“Aye-aye, Captain,” the pilot said over their private line, and not without a little sass. He was just lucky the crew in the bay only heard Aykhan's replies to his curiously concerned recommendations, otherwise she would have had to play into his suggestions and end up nixing the whole plan just to save face. Captain Aykhan was supposed to be the calm-under-pressure-hero type after all. As it was, since they'd only gotten one side, she could spin things however she wanted, and at the pilot's expense too.
Aykhan made sure her face was out of the camera's line of sight as she beckoned Bianca and Lachance to take her side, magnetic boots engaging and disengaging along the sheetmetal. She'd disabled the bay's microphone several weeks ago, but she bet good credits Zeru could still read lips, given his interests.
She crossed her arms and said, “Hatch is unlocked. Now we wait.”
Lachance put on his rebreather and asked, “What’d the pilot have to say about all this, Cap'n? Begging pardon, but you sounded terse.”
Terse? That's a word. “I had to talk him off a ledge. He just wants to blow them out of the sky and be done with it. I want to know why they're in this swatch of space and if we can look forward to more trouble along this highway. It's our responsibility to keep the way clear for those traveling behind us.”
Lachance sniffed. “I find it hard to believe our quiet little pilot is that bent over skimmers.”
“A personal grudge, perhaps,” Aykhan suggested, but the warden didn't seem convinced.
“I think I agree with the runner. Wouldn't blowing them into fucking stardust be enough of a cleanup?” Bianca asked.
Aykhan gave her sharp, reprimanding look. “Miss Sane, we’re better than that. They're still human beings. I follow a code of honor. I won't strike them down until they give me cause. Until then, we parlay.”
“Honor? Yeah, honor's great until someone's trying to shoot you through it. I still think you've got your own beef with them you're not sharing,” the blonde engineer mumbled before popping a bubble of gum between her teeth.
The brat can almost be cute sometimes, Aykhan mused internally. So damn edgy and observant. Still, she'd better watch herself. She can't legally drink, but she could legally die for the galaxy. Aloud, she said, “I have beef with anyone silly enough to try shooting through my honor.” Because it's too thin to stop anything but insults. She gave the girl a wink. “Anything we should avoid doing while we chat?”
Bianca nodded. “Yeah. Don't go for any weapons, obviously. Badland like to think of themselves as gentlemen, so they'll play the part as long as everyone's cordial. Don't call ‘em pirates, and definitely don't accuse ‘em of being untrustworthy thugs.”
“If we give them fuel, what're the odds this outfit lets us go without a scuffle?” Lachance asked, not questioning Bianca's sudden expertise. Either he'd known about her prior associations with Badland, or he was simply rolling with it.
Bianca said, “These are Trapdoor guys.” Aykhan didn't know the significance of the distinction, but she noticed how Lachance paled as Bianca continued cooly, “If you've got enough fuel to just give out of the kindness of your own heart, they'll know you have more and they'll skin you. Try to deal instead. Offer fuel for safe passage, provisions, or arms. Whatever you do, don't imply you don't take them seriously. They hate that.”
The other side of the docking tunnel finally opened and they could see three silhouettes exit the Deringer and linger before Sigyn's ingress door for a moment.
“Whatever happens, remember what I told you,” Aykhan said. “If they start shooting, head to the cockpit.”
“Aye, Cap.” Lachance saluted her.
“Like I'll leave you,” Bianca sighed. “I'll stay and cover our retreat.”
“No,” Aykhan said slowly, regretting now that she'd used sex to coerce Bianca into liking her instead of just ordering her to turn on her Badland comrades. “A captain's duty is to the welfare of her crew first. Your duty is the same.”
“Duty-schmooty. You can't fight them by yourself, Feline.”
Aykhan grit her teeth. “Bianca, I'm ordering you to—”
“Sod your orders. I'm not leaving you behind.”
Her information was not worth her becoming a liability. Aykhan debated about knocking her out and giving her over to Lachance. “You—”
The pirates pressed the release and the hatch opened, admitting them into the bay with a hiss of stale air. They hadn't closed their own ingress door behind them. Aykhan initially chocked that up to them wanting a quick getaway… or that they weren't afraid that Sigyn was full of pirates too.
“Welcome aboard Sigyn, my name is Captain Aykhan. These are my seconds for our meeting.” She gestured at the warden and the HVAC officer.
The lead man floated forward and braced himself against one of their storage crates to keep himself from getting too close. No magnetic boots, Aykhan noted. “First Mate,” the shave-headed man said. “Call me Baron. These two are Duke and Mark, my, uh… understudies. Thanks again for meeting with us, and so soon!”
“I decided to forgo the wait. You have wounded after all,” Aykhan said primly. She smiled at Baron's scarred-up, muscle-laden lackeys and said, “What brought you this far out into the black?”
“A navigational malfunction,” Baron said smoothly. “‘Puter said we had levels to get to Neon-1, but we didn't even make it a third of the way! We've been aground for almost two weeks and we're running low on supplies.”
Aykhan gave him a sympathetic look before she cocked her head in faux confusion. “Neon-1 is almost four months away from here. But you're running low after only two weeks?”
“Supply level malfunction,” he explained with a dismissive gesture. “We thought we had enough for six months, alas.”
The ghost in the machine did it, huh? Were the other tropes too busy today? Aykhan uncrossed her arms and asked, “How can Sigyn help? We have provisions we can lend you, but as for fuel, we're a little strapped ourselves. Do you need us to phone a Colonial freighter to tug you into the nearest station? We'd offer to do it ourselves, but we're expected elsewhere.”
Baron gave her a crooked smile and opened his mouth to say something charming and probably cute. She could tell he had figured her out—and had figured out how they could both get what they wanted—but all bets were suddenly off when all their attentions were snagged by one of the lackeys, Duke, blurting out, “Wait one fucking minute. I know you.”
Aykhan's eyes flicked to Bianca for a second before realizing the man wasn't looking at the engineer at all.
The lackey drew a shock baton and his mirror image on the other side of Baron draw as well, realization hitting him too. Mark hissed hatefully, “Stephano Lachance! We should've fucking guessed.”
Aykhan looked at Lachance, expecting either incredulity or fear, but the warden was scowling, a lip corner curling up in distaste.
Baron met her eyes then and shrugged in a can't be helped sort of gesture. He gave her a roguish smile and said, “I don't care if he works for you, or you work for him. In the Badland, blood debt is a blood debt. It was a pleasure.” He nodded once and pushed backward toward egress.
Aykhan slapped her PC. “Zeru! The hatches!”
Everything moved at once.
Mark and Duke both sprang toward Lachance who untwisted a punch gun from his vest, his first rubber bead going wide and striking a crate with a fu-pock! as Bianca grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the ingress door to escape into the ship. So much for staying behind.
The egress hatch slapped shut and Baron banged face-first into it, his nose crunching, blood shooting out in a series of bubbles that clung to his face. Demagnetized, Aykhan was behind him in a second, forcing his head into the door again as she palmed the back of it. Then she shoved his unconscious body aside and turned toward the camera.
“I'm not opening that door again,” Zeru said in her ear.
“Good,” Aykhan said and pushed herself toward the two lackeys trying in vain to get through their ingress at the same time. “Chop ‘em!”
“I'm not shutting them in the hatch.”
“Do it!”
“It could damage the door!”
Aykhan rolled her eyes and whistled. The Badlanders both froze. “I was in line first, Boys.” Duke and Mark, obviously brothers now that she saw them smashed together, both turned to look at her at the same time. She gave them a smirk. “Which one of you is better in close quarters?”
After a second or two of silent argument—with Mark trying in vain to get them both to go after Lachance and leave her—Duke shoved his brother away and said, “Me.”
Mark disappeared and, now that the alcove was clear, the ingress hatch slammed shut.
Duke asked seriously, “You sure ya wanna do this? I don't hold back when I’m pounding ladies.”
Zeru barked in her ear, “Security has that Badlander pinned. Warden and Bee are on the way to the pit. I've locked the ring. I'm gonna open ingress. Funnel that fucker inside and we'll box him in. Then you'll get your information, won't you?”
The hatch opened silently behind Duke, and Aykhan was careful not to take her eyes off him. The pirate either hadn't noticed or didn't care.
The captain treated him to a playful laugh. “Good. I don't pull my punches for little boys either.”
Duke spit and sneered, “Bitch.”
“Captain—!”
She ripped the comm bean out of her ear and kicked off a box to launch herself at the thug. Duke, oblivious, tried to kick against the hatch that wasn't there anymore, and floundered in the zero-G, his eyes going wide before his arm caught up and tried to block her assault with its baton.
They exchange a handful of blows, trying to grapple or shock one another if they couldn't get leverage against the terrain. Aykhan was at an advantage because she could engage and disengage her boots at will, giving her the ability to run up walls and bludgeon him with kinetic interest.
She wanted to prolong the fight for fun, but it wasn't long enough before she heard the telltale, distinct sound of a plasma cutter against the egress door. A glance over her shoulder between a bout revealed the shadows of pirates at the door. Spoil sports, she thought to herself before grappling Duke's neck between her thighs and squeezing the consciousness out of him as he banged his baton against her armored flank, useless. Then he went limp.
A concussive sound made her kick off of him and spin toward the docked door. She slapped her PC to hail the cockpit, “If our people are locked in, blow the couple!”
It took a second for someone to come over the line. Lachance said, “Cap, they’ve already cut the seal! We break away now, you'll see what happens when you try to dolphin yourself through a one-inch gap at lightspeed.”
“Fuckssake,” she hissed at no one. Then she keyed her radio and replied curtly, “What's the pilot busy with?”
Lachance said, “Cap, I'm sorry—”
“Just tell me he's not—”
“He's on his way.”
She cut the transmission with a finger jab and flicked to Zeru on her private line. “Why the fuck isn't your ass in a chair?”
“Because your ass is still in Cargo.”
“Get back to the pit, Pilot—that's an order!”
“Who's gonna sign my paycheck if you get spaced?”
She scoffed aloud. Ah, Mignon. Very fucking cute. Lachance was pinging her from the cockpit, but she wasn't done raking the pilot. “I knew you had MCD.”
“Excuse me?”
“Main Character Disease! What the fuck is the crew supposed to do if the both of us get biffed? Did you think about that?”
“Nope. I'm just the getaway driver.” He cut their transmission.
She swiped once and barked, “Go.”
The warden said, “They'll be through in ten seconds.”
“Security's on the way?”
“Cap, the pilot locked the ring. No one can get to you!”
Caleb-mother-fucking-Zeru was going to be the death of them.
“Override the tubes!”
“I don't have the keyword! Bastard locked all main controls—probably in case Badland couldn't be stopped.”
“I'll try the emergency channel from my—Merde!” Her head jerked up as the egress hatch was kicked in and a swarm of bodies poured into the bay. A haze of smoke curled out, followed by a hail-like volley of rubber bullets.
She pushed into cover as the beads ricocheted into and around their chained supplies. She bit down on a curse as a bead or chipped-off piece of fiberglass hit her in the right shin. The bone cracked, then quickly reset, burning with heat.
She gritted her teeth and was preparing to pull herself over her cover to shoot, but then a shadow shot through the ingress, helmet-first, and a barrage of pistol pops had the pirates all cursing as they rolled into their own selection of cover at the other end of the bay.
Zeru flipped over her box and put his back against it, his body oriented upside down relative to hers. His helmet canted down to look at her. “Brought you an extra gun.” He passed it to her, grip-first.
She checked the chamber and rolled her eyes. “You're not cool. How many did you count?”
“Seven. You a good shot?”
She activated her boots and popped out of cover, lining up her dot on a couple of the pirates that posted up to greet her. Gloves pinched around cargo chains to keep them from floating away, the pirates had short stock rifles tucked into their shoulders, preparing to fire one-handed. She snapped the trigger twice before either of them could level their sights on her and both pirates reeled away, faceplates shattering, lanyards snapping.
She squatted and smirked down at Zeru. He gave her a single nod and pushed up with one hand to throw himself out of cover again, body twisting like a breakdancer. In that same fluid motion, he drew two ringed knives from hidden sheaths on his thighs and used his momentum to sling them across the bay.
She heard two pirates cry out, blood bubbling into the air, and she took that as her cue. She too slipped out of cover and pushed to a closer position, firing once and once more to cover Zeru's more aggressive advance. Another pirate howled, the others spitting conflicting orders at one another as they misinformed each other about the nature and position of their threats.
