The Long Black (The Black Chronicles Book 1)

by J. M. Anjewierden

  “I’m still small enough that the child outfit fits me, mostly. The factory clothing fits a bit better, but the fabric isn’t as durable,” Morgan said, carefully pulling the small folded portrait from her pocket, the data storage device tucked inside. Then she tugged off the handmade bracelet on her left wrist. Finally she pulled her daddy’s spanner from its belt loop. The woman held out her hand for them, taking them gently and placing them on the table.

  “That’s what I was afraid of. Mass produced in just a couple sizes then? Don’t worry, we’ll get you sorted out. We can hardly send you back to that sh. . . nasty place, can we? I’m Mary, Mary Tempest, by the way. You’ve met my big sister Helga. The voice on the speakers earlier was her husband, Captain Asad Allred. Are you ready to tell us your name?”

  No one had actually asked her name yet, but Morgan didn’t mind.

  “I’m Morgan. I only have the one name. So. . . what are you going to do with me?”

  Mary opened her mouth to answer, but closed it when Helga cleared her throat noisily.

  “We’ll talk more after you get cleaned up. Mary here will show you to the bathroom and where everything is,” Helga answered instead, “We’re headed out-system now, which will take some hours. But first things first. Get cleaned up, and then Mary will get you some food.”

  “Some more food, you mean,” Mary said with a crooked smile.

  “Sorry,” Morgan said again, feeling her face heat up. “I wasn’t sure if it would be hours or days before you left.”

  “Be sure you don’t steal any more food while you’re onboard my ship,” Helga said, her voice taking on a bit more sternness for a moment. “Space is always at a premium on a spaceship. We don’t have extra food just lying around.”

  There was an awkward silence for a moment, and Morgan considered apologizing again.

  “Well, I like your spirit,” Mary said, pointedly ignoring Helga’s glare.

  “What’s a spirit?” Morgan asked, the word unfamiliar to her.

  “A long conversation we don’t have time for,” Mary said, glancing at her sister’s impatient face. Instead she changed the topic. “Is that all you have?” Mary asked, putting Morgan’s handful of belongings into a small box she had pulled from under the clothes.

  “I don’t have anything else,” Morgan said, glancing around the room and seeing again how little she had had, even before leaving home.

  “Well, don’t worry. Once you get settled in a new home you’ll be able to get anything you need to keep,” Mary said, smiling at Morgan. “Sis, any of it look like it’ll fit?”

  “Just the one.” Helga held up a garment that was a pale yellow, with patterns that looked a bit like the flower Morgan had seen once growing in one of the few patches of bare dirt near the mines. It was the prettiest thing Morgan had ever seen. “Now, it’s a dress, so be careful if you go through any of the areas of the ship that don’t have gravity.”

  “What’s a dress?” Morgan asked.

  “This is a dress,” Helga said, exasperated, holding the garment up so Morgan could get a better look at it. The neck hole was bigger than she was used to, and the sleeves much shorter, and it only had one opening for legs, much wider than any pant leg. Morgan supposed it would be something like the improvised nightgown she’d worn back home. It would be horrible for crawling around in, and hard to keep in place on any of the windy days Pari Passu was known for. . . not that she needed to worry about either of those now. Though given the warning about wearing it around the ship, Morgan supposed they didn’t consider it especially practical wear either. Thinking about it, she supposed keeping the lower part of the dress from flying up in her face would be hard without gravity. Then she wondered if she’d get to see what no gravity felt like. So far she was certainly enjoying having less than on Hillman.

  Her mind now wandering Morgan thought about the offhand comment about burning her current clothes, and how rich the ship captain and his wife must be. The clothes were barely five years old and her arms and legs were only a little bit too long for them. Sure, one sleeve had been torn off, but that was easily fixed.

  Once she started comparing the two garments she realized that on top of the impracticality of moving around in the dress, it also looked like the fabric didn’t have padding of any kind. While they were patched and dirty, at least her current clothes were thick enough that she wasn’t likely to break anything if she tripped. This dress looked far, far too thin.

