“Well,” Desmond said, wandering into the room from the entryway. “If you ain’t up for it, we got a couple minutes ‘till the engines are up and running for you to pack your stuff and leave. They’re always looking for fresh blood to help herd the cattle back in Alice.”
“I’m fine here,” Kendal said.
“Glad to hear you’re on board,” Desmond said.
Kendal tried to give Desmond his kinetic back, but he said to keep it. Kendal had lost his Union pistol back on Nau Cedik and it felt natural to have one stuck to his belt.
Desmond sat on the other couch and took a folded slip of paper from his belt. “The lad’s name is Boe. He’s part of an away team on the Bachman, not much more than a few days’ journey from here. Eight days there and eight days back. We got the coordinates, and a we know what we’re after, but other than that we’re on our own. It ain’t the kind of ship the Union’ll be expectin’ an attack on, so we might be able to sneak aboard given what the lieutenant here’s got to say.”
“Me?” Kendal said. “What do I got to say?”
“Who best to find a way to sneak ‘board a Union vessel than former Union,” he said. “You know more about them than me and Mir put together.”
Kendal wanted to argue, but he knew better than to disagree. This was Desmond’s ship, and Desmond was the captain. The only way to get out of Union space was to follow his command and if they needed his help to retrieve this bounty then Kendal would play along. “Understood.”
Desmond stood up and started to leave, but turned back around after only a step. “If you’re going to be on my crew then you can’t be wearin’ that damned uniform.”
Kendal’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“That Union outfit,” Desmond said. “Can’t be wearin’ that here. You ain’t no Union officer no more, and you certainly ain’t gonna be dressed like that in my home.”
“Just cause I’m not Union anymore doesn’t mean those years are gone,” Kendal said and straightened his coat. “I worked hard for this rank.”
“What rank?” Desmond said. “You ain’t more than a deck-hand here. There’s no rank in that, and there certainly ain’t a uniform.”
Kendal glanced at Mira, but she was looking at her own feet and trying not to get involved. He grit his teeth and looked Desmond in the eye, hoping he’d back off and leave Kendal alone. But he didn’t.
“Fine,” Kendal said. He hesitated at first, but then took off his coat, blazer, and gloves. All he had left was his gray button up shirt, already losing its shape, and his black trousers and magnetic belt which his kinetic clung to. The only bit that looked Union anymore were the boots, which still had the white triangle on the side, but his trouser legs covered those now that he’d stopped tucking them in. “Better?”
Desmond bundled up the uniform and took it with him to the crew hallway. He heard Desmond opening the trash chute and the uniform being pushed down.
“Bastard,” Kendal muttered and went to the kitchen to fetch some water. He opened the fridge and took out the pitcher, only to find it overfilled with ice.
He caught his breath and tried to calm down.
No point in getting angry, he thought and closed the fridge door. He’s the only way you’re getting out of Union space.
“Don’t listen to him,” Mira said.
He was surprised to see her. He thought she would have gone back to her cabin like she usually did after Desmond went off at him.
She walked into the kitchen and sat on the counter with her legs crossed.
“He’s kind of the captain,” Kendal said. “He’ll throw me out if I don’t follow his orders.”
Mira rolled her eyes. “I mean, don’t take what he’s got to say so personal.”
“He’s right though,” Kendal said. “I don’t belong here, but I am. I got to get used to this or I’m not going to make it much farther in life.”
“Look,” Mira said and hopped off the counter. She walked over to him and leaned against the fridge “We’re both having trouble with all this. That guy we’re workin’ for, Sava, he’s a right prick.”
Kendal chuckled.
“I’m dead serious. He even told Dess not to bring me next time. If he wasn’t offerin’ so much I would’a stuffed the barrel of my gun right up his ass!”
Kendal shook his head and laughed. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
“All I’m saying here is that you shouldn’t take what he says to heart, you know?” Mira had her mouth open in a smile, her gapped teeth showing. Kendal noticed she wasn’t covering it with her hand as much when she talked now. “Dess ain’t a bad guy, but he sure loves to act like one.”
