by Ginger Booth
But what he said was, “Sass? You just devastated two women.”
She bit back several retorts, and ended up with, “Good.”
Eli stared at her, then nodded a fair-enough. “You want me to supervise cleanup in here? Um, maybe I could use…those two. You take a break. Check in on Copeland. And Sass – it’s getting kinda cold.”
She hadn’t noticed. Even a brown dwarf engine kicked out a fair bit of heat, not to mention the fires. She sighed. “Alright. I’ll get out of your way. Abel and Jules can help you, too. But for God’s sake make sure everyone knows what caused this.”
Eli took out his tablet, and made another ship-wide announcement. “Kassidy and Cortez, Greer and Greer, report to the engine room for cleanup.” He let off the button, and murmured gently, “Be sure and get some fluids, captain. Take care of yourself.”
Sass dragged out of there thinking she didn’t deserve any sympathy. Cope tried to tell her the situation was serious – even dragged the captain down into a silly cat-fight. And then he’d protected her from the flames.
Fortunately Clay intercepted her before she could duck into the med bay or mix it up with the two offenders. He insisted the first stop was her cabin and his to clean up, change clothes, and chill out.
The rapidly cooling ship would tend to help with that.
Much calmer, and with a couple shots of whiskey in her, Sass checked her face in the reflection of the burnished steel of a med bay cabinet. Still shiny pink in spots, but not too alarming. The dead skin had peeled off. She perched on a rolling stool by Copeland in the auto-doc.
“You look fine, captain,” Ben confirmed softly from the other stool opposite her. He hadn’t budged from the med bay yet, his fingers resting on his room-mate’s jaw.
“I’m so sorry, Ben,” Sass murmured. She tapped the auto-doc control screen, the override button to bring the patient to consciousness. A rude orange popup message protested that the patient would be subjected to unnecessary and extreme pain. Ben blanched at the warning.
Sass leaned her face into Copeland’s view field. “Cope? I need my engineer’s advice.”
His brow, so much younger looking and untroubled in his drugged sleep, began to furrow and contort.
Sass mustn’t let this drag out. “The engine won’t start, Cope. It says the hopper is not secured.”
He swallowed painfully, maybe tried to say something.
“Hey, buddy, I’m right here,” said Ben. He gently pulled down Cope’s half face mask and leaned in, making Sass retreat so they wouldn’t knock heads. “What was that?”
Sass didn’t catch it. But in an instant, Ben kissed Cope’s forehead, restored the face mask, and hit the Resume button on the auto-doc, all in one smooth flow of motion.
“Ben –” Sass began. She needed this answer before they froze to death.
The young man’s eyes remained glued on Cope. He murmured, “He couldn’t latch the fuel hopper before he retracted it.” Cope nodded his head infinitesimally to confirm. At that, Ben looked up at her. “Just open up the hopper again, and latch the lid. Cope needed the fuel safe in the wall before the fire broke out. Right, Cope? You smelled it starting.” But his patient was already dead to the world again.
“Thanks, Ben,” Sass said softly in benediction, and touched the youth’s shoulder. “And thank you for taking such good care of him. The auto-doc says he’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
Ben barely nodded.
“What are you going to do to them?” he asked, as she turned to leave.
Sass shared his hunger for revenge, all the more so because she felt guilty herself for the accident. But that wouldn’t do. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Abel and I can cover your watches until the auto-doc releases him.”
His mouth said, “Thanks,” unvoiced.
12
Day 14 outbound from Mahina
139 days to Denali
As Copeland entered the bunkroom shared bath, he caught Cortez in there washing her hands. Her eyes rose to meet his in terror like a kicked child, and she fled.
“Cortez!” he tried to call after her, but his voice was a whisper. That ought to teach him to fight the auto-doc’s ministrations. The creepy mask, in a crystalline pale blue-green, still freaked him out.
He took care of business, then fetched Ben to be his voice box. They knocked briefly on Cortez’s bathroom door, then entered without invitation. In spite of his best intentions, his face screwed up in disgust as he took in her and Wilder’s cabin, the mirror image of his own, but a complete and utter pigsty. One of the lower mattresses even spilled out of its rack onto the floor. He toed a pair of boxers under Wilder’s bed frame.
“Cortez, Cope wants to talk to you,” Ben began. “We share a bathroom. You can’t hide from each other.”
Face frozen in dread, Cortez nodded. Rather than approach, she cowered half behind her bed frame, as though for protection.
Copeland licked his lip. Her body language was pissing him off. He’d never lifted a finger against any woman on this ship, except in practice bouts. He’d hit his ex-wife exactly once, after she’d nearly killed their baby. He hadn’t trusted himself in the same room with the woman since. The idea that he was a threat to Cortez now was a bad joke.
“I need to know one thing,” he rasped. “What did you throw at me in the engine room?” His voice couldn’t carry across the modest cabin. Ben repeated it for him.
Cortez frowned. “A gray pebble.” Her fingers described a tiny bit of rock, smaller than a pea. “Some kind of decorative rock from the planter with the giant leaves. Banana?”
“You didn’t throw a fuel pellet?” Copeland confirmed through Ben.
“No! I swear I didn’t!” Her eyes brightened with tears unshed. She dropped her gaze. “We might have knocked some fuel loose when I was fighting with Kassidy. I’ve been over and over it in my head. I don’t remember any spilling.”
“Some pellets spilled,” Copeland confirmed. “That’s when I called in the captain on you two.”
Ben echoed this faithfully, then added as an aside, “Cope, I thought we were in here to make nice.”
“Clear the air,” Copeland corrected him. “Did I do anything wrong to cause this accident?” Ben shook his head vehemently. “You weren’t there. Ask her.”
Sheepishly, Ben conveyed the message.
“No, sar!” Cortez denied.
“Not an effing sar,” Copeland groused. He glowered at Ben for failing to echo the message.
Unrepentant, Ben blinked back and smiled. He’d had all day playing voice box for his cranky room-mate by now.
Copeland turned back to Cortez and continued, “Captain says we got something in common. Both settler babies. Orphaned by an accident. That right? The urbs kept you?” This Ben relayed faithfully.
Cortez frowned, afraid to know why he brought it up. “Yeah. The Bonhomie meteor. Nobody ever adopted me.”
Copeland nodded. “My uncle found me. I was Nico’s age. Trapped in an air tent alone for nearly a day. Screaming, dehydrated, hysterical. My parents dead. Atmo fail in Schuyler.” He need to pause a couple times for his translator to catch up. “I figure we’re the same, Cortez.”
She nodded, uncertain. “You were lucky you had your uncle.”
“Not really. You were lucky you got an urb education.”
“Not really,” she returned slowly.
He nodded. “You won’t jerk around again, working for me.”
“No. Never.”
“Good enough. We’re done with this. Clear?”
“Clear. Thank you.”
As they slipped back into their own cabin, Ben asked, “Did you mean to be so rough on her?”
Copeland considered the question as he clambered onto his top bunk to nap. But his feelings on the matter were all tangled up with his ex-wife. Wondering if he’d ever trust a woman again. His own guilt over letting the silly squabble get out of hand to endanger the ship. More guilt over leaving his son Nico with the urbs. Fee
lings for Ben that confused the hell out of him. And a splitting headache from the fire’s fumes and the auto-doc’s drugs. All of it was entirely too complicated and intimate to whisper in Ben’s ear. The kid didn’t deserve that. He was sweet.
But Ben hung on the edge of his bed, trusting, awaiting an answer.
“No. I didn’t mean to be rough,” Cope breathed. “But she needs to learn.”
“OK, buddy. Just so we don’t teach our baby Nico like your uncle taught you. Dad taught me plenty without a beating. Without making me feel lower than dust. Alright?”
“Right,” Cope whispered, though his voice might have been husky anyway. “Thanks, Ben.”
Day 15 outbound from Mahina
138 days to Denali
Sass rapped on Kassidy’s door with the best of intentions. She carefully cooled off for two whole nights before having this conversation. She spoke to every other member of the crew first.
Kassidy’s snuffly voice squeaked, “Who is it?”
Sass simply barged in, and hung arrested at the doorway. There was no path forward. Heaps of clothes, priceless electronics, and toys covered every square centimeter of floor space. Kassidy herself, her face a red-eyed weepy drippy mess, cringed into a corner of her bed, hugging a satin heart pillow, amongst a nest of other pillows.
