Captain Aykhan had to be fucking with him.
By laying too low—which he hadn’t thought possible—he'd made himself a target of suspicion, and who could blame the captain? He knew pilots came with a reputation, and it wasn't as if he'd ardently defended himself. But then, how could he? She’d already decided what he was and wasn't, and he was too tired to mount an argument that didn’t sound pathetic for entirely different reasons.
He didn’t get any perverse gratification from watching people. He just enjoyed human beings doing their thing—like how someone might like birdwatching or stargazing. But he was loath to admit that to Aykhan, or anyone in Sigyn for that matter.
Even though she must've assumed the worst of him, the captain returned to the pit at the beginning of the next shift cycle as promised, but instead of digging her nails into him, she began working. She greeted him neutrally, asked him where his secondary and tertiary workstations were and that was the extent of their initial interaction.
For weeks thereafter, she would strap in, eat her meals, do intermittent calisthenics, and job for ten hours. She'd reply to long-distance communications, catch up on the latest navigational news, and review crew schedule changes. Then, once her shift was complete, she would always bid cheerily, “See you in fourteen hours, Pilot. Don't bump into anything while I'm gone.”
The first couple salutations, he couldn't manage more than a grunted, “Captain,” but by the tenth rotation, he was sending her off with a bland, “Of course not, Captain. See you tomorrow.”
The routine was only upset after fifteen cycles. Aykhan made to leave after stretching. Then, apropos of literally nothing, she asked, “You don't have any more music?”
He had opened his mouth to give her his rote response, but her casual question caught him off-guard. “I do.”
“No rule says you can't play anything, right? Pit’s like a mausoleum otherwise. Unless you're into podcasts? Books?”
He wondered why, if it bothered her so much, she didn't just put her comm beads in and tune out. “If… music is alright, I'll play some. Any genre off limits?”
She smiled at her terminal. “Ekhancci. Anything else is fine.”
He didn't probe, although he wanted to. He said, “I'll put an even mix together.”
“You're not going to ask why?”
He hated how easily she could read him even through all his artifice. One of the benefits of wearing a helmet was being able to hide the parts of himself he’d never really managed to master, specifically his face parts.
“No, Captain. I'm sure you have your reasons.” He wanted to take the words back as soon as he'd said them, not least of all because he saw something predatory glittering in Aykhan's gold eyes. He'd forgotten for a moment who he was talking to.
But before he could choke on his own foot, she smirked and said, “I do.” Somehow, he got the feeling that wasn't all she wanted to say, but then he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything. Even fully exposed, from her skin-tight suit to the glass breather resting in the hollow between her collarbones, her body language remained foreign to him.
He thought he'd gotten a glimpse of her true self a couple weeks ago, when she'd come to the pit with her flimsy excuses and her accusations. But now, he didn't know what to think. He'd even started questioning what he'd seen and heard. She didn't even have green eyes. Maybe he'd been mistaken before. Maybe the lighting had been off. Maybe he was just seeing things.
And now, whenever he felt himself relaxing around her, he was waiting for her to show her true colors again—no pun intended—but instead, she acted just as aloof and professional as she had on The Promenade.
She uncoupled herself from the stirrups and said, “See you tomorrow, Pilot. Fly true.”
“Take care, Captain.”
She was going to drive him insane.
What did she want? She wasn't watching him. She came in, did her duty, and left. She'd said that it would benefit them both to be seen together, but what did he care if the crew thought he was strange?
He was watching her though, that at least wasn’t a secret.
Maybe that was why she didn't feel the need to fill the air with useless updates and small talk? She knew he saw her cozy up to Miss Jahja from Engineering, Misses Canner from Electric, and Miss Sane from Heating and Cooling. He saw her go to mess twice a day—when she hadn't before. She played cards with Lachance and his leads once a week at Leisure, Sigyn’s recreational lounge.
In the last ten cycles, she hadn't gone to her berth alone once—though she had picked up Bianca Sane the last three, so maybe she held to some idea of fidelity, deep-down. He never saw her smile fall, never saw a hitch in her step, never saw her skip a workout or a chance to engage with a curious crewmember. The only place he didn’t follow her was into sanitation or her quarters.
That was how he knew she knew he was watching her: even in the stairwells, her eyes always found his cameras.
Was her spending time in the cockpit just as carefully cultivated as her relationships outside of it?
Zeru couldn't take it anymore. He needed to know what her game was. He could observe her behavior all he wanted, but for everything she did, he was more and more convinced that everything was purposely meant to toy with him. Did she expect him to expose her? Question her? What was the point of everything otherwise?