Aykhan couldn't help but feel impressed. She'd witnessed how the pilot moved before, but things were always different in a fight. Too many people think of shootouts in straight lines. He doesn't move like there's a floor and a ceiling. He thinks along the Z-axis. She planted herself against another crate and smiled. He is a photonrunner after all.
She schooled her features and popped up to see Zeru swinging through cargo chains like an ape, slinging silver. She shot abreast and took out a pirate swinging a baton the pilot’s way. The rubber slug hit the pirate in the chest, making him spin, and Zeru used that window of opportunity to kick off the man’s faceplate, pushing the body away and propelling him with lightning accuracy into another pirate that had been aiming down his sights at Aykhan.
One last ricochet bounced against a light fixture, making it strobe for a moment before going out, and then all was quiet in the bay—if one tuned out the groans and moans of pain coming from the handful of semi-lucid ops at any rate.
Zeru regrouped with her near the center of the space, his guttural voice no less weary or breathless than before as he said, “We gotta go.”
“I need to jack into their net,” Aykhan said, pulling off her bruised faceplate and letting it float away. “Afterwards, we can drag these assholes back into their coffin.” She pushed hair out of her eyes as she told him sternly, “You can come with me, or you can get out of my way.”
“Why'd you—? Listen!” He gripped her arm, and she froze in place. “You don’t understand. There are more coming.”
“Then get to cover and—”
“Bots.” He gestured at his helmet. “I can’t crack ‘em.”
Aykhan cursed. I hate robots. “How many?
“Six.”
She snorted as she pulled away from him. “Only six?” He tried to grab her again, but she was already beating metal to their egress to take the fight to them. “What’s six more piles of scrap in the grand sch—”
Her PC screamed a proximity warning at her before she saw them spill into the cargo bay like a lanced egg sack. The arachnoid robots climbed walls and crates, their magnetized claws clambering over obstacles as if they weren't even there. They were fast, too fast. Before she could get her bearings, they were already on top of their position. Zeru smacked the safety release on her hip and her boots let her go as he slung her toward the ingress, catapulting him into their midst in an equal and opposite reaction.
“Martyr piece of shit!” she managed before the door jamb punched all the air out of her lungs and the wall knocked all the sense out of her head. It took the nanites in her blood a disturbing amount of time to clear the black spots from her vision.
Zeru, for his part, had managed to agro all the dog-sized arachnoids. But he was still only human. Blood droplets pooled and bounced and coalesced within the sharp, tangled mess of metal limbs, sometimes clinging to moving surfaces, sometimes splashing against the bulkhead. Despite his obvious duress, the pilot was still swinging, still cutting, and the only thing she could hear from him were his grunts of effort as he tried to break through the weaker bits of armor around their joints.
But arachnoids had a lot of joints.
They're going to tear the blasted pilot apart, and for what? She gnashed her teeth and then her eyes snagged on a floating, broken lanyard. She snatched the discarded rifle out of the air and braced it into her shoulder, looking down its sights with both eyes open.
We have a medical bay for a reason, the empty thing inside of her remarked. “Fucking robots,” she snarled under her breath and emptied the bowl into the violent little maelstrom, not caring if she beaned her pilot in the process.
She figured he'd probably survived worse.
She didn't have time to enjoy the fruits of her labor, however. As soon as he was free from the mangled remains of the decommissioned bots, he gracelessly grabbed the box-like sensory thorax of one of the units and pushed himself toward her. “Another ten incoming!” he shouted, and just as she meant to swipe at her PC, he growled, “Lachance, shut the ingress! We're being overrun!”
He's not thinking…?
His shoulder hit a crate hard and he pinwheeled out of control, barking, “Light fucking blind you, Warden! Shut the damn door!”
We're gonna space them.
Zeru slammed into the ingress just after it shut and juggled the thorax for a moment before managing to grab a handhold and secure the bot brain to his safety lanyard. He turned to Aykhan, and the black glass of his helmet reflected her nonplussed expression before it went suddenly clear, and she could see his bloodied face beyond it. “I'll grab the override.”
“Lanyard yourself first,” she said, moving to the airlock station.
“I know what to do,” he grumbled.