“I know,” he said.
“No you don’t,” Mira said. “You don’t know, and that’s why I’m here tellin’ ya.”
Kendal felt a knot in his stomach. For the first time in years he was having a conversation with someone and enjoying it. He was starting to forget the Union and his old life. Dess might have treated him rough, but at least he spoke to Kendal. At least he didn’t find useless tasks for him to bother with and keep hidden behind a vale of notes and messages.
Dess felt like a real captain, now that Kendal had a moment to think. And Mira felt like…no, he wasn’t going to think about who Mira reminded him of.
“I’ll go work on those plans,” Kendal said.
“I’ll come with,” Mira said, following him to the common room. “Not a whole lot to do on this boat, and I get bored real fast.”
Kendal sat on one of the couches and started up a plan. If the Bachman was anything like the Morana, the storage rooms had external airlocks.
Chapter 13
“You sure that’s it?” Mira asked. She leaned against the back of Dess’s chair, chin on his shoulder, and stared at where he was pointing on the monitor. “Looks like nothing but a reflection to me.”
“It’s a Union ship,” Dess said.
“Right,” Mira said, trying to focus her eyes on the point. It was on the camera feed, but to her it only looked like a small discoloration against the starry black. The radar wasn’t showing anything aside from a blip without an indicator, which meant it could have been an asteroid or a scrap of junk floating in space.
“It’s the only bit of floating metal anywhere near Sava’s coordinates,” Dess said. “And I even got the lieutenant to confirm it. No doubt that’s the Bachman.”
Mira gave up trying to see it and took a seat on the floor beside where Kendal was standing.
He was as quiet as usual and leaning against the side wall with his arms crossed and his eyes perched to the screens. His gray shirt had darkened in color and wrinkled all over, the collar bent in odd angles and the top button missing. He still had his fancy Union belt that things clung to without straps or adhesive, and his boots still fashioned the Union logo, even if it was covered by the legs of his pants. If she’d met him now, she never would have guessed that he’d been a Union lieutenant.
She tried to follow what Dess was doing with the systems. She hadn’t consciously been trying to learn how the ship flew, but she’d been watching close enough to know the basics. Dess had added the Bachman’s location into the system as a registered vessel, and he was now able to map a trajectory towards it. His fingers moved fast, and he spent most of his time watching the radar and not what he was typing on the screen.
“Can you set a course all the way from here?” Mira asked, finally lost and unsure what Dess was doing. Lately she’d been more interested in learning about how the ship worked than how to fix weapons and water reclaimers. “Like, be able to dock ‘er just by typing a flight path?”
“I could,” Dess said. “But I ain’t sure just how docking’s gonna work. The lieutenant wasn’t too clear on just what we’ll be finding once we get there.”
“We’ll find an airlock,” Kendal said, breaking his half-hour long silence. “On the side of the ship, easily openable from the outside.”
“Not so clear on what ki
nd of airlock we’re talkin’,” Dess said, spinning his seat around to face him.
“If it was the Morana, I could confirm an accordion lock and we could latch on, but the Bachman is a smaller ship that I’ve never even been on. We might have to go on a walk.”
She’d been told what a ‘walk’ was. Dess called it ‘going out into zero’, but she knew what they meant. If there was a gap between the Bachman’s airlock and their entryway, they’d need to hop from one to the next. A scary thought, but Mira felt safe enough. She’d never been in a space-suit, but guessed they were easy to use.
“We got twenty minutes ‘till we’re there,” Dess said. “You sure the airlock’s gonna get you two inside in the right place?”
“No,” Kendal said. “But if we end up somewhere we’re not supposed to be we should still be fine. Most of the crew don’t spend all day hanging around the airlocks. Worst case scenario we’ll have to explain why we’re not in proper uniform, and try to get to a storage locker as quick as we can.”