He didn't want her to know she'd gotten a rise out of him after all, but he didn't know how else to confront her. She never did anything wrong. She never “gave him a show”. She just did what any good captain did and let sleeping dogs lie.
As he had since war's end, instead of proactively doing anything about his trials and tribulations, he put his head down, buried his arms elbow-deep in theoretical astronautics, and prayed the Darkness hid him.
He’d involved himself with enough people. Now all he wanted to do was make up for all the times he should have left shit alone.
Try to ignore her. You’ve rebuffed worse. We’re just here to help push pharma and keep the boat afloat. Eight more months and we’ll be scot-free. We’ll retire to some water-mining comet at the edge of a no-name system and make nice with the locals. Maybe get a new face…
He let the old, ironic fantasy go as he pulled his math slate down and started ascribing meaning to entropy. “Who am I kidding?” he murmured to himself. “There’s no going back.”15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6VDL4HV1xY
“How'd you lose your eye, Pilot?”
Thank the Darkness, after another month, the other star finally shot. In keeping with Captain Aykhan's previous engagements, it was dealt completely out of the pale, with no build up or warning, and was preceded by an innocuous comment about Mess, music, or mathematics.
Zeru smiled. He said, “Gambling debts, Ma'am.” He could weather a bald interrogation. He just couldn’t fight unseen torture.
The captain laughed like she didn't believe him, but instead of pushing, she leaned into the fib with friendly skepticism. “Lost it in a card game? I believe it, with that glass poker face of yours. Pretty typical of your kind.”
“I'm just a stereotype in a cool jacket.”
“More like three clichés in a flight suit.”
“Only three? Should I pick up a Dusk habit?”
“Or shrooms,” she suggested.
“I'll consider it,” he promised.
She didn't speak to him again until she was leaving for the day. “See you tomorrow, Pilot. Try not to crash Sigyn into anything.”
“Roger that, Captain.”
The next day, she was silent for nearly six hours before she made a comment about the temperature and then asked, “How'd you lose your eye, Pilot?”
He sucked his teeth, considering. “Infection. Fell out of a tree when I was a kid.”
“Hit every branch on the way down?”
“Tragically.”
“Homeworld had the tech, but not the medicine to save it?”
“The universe hasn’t been as kind to me.”
She laughed. Then, another few hours came and went, and she said through a yawn, “See you tomorrow, Pilot. Muster the warden if you see aliens.”
Agony. She was trying to kill him.
“Of course, Captain.”
The next day, she greeted him with, “Are you going to tell me the truth about your eye today, Pilot?”
He sighed dramatically and asked, “The truth?” A nod. He motioned for her to float closer. He told her, “It's not a pretty story…” She didn’t blink. “After my first wife and I had been married for a few years, she started to grow distant. You can guess how it ended. I caught her and her lover in the act. There was a struggle. A gun went off once, twice, thrice… She died, I nearly did myself, but at least the bastard that drew her away from me won't be having children anytime soon.” He shook his head as if to rid himself of a ghost. “As you can tell, it's not a story I'm proud to advertise.”
Captain Aykhan had a hand over her mouth by the end, her shoulders shaking, her eyes narrowed with mirth.
“What?” he demanded with a scowl. “I’m not.”
She finally laughed aloud. “How many times have you told that one?”
This time his sigh was sincere as he turned away from her.
She went to her terminal as she said, “You're not murderer stock.”
She's right. Murder for passion isn't really your modus operandi, is it, Caleb? You're more into cold, efficient genocide.
After he didn't reply, she made a humming noise as if she'd decided something else about him, but she didn't share any of her theories.
After shift’s end, Aykhan was already at the door when she said, “See you tomorrow, Pilot. Keep the pit warm for me.”
“Yes, Captain,” he answered tonelessly, only this time, he couldn't stop the amusement from twitching the scars on his face.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDPBOmB9DOC
They’d been two months in the black when Lachance visited him during a mutual crew rest cycle. “Evening, Pilot.”
“What can I do for you, Warden?”
“Didn't expect the door to be open without Cap'n.” Lachance took his time looking around the cockpit before asking over his respirator, “You ever take that helmet off?”
“You ever leave your berth without a rebreather?”
Lachance grinned, showcasing two metal canines Zeru hadn't noticed before. “Fair ‘nough. Why don't you come join us in the game booth for a spell?”
Zeru took a moment to hang up his slate before asking plainly, “Aykhan put you up to this?”
The warden cocked his head, confused. “No. She begged off tonight to, er, take care of some personal business. We've got an open seat now. If you're not a betting man, we'll play for embarrassing stories instead.”