“What the rego hell?” Sass demanded, as her eyes wandered up to the horizontal surfaces of the storage. This wasn’t how she planned to begin this conversation. “Kassidy, is that effing pizza on your vanity?”
“I-I eat when I’m upset, hic,” Kassidy wailed. She started sobbing again. An avalanche of tissues spewed from her across the bed and into the bathroom. She blew her slurpy nose and tossed another wet wad to land on a lampshade.
“Get on your feet, crewman!” Sass hollered. She couldn’t help it. “Ms. Yang, you are junior crew. Not in any way entitled to this deluxe room. You no longer pay rent. By rights, this cabin belongs to Mr. Copeland.” She kicked at a pile of underwear. “Who exactly do you expect to clean this pigpen for you?”
“I don’t know,” Kassidy moaned. She slunk further down into her pillows, sobbing into her satin heart. Instead of getting on her feet and acting like a professional member of Sass’s crew.
“I said get up. Stand. Do it now.”
With all the melodrama the starlet could muster – and melodrama was her acting forte – Kassidy reached overhand to the edge of her mattress. She folded forward onto the arm like an inchworm doing yoga. She arched her back like a cat, and swung her pajama-clad legs around. It was nearly noon. She slipped pointed toes with pink pearl enameled toenails to vanish into a pile of T-shirts and panties. Like a rag-doll, she unfolded herself upright, only to slump again into a ‘kick me’ posture, a pantomime of remorse.
Effing drama queen.
“I’m sorry, Sass,” she crooned.
“Not nearly as sorry as you’re going to be,” Sass replied. No, that really wasn’t how she planned this. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ve spoken with Guardsman Cortez and Sergeant Wilder. And Mr. Copeland, through Mr. Acosta as translator.” She paused to let that dig sink in. “You nearly cost all of us our lives. By shacking up with Sergeant Wilder.”
Kassidy sniffed her drippy nose. “No, Sass. I mean, sure, that’s what the fight was about with Cortez. I shouldn’t have fought with Cortez on duty. That was unprofessional and completely uncalled for –”
“Wrong,” Sass interrupted her. “You caused this by shacking up with Wilder.”
Kassidy wiped her nose on her sleeve. “She doesn’t own Wilder.”
“No, Kassidy. Cortez doesn’t own a damned thing. Then you took the one thing that mattered to her, the only dream she had left.”
Kassidy’s lips frowned in a protuberant pout. “Sass. Listen to what you’re saying here. What is Wilder in this, a sex toy? He was willing. More than. It’s not like any of us are married.”
“You don’t get it,” Sass argued. “Because you’ve always had everything. Wilder matters more to her than anything else in the universe. He’s all she’s got. Do you think she’s going to get mad at him? When that would push him away? He slept with you, and she’s stuck begging him to forgive her. How much do you think that makes her hate you?”
Kassidy picked out a clean pair of panties from a drawer hanging open, and gave her nose a resounding honking blow. “Sass, what you just said? Makes no sense whatsoever.”
“That’s because you’re spoiled rotten, Ms. Yang. And that ends now.”
“No, Sass, I don’t think that’s the problem. You know what I think? I think you’ve bought into some seriously screwed-up male-dominant worldview. You need deprogramming. That is just the most sexist bullshit I’ve ever heard!” She flicked away the nose-rag panties without looking, to catch on a photo frame beside Sass, as though she were playing quoits.
“Ms. Yang, that’s because you’re applying over-educated over-privileged self-serving pseudo logic, on a problem that has nothing to do with logic. Love isn’t logical.”
Kassidy tossed a wrist sideways. “Cortez was fine about Wilder just a couple months ago. Take him or leave him. Trust me, I’m an urb. So’s she.”
“You missed the part where she changed. The part where all the time you were playing in Mahina Actual, she was isolated with the one person in the world in her boat. Literally. The part where you were her friend. And you betrayed her, by sleeping with her guy. Is this starting to make sense yet, Kassidy?”
“Oh,” she allowed. “Well, we were kind of close. And I guess they have been together…”
“Since Sagamore,” Sass supplied.