“Do Union-folk always wear their uniforms?” Dess asked. “Nothin’ casual?”
“They’re pretty strict,” Kendal said. “Most officers don’t even pack regular clothes. We get uniform replacements every odd week and that’s about it.”
“We?” Dess asked.
Kendal rolled his eyes. “We’ll need to wash up,” he said, walking over to the doorway, “and I’ll need to shave.” Only the two were going, Mira and Kendal. Dess insisted he remain to watch over the ship.
Mira waited outside the bathroom while Kendal shaved and washed his hair. He had hung up his clothes, letting the steam press and smooth the wrinkles out. All she could hear from the room was splashing water and Kendal wincing as he fumbled with a razor.
He soon walked out, shirtless and with his black union trousers all splashed and flat from the steam. His face was clean shaven, and his hair was washed and parted to the side.
He gave her a nod as he passed, and Mira went in herself, closing the door behind her.
The bathroom was only big enough for one person, and only had a toilet and a sink. She could barely wash her hair without her elbows bumping into the walls.
The sink only had warm water that came straight from the reclaimer. It made bathing easy, but drinking not as much. If someone forgot to fill the water jug and put it in the fridge, they were drinking near-hot for the day.
She stripped down and washed herself off with a cloth, then soaked her clothes in the sink and scrubbed the filth and sweat from them.
First thing I do after we get paid is buying the parts to fix the damn cooling system, she thought. The room was boiling, and the wet clothes hanging on the walls only made it moist.
She sighed and fanned herself off with her hand.
Time seemed to stop for a while. It might have been the heat, or Mira’s own poor timekeeping, but Kendal knocked long before she thought he would.
“You in there?” he said, voice muffled by the door.
She nodded her head before remembering he couldn’t see her. “I’m still in here! Drying off my clothes and such.” She took a breath and fanned herself. “You need somethin’?”
“You’ve been in there for an hour,” he said. “We’re almost up to the ship, I thought you should know.”
“I get it!” Mira realized her voice sounded too angry once the words left her lips and tried to calm the tone by the last word.
Kendal left, and she buried her face in her hands and groaned. She was hot. Skin itchy and sticking to any surface it touched. She missed home. She missed the rain. She missed the swamp and the people and the wooden houses and visiting Dess when she got lonely. It all changed so fast and she was having trouble keeping up.
Mira wiped her eyes and got dressed. Her clothes were still damp, but she was willing to put up with it. She’d be leaving them on the Bachman once they switched to Union outfits anyway.
Dess was on the bridge chatting with Kendal. Both stopped when Mira walked in. She knew they could tell she’d been upset, but neither wanted to mention it. Mira almost wished they had brought it up so she could tell them she was fine.
“I’ll go get us ready,” Kendal said
“Make ‘er quick,” Dess said as Kendal left the room.
Mira leaned against the back of Dess’s chair to watch. They were close to the Union ship now. It took up most of the screen and was growing larger each passing second. A triangular mess with thrusters out all sides and notches and dents and doors all over. It looked dangerous and impractical to her. Dess’s ship might have been beaten around, but it had an eloquence to it, unlike the Bachman.
“How does it land?” Mira asked.
“It don’t,” Dess said. “Shuttles are how she get passengers and cargo. Never leaves space herself.”
Mira nodded and stood by Dess and watched the screens as they approached. Closer and closer, until all she saw was the Bachman. There were small doors on the hull, and plenty of handles and scuff marks. A few of these doors had circular handles. Dess latched the ship next to one of these doors.
“Why you so rough on him?” Mira asked.
Dess seemed to freeze. His hands still over the controls and eyes fixed on the monitor. “Cause he’s not gonna learn if I don’t.”
“Why do you care if he learns anything or not?”
“What do you think’s gonna happen when we get to Sintic?” Dess said. “It ain’t like we’re gonna settle down and be done with it. Life don’t work that way.”
“I don’t get what you’re sayin’.”