Zeru gave his console a worrisome frown. “I, uh… Thanks, but I don't think that would be very appropriate. I've got some important calculations to go over myself and I—”
“Come on, Pilot,” Lachance said sternly. When Zeru looked at him, he was beckoning with cupped hands. “The maths will be there when you get back. Come spend some time with us. We'll even turn off the wheel, so no one gets hurt if we get rowdy. How’s that?”
He perked up at that. No gravity? It didn’t sound so bad if there was no gravity involved. “I… won't make for very good company.”
“Then you'll fit right in,” the warden said with a wink. “None of us are respectable company either.”
Zeru had to huff a laugh at that. He somersaulted out of the stirrups and pushed toward Lachance. He invoked the familiar refrain as he held up a gloved finger. “Just one drink.”
Lachance caught his forearm, slinging him toward the door before the warden followed with a shove against the bulkhead. “Just a nip. Back ‘fore your magic wears off!”
It certainly felt like there was a spell cast over the crew when Zeru encountered the lot. They were wary of him at first, uncertain how to act, but it didn't take long for them to warm up to him once he proved to be a good sport about possessing the worst luck in the world. Most people like fun losers. Especially when it seemed he had pockets to let and didn't keep any grudges about it.
The first game of Liars’ Brink was a wash. He played like shit on purpose just to avoid drawing out the rounds. It seemed Alonzo noticed, but she didn't say anything about it.
After a couple of people retired, they played sixes ‘n’ sevens on a tablet display for a while before an aged set of playing cards were produced. Those folk that remained flicked paper across long stretches of hallway in zero-gravity, trying to see who could slip one into the blast door at the other end. The point wasn't to slide them under the airlock exactly, but to get specific suits stuck in the seal of the door or to knock your opponents’ cards free. Zeru was good at Flicky; had always been good at judging velocity, angle, and distance. Instead of resentment, he earned the admiration of some of the younger crewmembers who insisted he teach them his technique during the next rest cycle.
More crewmates called it a night after that, and the last handful played a round of charades for the laugh of it. Zeru was terrible, but he was happy to be reminded that you didn't have to be good to be entertaining.
One drink turned into two, turned into six, into ten. Zeru lost count after that. His helmet had come off at some point. Thankfully, by then, most of his playmates had already pronounced he wasn't an ascetic before retreating to their berths to nurse impending hangovers.
After everything settled down, it was just him, Lachance, and Alonzo left lounging in Leisure. They'd turned off the music and turned on the simulated fireplace while they cooled their jets over vapor boards and nicotine pouches.
Through a haze of psychedelic mist, Alonzo said, “You're alright, Zeru… for a hanger-banger.”
“Thanks,” he huffed.
Lachance barked a laugh. “To think this whole time, I really thought you were some posh-neckin’ photon phony. Why've you been camped out in the pit, Mate? You're a right riot!”
He shrugged.
Alonzo grinned as she said, “Never thought I'd ever meet an introverted pilot. Didn't think it was possible for space jockeys to be shy.”
Zeru rubbed at his hair self-consciously. “I get that a lot.”
Lachance caught a little fit of the giggles and when Alonzo prodded him, he gestured at her meaningfully, “Oh, Zoey, wait ‘til I tell the captain that Lithium beat her card record! Miss Enterprises will lose ‘er min—!”
“Don't!” Zeru snapped and he instantly wished he could take back the single, starchy word.
Lachance looked befuddled, but Alonzo, even high off her rocker, was giving him a blissed-out serpentine look of knowing through dark, meshed lashes.
Zeru swallowed. “I mean, you don't need to tell her. It was luck. I'm… I cheated.”
“No!” Lachance was aghast. “How?!”
“Um. Strings.” Zeru winced.
“You're an even worse liar when there's no money on the line,” Alonzo drawled. “No wonder you wear a helmet.”
Lachance slapped his thigh in mirth. “Pah! Don't tell the—Oh… Oh!” He gave Zeru a mischievous look. “Now that all the betters are abed… What is the deal ‘tween you and the captain anyhow? Old rivals? Friends? Lovers?”
Zeru was not sober enough to formulate a diplomatic or dismissive response, so instead, he babbled. “What's the deal between the captain and any of us? We're on her payroll. Deep enough pockets not to ask questions, right? That's all there is to it. Take from the rich, give to the poor. I'm just the getaway car, and she's just a job… Right?”
Lachance raised an eyebrow at Alonzo and the HVAC engineer hid her answering smile with a sharp inhale of vapor, but then she couldn't contain a cackle. “Two months breathing each other’s farts is just a job?”
