“Her name’s Captain Feline Aykhan. Young, but she’s got something that keeps the good guys coming back, and the bad guys at bay. Charisma is the word the custodian used. Portia said she bleeds it,” Mister Connelly, union rep, gushed aloud.
That’s exactly what I need on my ship, Zeru thought derisively, flipping the captain's profile picture over to avoid looking at her golden eyes. A gorgeous queen bee with flowing locks of obsidian hair. As far as he was concerned, all captains fell into three categories. Charismatic meant attractive and dumb. Takes no shit meant crew-hating and short-sighted. Good to their people meant they had drinking, drug, or sex problem—and enabled any crew habits too.
Zeru didn’t need a charismatic, take-no-shit, alcoholic running his ship into planet-side. He needed someone capable of commanding and understanding people. Darkness knew he was out of touch in that department. “Some new do-gooder hot shot?” he almost groaned.
“Well, new, yes, but she’s underboard. Deals mostly in pharma.”
“She’s a vaccine pusher? Lemme guess. She gives to the poor.”
Mister Connelly grinned at him, pulling a half-chewed pen from his mouth to say, “I knew you’d go for it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I can hear it in your voice!” Connelly insisted, laughing. “Yes, she pushes to the poor. You love that! Admit it! Everyone knows you’re a hero under all that gruff and grizzled… gristle.”
He sat back in his chair. “Lemme think about it.”
“You’re meeting her at the gel bar in the plaza at ten.”
“Fuck me,” he mumbled without heat.
Connelly pushed the rest of the file across his desk and said, “Look it over, sure. But you’re gonna love her. Everyone loves her. If she wasn’t all over the map, she’d have a dedicated crew. Maybe you can do something about that, huh?”
Zeru blinked slowly.
Connelly grinned. “Best of all, she’s clean as a whistle.”
“On paper.”
“On the e-record too! She's legit on the top and bottom. Knows how to cover her tracks on both sides.”
Zeru waited a beat before he asked, “You sleep with her?”
Connelly gave him a chiding expression. “You are my only pony in this race, Zeru. You said you needed something to get you off this station and nine months of fuel says you’d be crazy to tell her no.”
“Nine months,” the pilot stated incredulously. “Nine fucking months?” Besides me, who the fuck has nine months of anything on this station? he wondered to himself. Off the top of his head, he could only recommend bad people.
“She might be new, but she’s bringing in big, hot money. And she’s got an even bigger heart. She’s twenty-three and she’s probably dumb.” Connelly smacked the desk, making some of his executive toys jump. “Bite the damn hook, Zeru! The worst that happens is you give to the poor out of the charity of your own heart. Is that so bad?”
“And if she’s not pushing to the needy after all?”
“Then you get fucking paid. Sweet Darkness, you can stop pretending to be some Mother Ubedgha.” Connelly was mad. Of course, the union rep who was only his friend because he was being paid on commission to be his friend would call him crazy for balking at so much money. And if he was invoking the old-system’s patron saint of Patience in the Face of Idiocy, well…
Zeru waved a dismissive glove. Explaining his reasoning—justifying all his moral caution—to a person who wasn’t going to live past sixty was virtually pointless in his mind’s eye. At most, it would be a waste of breath. When he’d been younger and less mangled by the cosmos, maybe he would have entertained a soapbox or pulpit, but not lately. He was in another of his jaded phases and couldn’t be bothered.
The Ten-Year War hadn’t helped—had probably exacerbated the feeling. That war, out of all the others, had almost made him see people as things. A year wasn’t enough space, literal and figurative, between him and that dull, lifeless ideation.
Fuck. Maybe I’m just feeling my age. He’d been alive for more than two thousand years, and it was moments like this that he felt those years in his fingertips.
He sighed. “Fine, Con… I’ll see you at ten.” He got to his feet and went to the door.
“Really?” Mister Connelly called after him, thrown that he’d acquiesced without a fight. “A-Alright! I’ll see you there.”
Nine months of fuel, he thought after he was safely ensconced in the elevator up to his hotel suite. He undid his helmet’s pressure valve and pulled the brain case off his freshly shorn head. The last job paid out in ten days. And I'm not running on empty… I've lived on a station for years on less than an hour of fuel. He fiddled with a jacket pocket for a pink pill and popped the pick-me-up into his mouth. He crunched down on the anti-nausea tab and took a deep breath before putting his helmet back on. Nine fucking months. Where the fuck is nine months from here? That's gotta be at least two galaxies. That's not new, hot money, Con. Smells like legacy, ivy-league, trust-fund, cloned, on-worlder shit.
He found his room key in another pocket and pressed it to his door, falling into the tidy space with a breath of released tension. He went to the window that overlooked The Promenade’splaza and noted all the tourists and spacers enjoying the give and take of the market.
His artificial eye helped him snap a couple candid photos as he smiled. Whatever this is, he thought, I just hope this captain is good for the push. I could care less about the gas. It means more to me that there are still people out there that want to do something about the suffering in this universe. A captain that's willing to risk it all for something like that? I'd taxi them to the ends of the universe.
He let his helmet rest against the tempered glass with a clunk. “The drugs are making you loopy again, Caleb,” he whispered. “A hero… Yeah, that’ll be the fucking day.”
He thought about taking a shower but knew the damp would just cling to him until he got back to Sigyn, so he opted for a change of clothes to at least get the smell of fuel off him. Then he took the elevator down to the mezzanine that overlooked the market.
He could see Mister Connelly had already beat him to the gel bar, but he hesitated to join him. He still had another half-hour to himself, so he lingered on the railing, basking for a moment in the chaos of the living station.
He’d been on dead ones before.