She barely had her hand on the release handle, her boots affixed to the wall, her suit clipped to the safety bar, before she heard the clicking and pounding of arachnoid feet. She and her pilot turned.
There were more than ten. They were also bigger, Scorpio models. They had an articulated appendage mounted with a gun that could fire in any direction, even underneath them.
“I fucking hate robots!” Aykhan roared as she slammed down her handle and held fast. Blue lights and pitchy sirens whirled and blared.
A second later Zeru popped the override, and the world went utterly silent as chaos unfolded in front of her, and then all at once, the vacuum sucked at them too, trying to rip them from the walls of the bay.
The bay doors opened like eyelids, squinting into the Big Black. The spiders held onto the cargo for a brief, mind-searing moment before their weight broke brace-point and magnetic coupling alike.
Crates, chains, ringlets, pitons, metal tie-downs, and arachnoids all quietly disappeared into the nothing.
Aykhan could only hear her heartbeat in those few moments, pounding steadily, evenly, methodically—as mechanical and cold as the light faintly glinting off the spaced pirate debris.
The vacuum did more damage to the inside of the Deringer in the end, pulling air and decompressed masses of flesh and tactical equipment through the egress door the pirates had left open. The difference between one atmosphere and none always managed to surprise her. Anything not buckled down or under hatch ‘n’ key pulled out of the door like ground beef pressed through a spaghetti machine.
It took the power of her immortality to turn her head even a scant inch to where she could see Zeru. He wasn't tethered. He was clinging to the override lever with both gloves, his face a warped mess of concentration and pain. She tried actuating her own lever, but without his override pinned up, she was powerless to close the door.
She could feel oxygen deprivation at the edges of her senses, but her blood was still sustaining her, preparing her with adaptation after adaptation to survive. No oxygen? That was fine. She suddenly didn't need oxygen. She didn't care how it worked, only that it did.
She would have waited for all the pressure to equalize before helping him, but then one of his gloves slipped.
Dammit!
Before she could think herself out of it, she unclipped her lanyard hook and whipped it true, her muscles bunching, bones crunching, as she fought against physics with brute force alone. The hook snapped onto the handle near his panel, and she deactivated her boots.
She reeled to him just in time to grab the override handle as he let go of it. She snatched his arm, gritting her teeth as universal forces threatened to pull her in half.
Zeru gaped at her for a moment before his glove gripped her forearm in turn. Another wad of reduced biomass slipped out of the Deringer behind him. Aykhan wondered how much more the other ship could have in it, but then something in the distance made Sigyn physically shake, and a streak of shimmering fluid poured out of Deringer’s airlock like blood and—
Light exploded across her vision as the stream of fuel caught fire and bathed Bay Three in green and blue colors. Heat washed over her, and she saw Zeru cry out, the sound swallowed by the vacuum. She didn't feel the heat scraping layers of skin off her exposed face. Her nature always shut down excessive pain before it ever registered to her.
Zeru looked up at her and mouthed something. She shook her head. Using every bit of strength at her disposal, she actuated the override with a jerking shrug. Red lights strobed.
Zeru said something again, but this time she understood the words forming on his lips: Let me go.
She tried to shake her head but just holding him took monumental effort. That's when she realized it didn't matter how strong, fast, smart, or impossible to kill she was. She couldn't hold onto him and throw her lanyard again without activating her boots. She couldn't activate her boots without letting go of the handle. She couldn't let go of the handle because her lanyard wouldn't be able to hold both their weights.
“Let me go,” Zeru mouthed again.
“No,” she said, stubborn and not understanding why she was being so stubborn. He was right. She should let him go. Even if she held on to him and waited for the pressure to equalize, the cargo hold would still be filled with long-burning, oxygen-sucking jetfuel—oh, and fire.
She could feel her lips begin to curl back from her teeth like bacon.
“You have a daughter,” he said.
She bared teeth at him, tried to narrow her scalded eyelids. “N'ose pas!” She assumed he wouldn’t dare. His survival drive would kick in. A miracle would happen.
She watched, stupefied, as he effortfully managed to twitch his other hand up and grab hold of her arm. Then her fingers snapped open unexpectedly as he used a knife to cut into armor and tendon. She didn't gasp, didn't swear. He winked his good eye at her and simply let go.
No. Absolutely not. You don't get to choose when you're done with me.
Seconds. She had seconds.
She used the knife stuck in her arm to cut her lanyard and launched herself toward the bay door release. Her dry fingers wrapped around it, her wet hand slapped her hip, gluing her feet to the ship, and she pushed up on the release, her mouth open in a silent scream. As soon as she felt the door actuating shut, the forces of the world began to buckle to her desire.
Sound returned with vengeance. She heard a metal crunch and then a back-shattering b-bang! that made her entire body flinch.
A handful of shaking, bloody finger swipes across her PC did the job, shutting off the oxygen resupply. Half a minute past before she felt safe enough to turn and confirm that the fire was gone, starved and chased back into the Deringer. She reactivated the airlines.
She had to move fast. Faster. There wasn't time. Two thousand years she'd been alive, and there was still never enough fucking time.
Zeru was listlessly floating at the other end of the bay, the back of his helmet an expanding mass of blood, glittering obsidian shards, and pink bones. His body was contorted in odd angles, some of his limbs frozen backwards or twisted so his clothing looked sewn together wrong.
“Damselfly,” she hissed as she stomped along the not-so-scorched ceiling toward him. She could feel her own flesh knitting back together, feel ruined hair fall out, as newer white strands grew in. “Why did you do that? You fool thing. You stupid little creature. Imbécile.” She grabbed his lapels and dragged him toward her, putting her seamlessly healed face an inch from his blood-filled helmet. “That was the single dumbest thing I've ever—You're no hero, you dumb fuck. You're a cretin, an eyesore, a pain, la salaud. You are, by far the most gênant, vexing, unknowable little shit—” She broke off as she got to the ingress.
She took a deep breath, cleared her throat, forced pigmentation into her eyes and hair, and calmly keyed her radio with a sigh. Then she immediately burst into tears. “Warden! A-Anyone!”
“C-Captain!” Lachance sounded startled, practically jubilant. Several other voices tried to shout over him before someone shut them all up and the warden was able to ask, “Are you alright?! The camera went out after the second wave of spiders came through. We've been relying on instruments here.”
She pretended to choke up after keying, then rekeyed after “collecting” herself. “Open the ingress. Hurry! We need to decouple. The Deringer is rigged to explode!”
She didn't have to explain. The door opened and she “collapsed” inside of it. Happy, if surprised, to feel gravity, she dragged Zeru's body into the corridor and dropped him like a sack of provisions. The hatch closed shut behind them. Blood quickly pooled across the floor, enveloping the metal thorax still tied to his belt, mating into a shallow puddle that soaked into the pilot's suit and scarred jacket.
6.9, she mused as she stared at him. The atomic weight of idiocy.
Less than a minute later, she was surrounded by personnel and equipment. They were ordered to muster stations and rouse the on-call. The decoupling was going to be violent since they were rotating with the pirates still attached. Their severance could sling them apart if they weren't careful.
Without a pilot, Aykhan took the helm herself. She hadn't planned on being the savior of the day like this, but she didn't trust anyone else to make the attempt.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Captain Feline Aykhan directed and commanded with all the energy and fervor of a woman scorned. They not only ripped part of the Deringer off when they broke away from her, but they managed to save one of the pirate ship's fuel pods before it was, in a way, self-scuttled by the fire consuming the first.
The ribbed shell of the Badland craft was a world away, broken open like an exposed chest cavity, before Aykhan felt calm enough to return to herself. She managed to look quite the marvel as she at long last succumbed to the good advice of her officers and retired to her own quarters to rest and recuperate. “I'll be back next cycle to get a sit-rep on our prisoner.”
“Of course, Captain,” Jackie said, leaving to reorganize their security.
She couldn't help but overhear their awed comments about her performance at the controls. Jackie said to his augmentees in an undertone, “Surprised she isn't a photonrunner herself.”
“Maybe she never passed the test,” someone suggested quietly.
“Or she prefers to be in charge?”
“I dunno. I'm just glad we didn't get hit with that concussion. Can you imagine the damage? That was some flygirl shit.”
“Fucked up what happened to Zeru though,” someone added.
“Did you get a look? Poor sod looked like someone pitched him headfirst into a processor.”
“Cap's gotta be hurting. Apparently, they were close.”
“Hear her from Engineering? She sounded like a pissed-off ring-worlder over comms. Blunt, but still sweet—like getting slapped around by a paddle made of chocolate.”
“What does that—?”
“Bret, that was French, not Ringweltsprache.”
“What—?”
“—the fuck is French?”
“Cradle language, like Anglish.”
“All due respect to her but, like, forget the captain for a second. What’re we gonna do without Lithium?”
“I imagine the captain'll take the helm again if she doesn't auto-dock us.”
“He was a tuber, but anyone know if he had family?”
That question was enough to kill off the conversation. Jackie awkwardly gave move orders after that, and the gaggle went completely out of earshot.
They liked him. He did nothing for a month and spent one fucking rest cycle with them, but that was enough. How? Aykhan was at a loss. She put her bewilderment aside. He’s a ghost now. Soon, meat will be memory.
“How did you manage to crack the keyword, Lachance?” she wondered as the warden escorted her back to her berth. I must really look like shit for him to be giving me so many sympathetic looks. Or maybe he feels guilty.
Lachance took a breath before he said quietly, “I guessed, Ma'am.”
“What was it?”
He looked away. “You know…”
She shook her head, trying to keep the animal urge to tear into him at bay.
“It was your name, Cap'n. Your first name.” He beat his chest. “It's my fault. I should've said I recognized the craft.”
Ah. Guilty. Normally, she would have assured him that it wasn't his fault. Things had happened outside of his power and control. But a blazing, self-righteous fury toward Zeru made her galvanize the warden to his folly instead. “You'll trust me next time, won't you?” she demanded flatly.
Lachance, holding back some deeper emotion, simply nodded his head and retreated with a respectful, “Aye, Captain.”
Left in the tube before her room, she stared into the darkness of Zeru's half-open berth for a long time. Bianca found her there, fixated, but she wasn't in the mood to put on a front, so she told the girl to get back to work and leave her to think about what to do next.
They had no pilot now, thanks to Zeru's selfishness. She could have flown in his place, but she didn’t want to. So, they would have to send for a new runner, or auto-nav to a space station to hire one in-person.
The closest station was still The Promenade.
Stupid little sacrificial lamb.
She didn't retire to her berth.
She didn't canvas Cargo Bay Three for the second time.
She didn't go to Leisure.
She went to Medical.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvenHkZL3BM
This bullshit bag of jerky ruined an on-going experiment and then had the audacity to die, Aykhan thought bitterly. She'd been leaning against the wall for half a cycle, staring at the body bag on thetable for what felt like twice that. Now I'll never know why he was so different from the other ones. I'll never know if he was a voyeur or just a watcher. I'll never know why he had such an eclectic taste in music. I'll never know why and how he became a pilot, or why he was so self-possessed. I'll never know if he had any family outside the system—a place he called home.
I should've never told him…
She lifted the arachnoid thorax from her side and turned it over again in her hands. In addition to their Badland prisoner, it was the one useful thing to come out of the bloody exchange.
She was still debating if another clue as to who had kidnapped her daughter was worth the other answers she'd been starved of. Logically, she knew acquiring the whereabouts of her daughter's abductors was paramount. What maternal instinct she had reassured her that no one was worth more than the truth about her baby girl.
But something else inside her squirmed in discomfort.
“You died for two-hundred pounds of henchman and fourteen megabytes of navigational flotsam,” she whispered lifelessly at the corpse. “I hope you're fucking happy, wherever you are.”
“The universe hasn't been as kind to me.”
She snorted to herself. “There are worse ways to go. I bet you didn't even feel it. One second, you're a humanist, the next, you're nothing.”
Did he have a death wish? He hadn't even hesitated. He'd looked in her eyes and said, “Let me go.”
No one had ever done that to her. No one had ever just… removed themselves from her life like that.
It had been a long time since she'd encountered someone as interesting as Caleb Zeru, and she was afraid to admit that the time between those encounters were getting fewer and farther between. Would it be another decade before she met something like him again?
The man's mysteries and strange convictions—all that deadly grace trapped in a pitiful husk of a body. Maybe it was better that he was dead. Now, whatever had haunted him in life was gone and done with.