“The captain’s only in there ‘cause you guys thought it was weird that she was bunk-bound,” Zeru said severely. “She's using me for cover.”
“Oh, I bet she is,” Alonzo giggled. “Bianca told me the same thing. Which makes me wonder if she's in on it!”
Lachance finally lost his own composure. His chest heaved as he squawked up at the light fixtures. He looked like a cliff bird trying to swallow a fish too big for its mouth.
Zeru could feel a cloying sense of unease crawling up his spine. His shoulders sagged as he crossed his arms. As the other two bandied theories back and forth about the true nature of he and the captain's relationship, he glanced around with his prosthetic to locate his helmet. It was highlighted in green, two berths down, floating in one of the sanitation closets.
Without saying anything to the others, he untethered himself from the rest area, pushed out of Leisure, barked a shoulder on a safety handle, retrieved his helmet, and slipped it back on after slamming the latrine door shut. Depressing the valve, the hissing noise didn't fully mask the sounds of his shallow gulps of air. He waited a solid minute before finally feeling the effects of the clean, heady oxygen bringing him back to a state of calm.
He liked humans.
He'd never been able to convince himself that they liked him back.
Yesterday, he'd been the mysterious pilot of Aykhan's crew. Tomorrow, he'd be its inside joke.
Lachance didn't invite me because a seat was open. He just wanted to hear some gossip about the captain. I don't blame him. It can get boring around here without drama. I just wish… He let the thought go as he felt his pulse quicken. He wasn't going to panic. He was just drunk. That was all.
What happened to Qaris Venn? he asked himself. The answer came, like the second reframe in a comforting mantra: Nothing happened. That's what killed him.
He kicked off a couple walls and pushed toward the cockpit, but when he got to the outer ring, he hesitated in the door alcove.
“No... Fuck.”
He'd played too long. Crew rest was over for some and starting for others. Someone had reengaged the ring in anticipation of the shift change and it already looked like it was spinning near one planet-weight. He could have pressed through point-five PW, maybe point-seven, but not full.
“You did it to yourself,” he hissed quietly, bonking the side of his headgear on the wall. Looking around the corner, to see if there was anyone who could send a message to Engineering to slow the ring, his helmet jerked sideways. He tucked back into the alcove and took slow, even breaths.
He couldn't go for the emergency stop, even using the speed rail. He'd pass out. He'd timed it before. And then there would be questions. There were always questions.
His berth. He had an override panel in his berth. He could stop the rotation from there and then get back to the cockpit. Easy. One tube passage at a time.
He pushed himself down through the heart of the old Unity ship, bumping and banging into every corner, handhold, and wall runner until finally coming to the officers’ quarters. He just really hoped—
Fuck me.
Captain Aykhan was in the tube outside her room, flicking away at her PC, seemingly oblivious to his presence at the end of the hall.
Or at least he thought as much until she said without looking up, “Went a little too hard at Leisure? Lachance was worried after you jetted off without a goodbye.”
He took a deep breath before shouldering into the hallway. He didn't say anything as he fumbled for the handle near his room and then flicked his wrist against the entry pad. He could feel her eyes on him, and they made gooseflesh of his skin. The door didn't open.
“Unity tech,” Aykhan said beside him. “The key resets every ninety days of disuse… Need me to rekey it for you?”
“I've got it,” he said, but after a few moments without moving, he dipped his head and admitted, “I don't got it. Implant’s being temperamental.”
Her expression was blank as she gestured for him to back up. She held her forearm up to the door and rekeyed the entry. She gestured for him to input his challenge information and his pin. It took him a couple tries, but eventually, he held up his wrist and the door accepted the microchip.
“Thanks, Captain.” He gave her a salute and she nodded without further comment. He watched her skip from handhold to hold, wondering how someone so refined on land could be so stiff and clumsy in less gravity.
None of my fucking business, he snapped at himself as he unlocked his berth. Say it with me now: None of my fu—“Oh, come on, man…”
The door only slid open halfway, but instead of trying to troubleshoot it or awkwardly go after the captain to ask for help, he squeezed himself through the reduced space and slapped at the pad on the inside of the room to shut the door. It made a crunching noise as it latched and sealed shut.
That sounded like Sober Caleb's problem.
Zeru cursed to himself, moving about the dark, unfamiliar room. It took him a solid ten minutes to realize he couldn't find the lights or his alternate console. When he tried to use his prosthetic’s night vision, the proprietary software sent another notification to his HUD that read, Blood alcohol levels are still beyond legal limits. Some features are disabled.
He could have laughed. Maybe he did. After a few minutes of dizzy, lethargic consideration, he pulled off his helmet and felt around in the dark for bunk straps. He rolled into the Velcro with a resigned groan.