“That’s a few months…” Kassidy allowed. “OK, well maybe I haven’t been a very good friend.”
“Not if you didn’t catch that bend in the road, no,” Sass confirmed. “You owe some apologies. Big-time. And you do not touch Wilder again unless Cortez invites you to. Understood?”
“Right,” Kassidy allowed, still sounding a little dubious.
“Other persons on your do-not-touch list include: Clay. Touch my guy and die.”
“Um.”
Sass narrowed her eyes. She’d bet anything that Kassidy had until just this moment fully intended to trip Clay into bed. “Abel. Wilder. Copeland. Ben. And none of the girls want you, either.”
“I don’t think Eli…”
“Probably not,” Sass agreed.
Kassidy frowned. “Who put Copeland and Ben off limits?”
“They did. Copeland wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole. And in case you haven’t noticed, Ben is no longer my love slave. He’s Copeland’s.”
“But they’re not gay. Are they?”
“Hardly matters if they don’t want you,” Sass replied with finality. “Do you require instruction on how to clean your cabin?”
Kassidy glanced around her mounds of clothing in overwhelm. “No. I know how to…”
“Put all the clothes in the washers. Then remove all remaining objects from the floor. Clear out space for the clean clothes to be put away. Fold neatly and stow in a cabinet. Anything that doesn’t fit into a cabinet, you lose when you fail inspection tomorrow morning. Clear? And I will inspect the insides of every cabinet and drawer. For tidiness. Bathroom too. You have exactly one chance to ask for help. Now.”
Kassidy was nothing if not smart. “Sass, please help?” By the time they’d cleared half the floor of clothes, she meekly added, “Can you help me make it right with the crew?”
Clay knocked on Sass’s door before he barged in uninvited. After a very long and tedious day cleaning another grown woman’s undies, the captain lay on her bed to brood, on her belly and arched up backward, pillow clutched to her chest.
Clay sat beside her and started massaging her shoulders. “I thought you avoided bed to stay alert when you were on watch.”
“Fat chance of falling asleep.”
“No, you’re wound up like a spring.” He kneaded harder, digging his thumbs into steely trapezius muscle
s. “You were magnificent in the fire, Sass.”
“Wouldn’t have happened if I caught on quicker. Copeland was telling me the situation was dangerous, not that he was annoyed with the pair of them. He couldn’t care less if girls snipe at each other.”
Clay sighed.
“What,” she demanded.
After a long pause, he mused, “Interesting leadership choice. Doing laundry for the junior crew. Who’s in the doghouse. Which you now resent.”
“I don’t know how to get past this, Clay. Everyone’s on edge. We nearly died.” She brooded a moment more. “You were magnificent in there, too,” she added, contrite.
“Thank you. That’s the preferred response to a compliment, by the way.”
Sass hung her head lower. “I’m furious with both of them. And I feel guilty as sin. This trip is too dangerous. This tech is barely sufficient. The ship is old and crotchety. Copeland is brilliant, but it’s too much to ask of him. God, Clay, he apologized to me for screwing up. Him!”
“You need distance, Sass,” Clay admonished, digging his thumbs painfully into her triceps. “Leadership. Cool, collected, positive. Detached. You know, all those character traits you hated in me all those years.” He aped a falsetto. “‘How could you not care about blah-blah!’ ‘You’re a cold bastard, Clay Rocha!’ Remember those?”
“I apologize. Again,” she growled.
“Wasn’t looking for an apology. And I’m surely not apologizing to you. You remember that time on the Vitality – just after the settlers murdered Al? I picked one of the ring-leaders and made him figure out how to restore order? You looked like you wanted to spit at me for months after that.”
Sass considered the fiasco. Part of the shock was that anyone managed to kill Al. He bore the same nanites as her and Clay. Yet they hacked him into little pieces and somehow he stayed dead. But Clay’s point escaped her. “There was a moral to this story?”
“Nothing moral about it. I considered the tableau, the mob dynamics, and I decided that particular SOB could restore order. And if I waded in, or sent you, the crowd would circle like a flock of seagulls and peck us to death. The only route was to stand detached and watch while they mopped up the blood. And cut rations for them to do penance. The punished need to feel they’ve done their penance.”