“Mir,” he said. “I’ve done all this before. Workin’ with a crew and trying to make a livin’ out there. It ain’t easy and any hand helps. I might not like the guy, but I trust him now and that’s a hell of a lot more than I can say ‘bout most in this system. When we get out of Union space, we’re going to be doing this sort of thing all the time and he’s only gonna make it if I teach him.”
“We’re stayin’ together after all this?”
“Ain’t possible to survive out there on our own,” Dess said. “Back when I had a crew, when I was your age, I did well for myself. Wasn’t ‘till I lost ‘em that my life all went to hell.”
She could have sworn he saw his eyes tear up, but couldn’t be sure.
“I shut the bulkhead between the entry and the rest of the ship,” he said. “Lieutenant’s out there waiting for you.”
Mira smiled. “Guess we won’t be seeing each other for a lil’ while,” she said.
“Just a lil’ while.”
Mira left the command room, the bulkhead immediately closing behind her and sealing the entryway off from the rest of the ship.
She met up with Kendal in the entry who was already waiting for her. “Desmond managed to get us a few feet from the airlock,” Kendal said. “If that ship is the kind I’m thinking of, then we should be able hope over and get inside and pressurize in less than a minute.”
“Fine by me,” Mira said.
Kendal opened the panel by the door and held his hand near the scanner, hesitating and taking a deep breath.
“Shouldn’t we, you know, get the suits on?” Mira asked.
Kendal went pale. He looked around the room like he was expecting someone else to answer her. “We don’t exactly have those,” he said.
“What?”
“No suits,” Kendal said. “Desmond doesn’t have any.”
Mira’s eyes were wide and she felt short of breath. “You’re saying we have to, just, go out into space?” she said, voice fast and dry. “Just like this with nothin’ protectin’ us?”
“You’ll be fine as long as you make sure to exhale all the air from your lungs before going out,” he said. “And make sure to keep your mouth closed, and your eyes wide open so they don’t tear up and blind you.”
“You done this before?” Mira asked, her voice louder than normal.
“Never done it,” Kendal said. “But we were taught how to in training and I’m sure we’ll be
fine.
Mira looked at the door and thought of the blackness of space outside. Growing up, her mother had warned her about the dangers of being out there. She said that your eyes would pull from their sockets and your blood would boil in seconds.
“It’s only for a half a minute,” Kendal said. “I’ll open the airlock and pull myself in, and you’ll close the door while I figure out how to pressurize the room.”
“I don’t like this,” Mira said.
“You’ll want to hold on to something,” Kendal said. He had a grip on the safety bar beside the door, and his other hand hovering close to the scanner.
“I don’t like this at all,” she said, taking hold of the closet door handle. Just as Kendal said, she kept her eyes wide and blew all the air from her lungs.
A loud rush of air swept through the room and sucked everything towards the opening. It felt like a gust of wind with enough force throw her off-balance and blow her hair all around, but was nowhere near strong enough to suck her out into space, or even make her lose footing.
Her ears popped and sound vanished. The room was quieter than any night. Not a hum nor a breath. She couldn’t hear her heart, or her clothes rustling, or the blood rushing through her ears. Nothing.
Her eyes stung and she felt tears sticking to the lids that scattered when she blinked. The skin exposed to the vacuum itched and her lips dried out right away.
People weren’t ever meant to be here, she thought, looking down at the gap between ships. It looked like an endless drop. The hull of the Bachman going farther than Mira could see.
Kendal leapt first. He floated past the gap between ships and landed at the airlock, catching the wheel and holding himself in place. He spun the wheel while Mira watched from ledge outside. The airlock door opened, and Kendal signaled for her to jump over.
Mira couldn’t see straight from the tears pooling against her eye. She tried to blink them away, but they only wiggled in place and left her in a haze. She kicked off the ledge and hurled towards the Bachman. The airlock came up too fast. She hit the hull chest first, spinning and whirling around.
Cast of Nova Page 10