Fine. If the Darkness wanted him so badly, it could fucking have him.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3ze9Z928MV
Zeru still reported to work on time, even with his berth door malfunctioning again. He didn't bother resecuring it.
He could tell Aykhan was surprised to see him when he came in. Her perfect swoosh of a nose wrinkled. “Sanitation was on the way.”
“I did sanitize,” he mumbled, pulling at his collar. “Maybe it's your upper lip.” Then he waved a hand at her. “Sorry, that—”
“I was teasing.”
“Oh.” He avoided looking at her as he put his feet in the stirrups and brought up his station notes. He frowned. Sigyn was queued to start taxiing around a comm buoy in an hour. “Anything happen while I was off being irresponsible?”
The captain made a noncommittal sound. Then, just as he saw he had a missed communication from a shortwave satellite flagged for malware, she added nonchalantly, “Nothing big. We’re about to dance with a Badland sloop in a quarter of a cycle. Other than that, business as usual.”
Pirates? We're in the middle of nowhere. They'd have to have known we were out here. He slowly craned his helmet up to look at her. Aykhan wasn't smiling. Despite her carefree words, her expression was pensive.
After cleaning the message, he listened to its audio recording. It was garbled and overly compressed, but still understandable: “S-O-S, S-O-S. This is the first mate of Daring Cross. Damage to fuel and airlines. Personnel are on emergency rebreathers. Requesting immediate aid. I repeat, this is the first mate of… of Caring Cross. If anyone's out there…”
He rolled his eyes. Obviously pirate bait. First mate couldn't even keep his ship name consistent in ten seconds of audio. Aykhan saw through the distress message at least, so she wasn't being totally naive.
“Why?” he asked her seriously.
“It's a tollway.”
“A toll that can't be wired to them?”
“A liquid toll.”
Oh. They're probably genuinely stranded. He shook his head. “Respectfully, Captain, if we let them siphon a drop, they'll leave us in the vacuum dry.”
“I'm not letting them siphon anything until I meet their first mate face-to-face.”
He frowned. “You're serious. Have you ever dealt with pirates before?”
She smirked. “Oh, yeah. I take it you have a lot of experience in that department too?” His face hardened and she grinned. “They're thugs. But I don't blast anyone out of the sky just for existing. Better we meet them on our terms, instead of taking a surprise volley along our flanks, mm?”
“You don't think I can outmaneuver something like that?”
“Is that your ego asking?”
He rolled his eyes. “The captain's pilot wants to know if he should standby or accompany her to the bay for the parlay.”
She laughed. “You're just my getaway driver, aren't you? And this is just a job.”
He sighed.
“Don't worry. I know you didn't mean it. You'd have said anything just to get them to shut up.”
“That's not… I didn't…”
“Caleb.”
He looked up at her.
She said, “I'm teasing.” When he only grunted, she added, “I just don't get why you didn't just tell them I'm a lesbian and let that be the end of it.”
He gave the inside of his helmet a hangdog look. “I wasn’t sure you wanted that advertised.”
She laughed. “I haven't exactly been discreet.”
Which made me think it was just as much of a smoke screen as coming to the pit was. “It was inappropriate speculation on their part anyway. I already regret taking Lachance up on his offer. It won't happen again.”
“Don't completely write them off. You need them amenable in case you need an actual break in the future—one that no one has to coerce you into.”
The thought made him chuckle. “I wasn't coerced the first time… But it was more trouble than it was worth, and I've got the migraine to prove it.”
“Just go easy on the starshine next time,” she said, a smile in her tone. “For someone so slight, your liver’s on another level. But even little heavies have their limits. Apparently, yours tops off around seventeen units.”
She's practically begging me to ask her how she fucking knows all this. He glanced at her, waited a beat, and asked point-blank, just to get it out of the way, “How long has your PC been spliced into my cameras?”
“No comment about calling you small, huh?” She snorted. “I've been cut in since you let me in, Day One,” she answered primly. “Don't worry. Your secrets are safe with me. Along with your room's code. And your credit pin. And your blog’s net password.”
Too hungover for this. “Is this revenge?”
“You watch me, I watch you. I wouldn't call it revenge so much as insurance.”
“Blackmail.”
“In-sur-ance,” she insisted in three parts.
“By another name, insurance is just…” He narrowed his eyes as he trailed off. Cursebright, that means she was watching me first!
He turned to throw her hypocrisy back at her, but she was already moving. She'd already unclipped from her seat and slipped from the stirrups. She said, “Send a message to Warden and HVAC-2. They're coming with me.”
HVAC-2? Isn't that Bianca's callsign? “You're taking your…?”
“Fuckbuddy to a parlay in Cargo with pirates? Yeah. She used to run with Badland. She knows their protocol.”
“Ah.” So even her fooling around had some kind of angle to it. How deep did Aykhan's machinations go? Was there any aspect of her life that was solely governed by joy?
She hesitated in the door alcove for a second, but he knew it was deliberate. Nothing she'd done so far was by accident. Maybe even the Space-Bambi legs were some kind of front. Or maybe I'm being overly paranoid, he ventured, but didn't internalize the thought as truth.
“Question, Pilot.”
He sighed. “Answer.”
“If you wanted to dump cargo, could you do it from the cockpit?”
The pilot was more offended that she thought him so uncreative. “I'm not planning on spacing you, if that’s wh—”
“Answer the fucking question,” she groused, and his teeth clicked as he shut his mouth. It always startled him when she cursed in that upper-class accent of hers.
“I can't,” he said honestly. “Safety feature. The only way to open and close the bay door is from within, and it needs two people on both sides of the ingress door to pull the override and the handle if you're trying to open it without depressurizing first. The override doesn't even become accessible unless the ingress hatch into the bay is closed off from the rest of the ship.”
“What about the ingress door and the egress hatches?”
“I can actuate those freely from the cockpit as long as the bay door isn’t open.”
She made a thinking noise. Then she said cheerily, “See you soon, Pilot. Keep the engine running. We won't be long.”
He frowned at her back and didn't say anything more. After she was gone, he tumbled into a terminal, blood humming with electric awareness as he plugged into his overwatch platform and opened the hundreds of eyes spanning across the interior and exterior of the ship.
Images spun out across his HUD, and he disabled everything but the views that watched Aykhan's progress through Sigyn's bones, and the views that exposed the ship of their soon-to-be visitors.
The pirate craft was half the size of Sigyn, but he could tell by some of the hodgepodge paneling that they'd jimmy-rigged metal shielding to disguise their armaments. From a distance, it could have been a recon vessel for a mining corp. Up close, it looked like a heap of bolter-scarred garbage covered in a dozen hidden weapons. Relatable. It was all camouflage unless you knew what to look for.
“I almost feel bad for the pirates,” he whispered to himself as he saw the dogged, slightly manic expression on Aykhan's pretty face as she beelined for Cargo. He had no idea what she was planning, but he knew that look well enough: bloodlust.
He just hoped whatever edge she thought she had on the pirates didn't make anyone on their crew bleed. “Mother Ubedgha forfend,” he muttered, pounding his chest.
For the next four hours, Sigyn slowly canted and rolled into the well of the other ship, using the comm satellite as a secondary navigational anchor. Bay Three’s egress, the aft-most, was lined up with the pirates’ primary. With painstaking control, the ships were docked.
It was a laborious movement on Zeru's part. He could have run Sigyn’s auto-dock feature and let Unity-made lasers guide everything into place, but like most things in the universe, he didn't fully trust the process when he himself was under pressure. Even the pit's music was silenced during the weightless maneuvering.
He hit the comm button after they were graphed together with a shudder and a distant boom. “Warden, Lithium.”
“Go, Lithium.”
“She's clipped in. Airlines are even, but I left the water alone until we can confirm signs of life. Lemme know if we need to uncouple in a hurry.”
“Good copy. Over.”
“Lithium out.”
He meant to sit back, but then a text message came in from Lachance: Any idea what this is about? Captain’s strapped and advised us to do the same.
He hesitated before typing back, No idea.
Lachance just sent him an emoticon rolling its eyes, happy to leave it at that.
Against his better judgement, Zeru couldn't help but say, Watch yourself in there. If you need me, I'm only a couple tubes away.
Dunno what difference you would make if it comes to beads, Lachance replied caustically, but then another message came through on the heels of the first: Are there any security cameras in Cargo? I'd feel a bit better if I knew someone had my six. You might send some of our guns if it comes to it?
Zeru, who had been watching them for the last ten minutes, hummed to himself before admitting, Just one. Look toward the personnel door, then find the red light.
Lachance's eyes found his camera and stared. His hand swiped across his tablet. Recording?
Live feed only, Zeru lied. I’ll notify Sec if things escalate.
Better than nothing, Lachance texted back, turning back to the bay. Badland, right? Hope nobody recognizes us. Whatever Cap’s plan is, I hope it’s worth whatever it costs.
In the bay, Aykhan said something to the warden which made him look up and fold his tablet away. Zeru hit the mic output, but nothing happened. He sighed to himself. There were few eyes in the ship that didn't have ears too. Of course, Bay Three's would be inoperable. It was Zeru's luck.
He was versed at reading lips, but both Lachance and Bianca were faced away from the camera above the door. Aykhan knew he was watching, so of course she would only turn when she wanted him to know something… and he still wasn't sure how much he could trust her at her word—let alone the words he couldn't hear.
In full view, Aykhan said, “Whatever happens, don’t engage. If rubber starts flying, I need the two of you to get to the cockpit and light these fuckers up from the outside.” A pause. Then she replied to something Bianca said, smiling ironically, “Make sure you’re both out of the bay before that happens.” Then she frowned, waiting for Bianca to finish gesturing angrily. “Frankly, Miss Sane, it’s none of your business.”
Aykhan wants a fight, Zeru decided to himself. But she can’t be planning to space them. Without someone else on the override, it’ll be impossible. So what? She’s going to fight them all herself after negotiations cave in? Fucking suicide.
Why was she even risking a meet-‘n’-greet with them in the first place? And why were they here of all places? Wait…
He shoved himself away from the overwatch console and went back to the comm terminal. Without strapping in, he reviewed the timestamps on the fake distress call and then brought up the feed looking through the cockpit. After tracing back and forth in time, he made a baffled grunt.
At no point since receiving the distress signal did Aykhan review their incoming communications—not from the console, or from her personal terminals. She’d come into the pit about an hour before the message came in and propped her feet up on her own terminal. She’d busied herself with peeling an apple and bobbing her head to music. Then, her face tilted slightly when Zeru had opened the cockpit door.
Zeru killed the old camera feed and took a deep breath.
Aykhan had known about Badland beforehand.
How? Why? A previous arrangement? She wasn’t pushing vaccines to criminal elements too, was she? Or was she naïve enough to believe the pirates wouldn’t turn around and hock them somewhere else, but for an upcharge?
He restored the live feed to Cargo as an incoming communications request blinked at him from a local control board. He depressed the switch and greeted, “This is Callsign Lithium on behalf of Sigyn. Go ahead with your transmission.”
“Hey pal, this is Callsign Baron of the Deringer Boss, first mate. You got no idea how grateful I am that you guys came along when ya did. We were this close to drinking from our sanitation stations. Lots were being drawn, y’know? We were gonna invite ya to couple with our stick, but it looks like you already took the liberty. Our wounded’ll thank ya kindly—We lost our medical officer a ways back to decomp-sickness. Mind if we come aboard?”
Despite her first mate getting her name wrong again, Deringer’s air quality and pressure looked good for a stranded ship. But her fuel levels were indeed dangerously low. After a couple perfunctory keystrokes, Zeru confirmed their pilot didn’t have any cyberzines that could crash Sigyn’s systems, but he set up a soft firewall anyway just in case. It was then that he noticed that Deringer’s class specifications accounted for two signal lanyards, the kind tug ships used to haul larger craft. Visually, he couldn’t see what she was dragging, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there, either tied down or disguised like the rest of her.
He made a miffed noise as his electronic probe practically fell into their unsecured intranet; no cipher-cracking required. Eyes flicking this way and that, Zeru virtually pinged the lanyards and sighed out loud when they answered his data request a second later: the Deringer was dragging two full fuel tanks. Both containers weren’t compatible with her ship class and model.
Honey, Zeru supposed. They probably funnel their main rig’s fuel into the tanks when they’re baiting the line, so their distress seems more authentic. If the first mate wasn’t such a dipshit, they might have been able to pull this off. Clearly, they’ve gotten a couple marks before, otherwise they wouldn’t still be parked out here, trying for more flies when they’re already so bloated with booty—but outside of having a good idea, their execution is sloppy. If they’d secured their net, I wouldn’t have found out about the tanks.
Two tanks. Two years of fuel. It was a fortune and then some. They should have cut their losses after getting the first tank to half, but evidently, they’d gotten greedy. And that would be their undoing.
If he was still Captain Garret Lollas, he’d have seen this crew as an easy payday. As Commander Qaris Venn, he’d have seen the Deringer as an improvised weapon—a powder keg that had no ability to escape.
But as Pilot Caleb Zeru, he was simply unimpressed.
He disconnected from their net and said aloud, “I read you, Baron. Until we can verify your identity, let’s limit our contact to essential personnel only. If anyone is sick, no one boards. We’ll send a quarantine crew over to assess you. In the meantime, I need your pilot’s guild registration and your captain’s full name and commission number before I open the docked hatch.”
“Copy-jalopy, Lithium. No sick on board, unless you count being sick to death with boredom. We’ll shoot our creds over to your net and—”
Infect me with malware? No. Not with your ship’s shoddy fucking security. No fucking thanks. “That’s not protocol,” he snapped, stepping on Baron’s transmission with prejudice. “Give me the numbers and I’ll run them myself.”
There was a weighty pause before Baron came back over the line with a litany of excuses. It didn’t take long for him to realize Zeru wasn’t a pushover when it came to the insides of his ship—or the cybernetic implant that ship was tethered to. Baron told him, “You’re not makin’ any friends over here, Lithium.”
“Do you need assistance or not?” he asked blandly. “I can uncouple if you don’t trust us. I’m sure someone else will happen along at some point. Alternatively, you can give me the info I want, and then I’ll twist off the tab.”
Baron said, “It takes time we don’t have to run that info.”
“Better hurry then. Me? I got all the time in the universe.”
Baron cut their audio connection, but a text package came over their comms a minute later in the form of two numbers and a name.
They both knew it would take a couple hours to get an answer from the communications buoy, but Zeru still ran the name and the registrations for the thrill of it. In the meantime, he hailed Aykhan on her PC. She answered after half a second and greeted him with, “They try to stonewall you over credentials?” He could see her smirking in the bay.
“How—? Yes, but I got ‘em. I’m running them now.”
Her smirk turned feral, revealing a sharp-looking eye tooth that glinted at a distance. “What did you promise them?”
“I didn’t promise anything, Captain.” When she only raised an eyebrow, he amended sheepishly, “I bullied them.”
“Good,” she said approvingly. “You can let them in. Tell them we have permissions to bandwidth highways inaccessible to the public, and we verified their identities in record time! That’ll make ‘em antsy.”
“A fib like that could backfire,” Zeru warned, trying not to laugh. He hurriedly appended, “Ma’am,” at the end when he remembered who he was addressing. “They might get the idea to ransom us.”
The captain grinned, meeting Lachance’s gaze after glancing at the pilot’s camera. “Don’t give them any ideas then. Let Baron in, Pilot. He doesn’t seem the patient type.”
He swallowed before daring to say, “It’s not too late to decouple and jump. We don’t need to do this. What do we gain? Fuel? Notoriety?” She inhaled slowly, but before she could get heated or otherwise with him, he added in a rush, “I know you knew they’d be here.”
Her smile softened, threatening to drop completely, and her eyes narrowed dangerously. She could have made a joke or pulled rank on him, but instead she said, “You’re right. This is risky. We don’t need to do anything. But I do.”
“Tell me why, Feline.”
Her face blanked. Empty. Still. She turned her back on the camera. Her slender digits flew across her computer and a text appeared in the corner of Zeru’s HUD: They’re the same breed that took my daughter.
It was like the universe had been turned inside out, exposing its structure. Conniving, cold, manipulative Aykhan, a mother? Some things about the young captain began to make sense, but he was still floored by the bald confession. It recontextualized their previous interactions in a way he hadn’t been expecting to.
She could be lying, he supposed. But there were better lies, and Aykhan wasn't that sloppy with them, even under pressure--not unless she was teasing him. But if she was testing him, she'd want to see his reaction, wouldn't she?
The captain followed that up with, I need information. If I can’t get that, I’ll take blood. If you want to lecture me about methodology or morality, we can discuss human nature at Leisure, after I’ve left the Deringer a decompressed wad of scrap and flesh in the dead of the Big Black.
A final message came a moment later: What kind of man are you, Caleb Zeru?
She either knew exactly how to work him—pulling at his heartstrings, guilting him, and asking him to empathize with her in equal measures—or Aykhan was being sincere, and she really was about to confront people she considered personal enemies, and would appreciate his support.
She wasn’t an addict, not a ship-wrecker (yet), and she was certainly no fool—at least not in the way Connelly had made her out to be.
Admittedly, he'd been in that position before, countless times over the centuries that he could remember—endangering other people without a single shred of hesitation or guilt because, in his mind, the ends justified the means when it came to the welfare of his family, made or found.
Aykhan was clearly better at hiding her self-interests than he had been, and she wasn’t exactly starting wars over it.
Yet.
“Dammit,” he hissed with feeling. It didn’t matter if she was lying. He was going to help her if only to prove to himself that he still had a fucking soul. “Light blind me.”
Captain Aykhan was still facing the egress door; the Badland ship and its hubris just beyond that. She raised her forearm to her faceplate and commanded, “Open the hatch, Pilot.”
I’m going to regret this, he thought. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
He opened the hatch with a flick and prayed to the Darkness that Aykhan knew what she was doing.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtW5m7DITgB