  “I guess it isn’t surprising they don’t have anything but work clothes down there,” Mary said, looking Morgan’s outfit over, “And dresses certainly aren’t practical for mining. Not for space travel either, for that matter. I wonder where it came from?”

  Helga waved her hand dismissively, “Oh, I’m sure some foolish passenger or other left it behind, years ago if the style is any indication.”

  Mary took the dress from Helga, deftly folding it into a small bundle she was able to put into a hip pocket.

  Morgan was nodding like she understood this, but really she was so overwhelmed with all the new words and things that she only knew which way was up because her feet stuck to the floor. Then it hit her. She was on a ship, flying through space to other planets, so even ‘up’ was probably wrong. Or could it even be right in space? Perhaps that was why everything felt so light, so flimsy. She felt lighter here than she had even on the station. Then again, the gravity here and on the station was artificial, so it could be set higher or lower as the person in charge wanted.

  “Mary can help you if you have any trouble. Go on and get cleaned up, and try not to bother me or the captain.” Helga said, and Mary nodded in agreement. She gestured back out to the hallway, and Morgan followed her out.

  “That was a very brave thing to do, stowing away, leaving behind everything you’ve ever known,” Mary said as they got into an elevator near the captain’s room. A crewman looked like he wanted to get on too, but Mary waved him off. “Especially since you couldn’t know how we’d react. The captain would have been well within his rights to send you straight back to Hillman.”

  Morgan thought about that for a moment, thought about leaving her parents behind, and the life they had led. She also thought about what would have happened if she’d been caught and returned. If that had happened, she wouldn’t have been around long to regret it in any case.

  “I thought it worth the risk.”

  The doors closed and they began to move. Mary leaned against one of the walls, her arms resting on the hand railing. Morgan stood in the center of the elevator, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, crouching down on her haunches on pure reflex.

  “Are you all right?’

  “I don’t trust elevators much.”

  “Because they’re enclosed?”

  Morgan shook her head. “Because they are held up by little more than cables. My main job was tunnel maintenance, places the grown miners couldn’t get to. That and checking the damage after accidents.”

  “Not rescue?”

  “The Tinnys wouldn’t complain if we found survivors.”

  “That must have been horrible.”

  “It isn’t always bad. Most days I just did my job and went home. The Tinnys didn’t care if we lived or died, but the managers got after them if the work slowed too much.”

  “Honey, that is horrible. People’s lives matter a lot more than how much ore a stupid mine puts out.” The elevator stopped. “We’re just one floor down from the skipper’s quarters. This is the rank and file’s spaces.”

  Morgan could see that. There were a dozen men and women milling about, with room for four times that, most of them in the skin tight outfit Mary wore. There were others in coveralls not too different from what the miners’ back home wore, though of much higher quality. Fewer holes too. They didn’t appear to be nearly as thickly padded.

  “Right,” Mary called out in a loud voice. “Everyone, this is Morgan. She’s the spunky girl who snuck on board. Don’t crowd her, kindly. Cap’
n is going to let her stay till we get to Parlon. Heather, would you please clear everyone out of the women’s shower?”

  “Sure thing, Mary,” the woman who Morgan assumed was Heather replied, disappearing into the doorway on the other side of the room. What was Parlon, Morgan wondered, but didn’t ask. A planet? A system?

  “This will be a moment,” Mary said, shaking the dress out. “Come here for a sec; let’s see if this will fit.” Mary held the dress up, careful not to let it touch Morgan’s dirty clothes. “Yep, she has a good eye. This should fit you okay. I think it was meant for someone shorter than you, if you can imagine someone that small. Luckily the sleeves are a loose design, or they’d be tight too. You’ve certainly got a lot of muscle on you.

  “It’s too bad we don’t have any shoes. Just stay away from places like engineering, okay? We will have to figure something out for underwear.”

  Mary put the dress down on the table sitting down next to it. She turned to one of the other ladies.