The sweat and food-smelling crowds full of loud, young families and equally loud merchant types filled him with a sense of peace. Here at least was a place untouched by the war. Here at least was humanity in all its tiny, glorious victories…
“Smells like money,” someone said from beside him.
He huffed a laugh. “Money’s right. So many people… It’s like a seek-n-find game.”
The young woman beside him cleared her throat noisily and he turned to regard her. She had an incredibly familiar face, but he couldn’t put a name to her. Her face was frozen in an overly polite smile, her hand outstretched to him. Was he supposed to know her o—?
Oh shit, he thought poetically even as she said awkwardly, “Oh! You don’t recognize me! I’m Captain Feline Aykhan. I’m supposed to be meeting you down at that gel bar. What a coincidence. Did you want to get a lay of the land too?”
He blinked. Think, Caleb. Do the stupid thing with your mouth that does the stuff for your stupid brain. He quickly took off his helmet. “Oh, no, that’s my fault entirely, Captain. I didn’t recognize you. You have longer hair in your profile.” And greener eyes. And more muscle mass. And you are far more polite than I would be if I were in your position. Fucksake, this is humiliating.
She didn’t so much as look at his face as she gestured with a finger. “And your hair is shorter than mine!”
He rubbed at the new cut self-consciously. He’d been worried about it being too short. He’d forgotten that he'd been keeping it long to hide some older, embarrassing marks on the back of his head from his time in the Leona system. “I’m sure I completely blend in with the military types now,” he joked with a smirk. He hoped she read it as a sarcastic smirk, anyway. He’d discovered over the years how much scar tissue could inhibit micro-expressions.
She laughed good-naturedly, smiling as if she knew something he didn’t. “You did! I only knew it was you because of the jacket.” He gave her an expectant look, zooming in on her furrowed brow for just a moment before the furrow flattened out. Aggression or just nerves? he wondered. She said, “It’s… got your name on it?”
ELEMENT on top, ZERU on bottom, with the atomic weight for lithium, rounded to tenths, between the two. He’d owned the jacket for almost forty years. If there was any way to really track him through the system, one could do so by following the garment's repair stubs.
He blinked. “Right! Duh. I’m—‘Course.” He put his helmet back on then and depressed the valve at its side, pressurizing his suit to avoid looking dizzy in front of his soon-to-be patroness. Then he waved for her to take the stairs down to the plaza floor. “After you, Aykhan. Mister Connelly has all the paperwork.”
“Captain is fine, Pilot,” she said.
He nodded, again internally kicking himself for being such a fucking space cadet and said, “Apologies. After you, Ma’am.”
Sweet Darkness, she must think I’m high as a satellite right now. Get it together. Nine months, Caleb. Nine months out of this system, out of this galaxy, out of this damned quadrant. This is your chance to start over. Again.
As she took the lead, she gave him a dashing smile over her shoulder, and he saw that same micro twitch between her brows before she faced forward again.
Somehow, that tiny, honest imperfection silenced the litany of doubts in his head. This captain was just another young gun trying to make her way in the world.
So why were his instincts so preoccupied? What was it about this girl that had him off his game? It wasn't her good looks or good manners. It wasn’t even the money. The last time he’d felt something like this, he’d been shooting an officer in the face at point blank…
It came to him as she shook hands with Mister Connelly with all the polite assessment of someone turning over an expired ready meal in their hands. For all her smiles and her straight teeth, there was something off about those green eyes of hers, as if she looked through everyone or judged everyone lacking somehow.
The captain felt like dread.
And then her eyes landed on him, but they stared at him instead of through him. “What do you say, Pilot? In or out?”
He could feel the anti-nausea tab fighting to come back up in spite his otherwise empty stomach. He nodded slowly. “I’m in,” he heard himself saying. “When you want to launch, I’ll be on the ship.”
Mister Connelly looked confused, almost concerned, but Captain Aykhan was all charm and grace. “Excellent!” she said. “I’ll see you on board in twelve hours. I’ll have the crew swing by before then to get things squared. We can launch at—” She flicked at a digit across her suit's mounted PC. “Balls tonight. That work for you?”
“Tight schedule for a nine month-er,” he had the presence of mind to wonder aloud.
She grinned, pounded Connelly on the shoulder companionably, then agreed amiably, “It is.” Deflection. Deception. Again, he saw that twitch between her brows, like a repressed snarl of disgust. She winked. “Gotta dash. Meeting the crew. You might know some of them, Pilot.”
“Is that right?” He doubted it. He never crewed with the same team twice. On principle.
“They speak highly of your reputation anyway,” she conceded. And there was that damn micro-frown between her perfect eyebrows again. She grinned. “Pleasure meeting you both! See you on the bay."
“G’day, Captain,” Connelly called after her receding back. Then he turned to Zeru with a befuddled look on his face. “Did you two already discuss the contract?”
“No,” Zeru mumbled.
“You could back out of this one,” Connelly said airily. “This… She feels off, Mate.”
“I remember hearing you say something to that effect about me, once upon a time.”
Connelly waved a hand. “You're off-good. She made me feel…" He let the unspoken thought hang for a moment before smiling politely. He held out his hand to Zeru and said, “Doesn't matter. You’re rich, my friend. And I, by commission, am also rich, so…”
Zeru grinned as he took the union rep’s hand. “Don't spend it all in one place, Con.”
“Oh no,” he assured the photonrunner. “I have a couple places in mind, actually! Lightspeed, Pilot.”
Zeru loitered in the plaza for a few more stolen minutes of peace before he pushed himself back to the stairs to the mezzanine. He had to pack a bag. And he figured another pick-me-up was in order.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhYlDsBDagY
