wanted to be alone forever. “I, uh, can see if we have any on the ship. But you have to tell me where Mr. Gold went. Did you see a man come through here? About so tall, kinda fat with gray hair and wearing a dark cap?” She held a hand up, indicating Gold’s height.
“Oh, him! Sure, he went straight to the bridge,” Jen said. “He looked a little scary.”
Olivia sighed. “Great. Then he’s got what he wanted, and we’re going to be screwed. Does this ship have any weapons?”
“Weapons? We were an exploration vessel!” Briefly the crazy glint faded from the woman’s eyes. “We found worlds, identified mineral fields in the asteroid belts, charted new ways for future safe warping. The Gloriana was always first.”
“I’ve heard. I’m sorry about… wait. You’re alive. Are there any others?”
The light went out of the stranger’s eyes. “Just Gloriana’s cook, Jen Cannon. Poor Jen.” She shook her head slowly. “She wanted to help the others, but she’s the only one who got her suit on in time because we hit a rock in the middle of the night, and no one was on watch. The others tried to fix the ship, but we had a lot of seals go in a gravity well.” She grabbed for Olivia’s hand. “You don’t try to fix things before you make sure you can breathe, right? That’s crazy!” And she started laughing, a sad sort of laugh that hurt Olivia’s tummy to listen to. “Crew got us out of the well and into orbit as they died. But I fixed it! I read the manuals and fixed the ship. The ship won’t clean up bodies like it did my coffee beans.”
“No! No. Oh, Jen.”
Moved by the older woman’s plight, Olivia grabbed and hugged her tightly for a long moment. Jen went stiff and stopped breathing for a moment. Then her arms crept about Olivia slowly and she inhaled again.
“I say,” Jen whispered. “Do you have any chocolate?”
She was like a broken record. “I will find you chocolate,” Olivia promised with all her heart.
“I love you,” Jen promised back with a solemn nod. She started to put the hammer down, but Olivia stopped her.
“You might need that. Mr. Gold isn’t a nice man.”
“Oh. We should be sneaky, then.”
“Yes we should,” Olivia said. “Sneaky as two sneaking things.” She thought for a moment. Then, slowly, “You say the ship cleans things up. Things that are not people.”
“It took my coffee beans!” Jen wailed. “Stupid Gloriana.”
Olivia clapped a hand over her mouth and leaned in to whisper. “What if we re-programmed it to clean up the people in particular instead of cleaning everything else? What does it use to clean things?”
The older woman blinked a little. “Waldos and robotic systems, for the most part. It takes things to the garbage bay and ejects them.”
“So it’s got robots strong enough to lift a person?” Olivia asked.
Jen frowned. “You mean, strong enough to clean up and get rid of the crew? Why?”
“Well, it ain’t respectful to just cart around dead bodies,” Olivia said carefully. “Plus if we hide, and the ship is getting rid of all the people it finds, it might get rid of Mr. Gold for us. You know. If we gas him first.” She thought of how he played dirty and decided she could live with it.
Jen stared for a moment longer, then nodded once. “I’ll show you down to engineering. I’m not sure how we’ll gas him.”
The two crept through the deserted Gloriana. Reaching the small control room for Engineering, Olivia asked to be shown the systems in question and immediately started to read through the lists of commands and recorded documents. “This may take a little while,” she murmured to the glowing screen in front of her. “Can I ask you an important question, Miss Cannon?”
The older woman seemed to straighten a little at being addressed formally. “Of course.”
“Do you know precisely why the Gloriana can’t fly?”
Jen shrugged. “Sure. Fuel and valves.”
“Valves?” Olivia was a little incredulous.
“Yeah. I had to learn how to fix things. I mean, doing the structural repairs was pretty easy, and I achieved hull integrity with the spare panels we had. But the whole engine and combustion system, with turbo-pump through valves into the manifold, that takes knowledge.” Jen looked sad, sketching the air with her hands. “I mean, I did what I could, but I’m a cook! I understood how to make an engine go, but dealing with how much pressure is normal and should be where between the fuel and coolant systems…” A sigh. “I blew some valves, and we don’t have replacements, and the fuel ran out.”
“Show me. But in a few minutes.” Olivia bent her head to concentrate on what, precisely, the cleaning robots were programmed to do. The computer interface was surprisingly easy to use, and far more modern and user-friendly than New London’s. Olivia tried not to feel disloyal, but she couldn’t help the growing feeling that this might be an opportunity to upgrade ships.
Jen had a gift for silence, although the way she hunkered down and stared at Olivia while she worked was a little unsettling. When she spoke again, her tone was steady. “I don’t think we should get the robots to clean off Mr. Gold with the rest of the crew.”
“Why not?” Olivia asked absently, typing away.
“Because he’s alive. And there’s been a lot of death around here.” Jen said. “Did he kill your crew mates?”
That caught Olivia up. “No. No he didn’t.” She hesitated, then stabbed at a button and turned to look at Jen. “What are you thinking?”
“Let’s think of a way to test him. If he passes, he gets a life pod and a homing beacon. If he’s just a criminal, he can get ejected with the garbage.”
Olivia was still for a moment, conflicted. She looked at the woman and thought about how unfair it was that Jen was alone for years and how she had only tried to do her job. “Okay. We can do that. I… You’ve been through a lot, and you’re a stranger. How about I lure him into the launch bay, and you lower the oxygen content from here. We’ll both pass out. Then you can maybe get him into a pod if there are any left here?” Her lips were firm. “If he shoots me, you hit him with that hammer, get the bots to dump him, and signal for help from my ship. Got it?”