  “See what you can do there, would you Gloria? Maybe one of the smaller ladies has something?” Gloria nodded and headed off down the hallway as Mary called out, “New is better, but at least clean, for Pete’s sake.”

  Morgan looked at her in puzzlement. Under where? What did that mean? From context it was clothing of some kind. Noticing her confusion Mary threw up her hands. “Oh for the love of. . . Those assholes really kept you all in piss poor conditions didn’t they? Underwear is meant to be worn under your clothes, partly for comfort, partly hygiene, and partly modesty.” Mary flushed a bit. “Oh, sorry about the swearing. Not one of my better habits, especially in front of kids. How old are you anyway?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” Morgan said slowly. At least that wasn’t a lie. She didn’t know when her birthday was. “The only date that is important on Hillman is the anniversary of the first ship landing. I’m twenty-six or twenty-seven, I think.”

  “Uh, that would make you. . . ” Mary looked up, twiddling the fingers on one hand as she did the math. “Eh, screw it.” She hit a button on the screen that was clamped onto the back of her left arm, just above the wrist. Morgan had wondered about it. It obviously wasn’t part of the suit (which had its own screens and buttons) but beyond that she had no idea what it did. Whatever it was made a chiming noise as Mary activated it, and she brought it up closer to her mouth.

  “Compute, twenty-six local years, planet Hillman, in e-standard.”

  No sooner had she finished talking than the device answered in a pleasant feminine voice that sounded a lot more lifelike than the computers in the mines.

  “Seventeen years, four months, Earth standard.”

  Morgan felt a little bad about lying to Mary, but her parents were right. Better they thought her old enough to support herself. Morgan wasn’t about to trust her future to anyone ever again, especially not another government, and it was very doubtful any of them would trust a thirteen-year-old to live on her own

  “Wow, you look a lot younger, even assuming you don’t have anti-aging treatments.” Mary held up a hand, palm up. “That’s another long conversation we don’t have time for now, but trust me, you don’t. The short version is that, once we get you to a doctor with the proper equipment, you’re likely to live a lot longer than anyone from that shithole of a planet.” Mary blushed again. “Sorry. Please don’t pick up my bad language, and uh, please don’t tell the captain about it either.”

  Heather reappeared in the doorway, giving Mary a thumbs up signal, holding a large fluffy piece of fabric that she tossed to Mary, along with a couple of bottles of something Morgan couldn’t identify immediately.

  “Right,” Mary said, pointing to the door while holding out the bundle, tucking the dress amongst the folds. “I’m willing to bet a lot of things are going to be nice surprises out here in the civilized galaxy, but I don’t think many will compete with a long hot bath, especially with bubbles.”

  ***

  More than three hours later Morgan sat in a very soft, very comfortable chair in the captain’s office. Sit was almost the wrong word. She felt so relaxed that she felt more like a liquid that had been poured into the chair. If only the ship hadn’t been so cold. It had been easy to ignore when she’d been running about trying not to get caught, but after the hot bath the cold had settled into her bones.

  There had actually been two baths, the first just to get most of the dirt and grime off, the second to soak in. Mary had been right, the dress only came down most of the way to her knees and elbows, but she didn’t care. It was the softest piece of clothing she had ever worn, softer than she had even imagined possible. And her hair! She hadn’t even noticed how itchy and messy it had been until she’d finished washing it with the shampoos and whatever all else there had been. If only. . .

  . . . If only her parents could have been here too. With that sad thought Morgan sat up in the chair, hugging her knees to her chest.

  She knew there was no way they all could have gotten off planet. Just getting her off very nearly got her killed. She knew her parents would rather she be here than them. Repeating that to herself helped, but only a little. Hillman had been a horrible place, but it was home. Now she didn’t know what would happen to her in an hour, let alone the coming weeks and months.

  “How you doing, kiddo?” Mary said as she walked in the room, closing the door behind her.

