Mira set the ship down in port. A soft landing bed designed to absorb the impact of setting down. Newly built and receiving more traffic each day than the last Benith Town ever received in its lifetime. Both towns had sunken into the crust of the planet. Every house and every person all destroyed by that woman. The new town had taken its name, despite being several miles away. A permanent population of over ten thousand, yet many workers lived here temporarily during certain parts of the year.
She put her hand on the entryway scanner, holding her breath as the door shot open. It was sunny, skies clear and not a cloud to be seen. She shielded her eyes and waited for them to adjust before stepping out. The ledge had been widened, and the ladder replaced. She stood on deck and looked out at the town. The landing port was raised higher than the town, and she saw it all. A cluster of houses arranged like white noise, with alleys as streets and buildings on top of buildings.
The town built into an imperfect square next to the cliff that led down to the mines. A busy town, more appropriately called a city, bustling with people and business.
Most of the craters, which had appeared all over the planet, had filled in with water and turned to seas, lakes, and rivers. The marsh dead and plant life growing on its corpse. Terraforming was needing, and she could even see the vapor clouds in the distance from one of the many machines placed around the globe. Air was still humid and damp, but sun out and rain kept to only a few days a week.
Mira went to registration and slipped the front-desk clerk her Union ID. He sat behind a window of plastic to keep him safe, yet the speaking holes were wide enough that Mira could easily slip the barrel of a kinetic in there.
“You’re all clear,” the clerk said, pushing the ID back under the plastic wall. “We’ll send some men and load up your ship. Should take the better part of an hour.”
Mira nodded and wandered away. An hour, she thought, setting her communicator to remind her. The biggest plus side to this arrangement was getting one of those magnetic belts, the same Kendal had. Union communicator built in, and any metal weapon snapping clean to the side. They offered a kinetic, but she took an EG-pack instead.
She walked down the main street of Benith Town, eyeing all the buildings and people that buzzed around. Quite a few inns, and places to shop, but her eyes lit up when she found a pub.
Inside was busy as all hell. People bumping into each other, crowding tables as servers went to the back rooms to fetch more chairs. A strange chaos that kept Mira on edge as she walked up to the bar and sat between a couple making out and a fat man drinking like he was expecting gold to be at the bottom of the glass.
Mira ordered a drink and used her Union card to pay for it. She felt fancy having to tap it and not even see what the cost was. She got some kind of yeasty mix that tasted worse than it smelled. During her year captive she kept craving this stuff, but now that she had it she could barely stomach it. She slid it away and ordered a water instead.
“Hey.”
Mira looked around, certain the voice was directed at her. Too many people. Mira shrugged it off as just another voice in the crowd, but then felt a tug on her sleeve.
She saw a girl standing beside her, quick to take her hand off when Mira glared. The girl couldn’t have been older than twelve. She was stringy and had dirty blonde hair that laid flat and spiked at the ends. Nice clothes, but she’d been wearing them too long and were only a month away from looking like she’d bought them second hand.
“What do want?” Mira asked.
“Um,” the girl said, looking around nervously. “You’re Union, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” Mira asked. “Do I look like a damn officer?”
“Your belt,” she said. “It’s a Union belt. Unless you stole it…”
“I stole nothing,” Mira said and sipped from her drink. Damn water, she thought and put it back down. “I work for them, but I’m not part of them.”
“I see,” she said, and took a seat on the stool beside her. “That mean you have a ship, don’t it?”
“Why you figure that?” Mira asked.
“If there’s not a Union base, then that means you have flown here. My moms both told me that the Union would be setting up here after the big economic boom and that meant we’d be seeing more of them around. You must have flown here, is all I figured.”
“I got a ship,” Mira said. “That what you want to hear?”
The girl nodded.
“What’s got you so interested in me havin’ a ship anyhow?”
“I like ships,” she said. “Never been on one.”
“This city’s barely been up two years,” Mira said. “How the hell have you not been on a ship?”
“I lived in the plaza until just a month ago. Took the train here.”
Mira huffed out a laugh. “Shoulda figured.”
“You seem like you’re trying to get rid of me,” the girl said. She got the attention of the bartender and ordered a drink that a twelve-year-old really shouldn’t have been drinking.
“That’s just what you think,” Mira said.
“Or that you’re trying to play it off like you’re too rough to bother, is that it?”
Mira shrugged. “Just get to the point.”
“I want off this rock,” the girl said.
Mira stopped. She looked into her drink and digested the girl’s words. Words that felt so familiar to her. “What’s your name?”
“Tiff,” she said.
“I think if you left this place your mom would miss you.”
“If she weren’t dead,” Tiff said. “Died in South Port.”
“Dad?”
Tiff shook her head.
“Look,” Mira said. “I ain’t exactly qualified to be takin’ on passengers at a time like this. Only cargo.”
“Union won’t let you?”
“Exactly,” Mira said. “Got a ten-year cap on my license and until then it’s only me allowed on my ship.”
“I’ll be here in ten years,” Tiff said.
Mira laughed, but Tiff wasn’t smiling.
“You’re serious?” Mira asked.
“Ten years,” Tiff said. “I’ll be here and when that comes you better take me with you.”
“Sure,” Mira said.
“That a promise?”
“It ain’t,” Mira said. “But it’s a good as you’re gonna get.”
Tiff downed her glass and stood up. “Which ship’s yours?”
“The one that looks like a cylinder with a bow at the front.”
“Isn’t that what most ships look like?”
“It’s an old ship and too big for what it is. Look for the one that don’t look like none the others and that’s what it is.”
Tiff smiled at Mira. “I got your promise,” she said and turned to walk.
“Wasn’t a promise!” Mira said, but Tiff walked straight out the building, leaving Mira with the buzzing atmosphere of the pub.
She counted down the minutes until her alarm went off, barely audible through the noise, and she went back to her ship.
As expected, the cargo had been loaded. Under the second floor, the bottom floor was a hollowed out cargo bay that could be accessed from the front of the ship, or from a ladder going down Mira’s room, formally where Dess had slept.
She climbed up the ladder and stood on the ledge, leading against the railing and looking out at the town. She hated to admit it, but the place never looked better.
Cast of Nova Page 24