Jen nodded. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”
Olivia rose. “This whole mess is my fault for bringing him on board and not watching him close. So you monitor me on the camera. When you see him and me in the bay together, lock the doors and cut the oxygen.” She looked earnestly into Jen’s eyes. “I’m gonna trust you with this, to not kill us, and to rush in and deal with him while he’s out. Please don’t be crazy.” I couldn’t bear to be wrong about people twice in a row, she thought.
“You promised chocolate,” Jen intoned, like an oath.
“There will be chocolate,” Olivia agreed and gathered her doubts and fears to hide them deep inside. She turned to head back through the Gloriana’s corridors to the docking bay despite the unease in her stomach. Once there, she closed the portal leading outward, back to the New London, then planted her hands on her hips in her best cocky pose (like Dodger, she thought to herself) and raised her voice to shout. “Hey Mr. Gold! You come down here this minute!” She was proud that her voice didn’t sound as scared as she felt.
Olivia heard the sound of his boots before he arrived. James Gold looked taller and more menacing than ever, and she felt her heart flutter. Still, she took a deep breath and lifted her chin in a bold pose. “As my mom used to say, I got something to say to you.”
James’ eyes glittered coldly as he looked down on her. Slowly he drew a small energy gun from his pocket and pointed it. “I should have suspected that you wouldn’t be caught quite so neatly as the others.”
Behind him, the portal to the Gloriana closed. Olivia saw it and hastened to speak louder and wave her wrench. “What are you going to do now, shoot me? What did I ever do to you? I LIKED you! I thought you were a decent guy, that we had a deal. Now I’m going to look bad. Dodger is NEVER going to let me live this down.”
Gold’s thumb pressed onto the power safety, and the barrel flared faintly red about the end. “Will it matter? What makes you think I’m going to let you live?”
“I do think you’re going to let me live, because you remember what it was like to be me,” Olivia said stubbornly. “That’s why you looked for a ship like ours, ain’t it? Even though you weren’t in the FAGN program, you know what it’s like to have everyone think that you’re not good enough, smart enough, or adult enough. You know that sometimes you have to cheat a little to get ahead. You gotta scheme.” She felt a little light-headed and hoped it was Jen reducing the oxygen.
The man’s lips twitched, but the barrel didn’t move from her chest. “Maybe I do. But that means you understand me, too, doesn’t it, little girl? Look at me if you want to know your future. One day you’ll be alone in the universe, trying to find that one score that’ll get you ahead of the game instead of always being behind. When your chance comes, you have to take it and not let anyone or anything get in your way.” He looked momentarily disgusted. “Even if the nav comp here was wiped. What a waste.”
“That ain’t quite right,” Olivia said. “You’re out on your own in space. I got a family, floating off in those pods. Maybe family makes it harder because we have to find bigger jobs and do more work to break even. And sometimes there’s nothing but fighting and arguing, and then you gotta spoon-feed the people that you’re fighting with because they were just sick all over your only pair of clean overalls and they need to get some liquids in them. But that kind of bother is what it costs to never
be alone. And I think you respect that.” She kept her words slow to kill time as the air thinned.
The barrel fell slightly, drooping just a bit in Gold’s hand. “I… don’t need to kill you.” He blinked a few times, focusing on her face. “I’ll just put you into an escape pod here on the Gloriana. I promise I’ll activate the distress beacon for someone to come pick you all… up.”
Olivia smiled weakly. “That’s a good idea. Were you planning on that? Not killing us, for sure?”
“I.. maybe, I…” Gold seemed uncertain. Or perhaps just blurry to Olivia’s eyes. She felt the world going black, and she tumbled to the deck as the lights went out.
When Olivia woke up, she was thrilled to be alive. She opened her eyes and saw Jen’s face hanging over her.
The older woman jumped back as Olivia started to blink. “Oh good, you’re awake! I was worried that your brain would get all oxygen-starved and crazy. But you’re not, right?”
“Here’s hoping,” Olivia struggled to her feet. “Where’s Mr. Gold?”
“I stuffed him in Gloriana’s escape pod,” Jen assured her, adding, “He’s still breathing, too.”
“You win all the chocolate,” Olivia said. “Go ahead and launch him with a beacon.”
“I did. Oh— the robots did what you told them to,” Jen murmured, her eyes downcast. “They cleared the ship.”
Olivia gave Jen a hug again. “We’ll get Dodger to say a few words for your crew when he’s back on board and awake. He’s a Captain, you know. It’s what they do, Captain-y stuff like ceremonies. Dodger’s very keen.”
A smile touched Jen’s lips. “They’d have liked that.” She looked toward the hatch. “I don’t suppose…”
“Let’s get you some chocolate. Then we got work to do, fetching my crew’s pods back onto the New London.” Sitting up, Olivia looked around with new attention. “You know, your ship looks like it’s in much better shape than ours, and we don’t know what all Gold sabotaged. I bet Mouse and Paris could use parts from our ship to fix anything wrong with the Gloriana, if you didn’t mind being a crew member again? Even if there’s no treasure, they’ll be glad to see you.” She briefly considered the argument to come with Dodger on the topic and decided she was up to it.