  “I’m a lot more relaxed than I was,” Morgan said, “Thank you for all your help.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You just needed to be shown how things worked. Easier than giving my nieces baths, that’s for sure.

  “I should warn you, that’s the last bath you’ll get while onboard.” Morgan’s face darkened and Mary quickly added, “Oh, no, it’s not anything bad. It’s just that there isn’t a ton of space on this rust bucket, so we do what we can to conserve water. A quick shower has nothing on a good soak, but it does the job and uses a lot less clean water.”

  Morgan nodded. Rationing she could understand. Really, it was almost a relief to find out that they didn’t have an endless supply of everything.

  Morgan noticed Mary staring at her arms, her mouth pressed into an unhappy line.

  “What?”

  “I talked with Heather about your checkup.”

  That had been an interesting part of the bathing process. Heather had insisted in checking every part of Morgan, both physically and with a device of some kind held a few inches off the skin. She had made a lot of clucking noises that sounded disapproving, but hadn’t explained herself. She had asked Morgan all kinds of questions, seemingly at random, along with questions that were obviously relevant to her health.

  “What about it?”

  “You’re healthy, for the most part. Obvious signs of old broken bones, a couple healed concussions, a bit of malnutrition, stuff we’d expect to see in mine workers. Then there’s your collection of bruises, it’s quite impressive, you almost look like a rainbow with the different colors blending together.”

  “What’s a rainbow?”

  “It’s. . . not important. Were you being beat on?”

  Morgan looked down at her arms, tucking her legs under her and hiding those bruises as she turned her arms over and looked at the patchwork of purples and greens.

  “Working the mine is dangerous. Just yesterday there was an explosion in one of the shafts, threw me around a bit.”

  “Why weren’t you treated properly though? And then there are your scars. I tried not to, but I noticed a lot of them while you were in the bath. Skin like yours, they stand out.”

  “Of course they were treated,” Morgan said tersely, “My parents might not have had much, but they always did their best for me.”

  “If they did, why all the scars? In places it looks like a roadmap.”

  “You’re not making any sense. What does getting my cuts treated have to do with them scarring?”

  Mary stopped her response and closed her eyes, her eyebrows knitting together as she thought.


  “What were they using?”

  “Quicknit. They provided it to all the workers, proof of their ‘love for us,’ imported at ‘great expense’ to keep us healthy. Mostly they just didn’t want us missing work while we healed.”

  Mary covered her face with her hands, slowly dragging them downwards.

  “Quicknit is just about the cheapest medicine anywhere, just above slapping a bandage on a cut. It’s only meant for bruises and muscle problems, as well as helping bones heal. It’s not used for cuts because it doesn’t prevent scarring like Quickheal does. Quickheal isn’t even that much more expensive. We just delivered ten gross of both to the station. Its cost maybe accounts for a cubic meter of ore we took on. Probably not even that.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  “The main ore hold is two-hundred meters cubed.”

  “So one out of two-hundred? That sounds like a lot.”

  “No, honey, two-hundred meters to a side, not two-hundred cubic meters. It holds eight million cubic meters.”

  Morgan leaned back, her mind reeling. All those scars, simply because the leaders could save a little bit of money by buying a cheaper medicine? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to strangle someone or vomit. Both perhaps, with tears thrown in for good measure.

  Mary noticed how uncomfortable she was making Morgan, changing the topic abruptly. “Sorry, I am here for a reason. Our first jump was delayed as the. . . jerks didn’t want us leaving because of some problem down on the station.

  “They actually were hinting that someone had snuck on board. Imagine that. We’re finally cleared, and I thought you might want to watch.”

  Mary pushed some buttons on the control panel next to the door, and most of the wall opposite the two of them turned on with a faint buzzing noise. At first it was pure black, but then the picture resolved itself into the star-field and the round grey-green orb Morgan realized was Hillman.

  She had known, in a general way, what her home had been like and the rudiments of space, but that is a far different thing than seeing it for the first time. The effect was compounded by the fact that Morgan had never before been more than a few miles away from the spot she was born on.