Aykhan blinked rapidly as a haze swept over her vision. Gas or dust, maybe. She rubbed the heel of her hand into her eyes.
She didn't regret picking fights with pirates, but if she'd known the price, well, she would have been a lot more subtle about some things. She wouldn't have let the situation escalate so fast. She would have done more research on Lachance—and then she could’ve extorted him for insight instead of getting cozy with Bianca.
She'd just been having so much fun, she'd taken risks, rushed.
Zeru was a bleak reminder that consequences could still find her, even if she herself was untouchable.
She dropped the glorified, demilitarized paperweight and trudged to the metal slab. She gingerly tugged the Velcro apart, undid the zipper, and pulled open the water seal.
Zeru was still very, very dead.
Death had never been pretty to her, but the pilot, as in life, was still exceeding her expectations. He was a grizzly sight; bloated, bruised, lacerated, scabbed-over, and sunken in in all the wrong places. When he'd been breathing, he’d been more of an attraction than attractive, but now the only identifying thing about him was his augmented eye, half-hanging out of its socket.
“Now I'll never know what you were hiding,” she breathed morosely. A cursory inspection solidified what the coroner algorithm had reported. He'd lost both his legs and a couple of fingers some years ago; had them replaced by startlingly complex cybernetics.
The fingers on his righthand were skinned to the knuckles, exposing pretty, burnt-red carbon fiber pieces. The maker’s marks had been machined off.
His legs were from different generations of development and different brands. The left had a militant design; black and silver; utilitarian and unadorned. Silicon fab’ skin, a shade lighter than his organic tone, still clung to the thigh, but everything below the knee was entirely exposed. His right leg was a sleek, gold and black unit that had probably never seen fabricated dermis. It was a showpiece that jutted from his hip—making him look like a lemon with one gold rim. His ‘netic tech was apparently so alien or proprietary that they couldn't be transplanted or sold.
Apart from the limb prosthetics, he had one organic lung, the other replaced by a twenty-year-old Unity bag. And he had a pacemaker. A fucking pacemaker.
She blinked slowly. “You and I both… Both of us the monsters of different Frankensteins.” She shook her head. She didn't feel melancholy, not really. She felt cheated. Like someone had stolen something that belonged to her.
It was only in moments like these that she felt well and truly old.
She hated it.
She hated it so much.
“Useless. Needless. Trash.”
An airline in the walls sputtered and burbled, and she cursed under her breath for nearly jumping at the sound.
“This is all your fault. You've wrecked me.”
The airline hissed again, and her eyes locked onto the corpse on the table.
The airline again?
No, a lung.
With a rising sense of cosmic horror snaking its way up her throat, Aykhan slowly backed away and gently pressed the intercom by the door release. “Sigyn, Engineering.”
Alonzo's voice came through a moment later, “Go ahead, Captain. You're calling from Medical?”
“Where’s Mister Cross? I need to stop the ring.”
“Morgan’s in The Cave—Sorry, did you say stop the ring?”
“Stop the ring, Miss Jahja. You know, the mechanism simulating planet weight in some of the modules? I'm running an experiment and it's imperative that I get my results in low-grav’.”
Alonzo, to her credit, didn't question her further. A moment later she said, “Morgan says it’ll take about an hour for the system to reduce speed.”
“That's fine,” she said mechanically. “I'm not in a hurry.”
Over the next two hours, she waited and watched, vetting chat probes from Alonzo and concerns from Lachance. After half an hour of that, she simply explained to them that whatever she was doing with Caleb Zeru’s remains were at his behest and to all their benefit. She was sure her vagueness probably made them uncomfortable, given how superstitious Lachance’s outfit seemed to be on a good day, but they didn’t engage with her after that, and she wasn’t bothered by anyone trying to seek care in the medical ward.
Still, she locked the door just in case.
Zeru’s recovery processes were not as quick, nor as extensive as her own capabilities. That his body was healing wasn’t in question. But at the forefront of all her mounting queries was something only a conscious Caleb Zeru could properly answer, and he could still lie to her: How many times have you died?
Bruises faded and joints popped. Shattered bones cracked and shifted, swelling limbs to worrying magnitudes before contracting into straight, properly proportioned shapes. Blackened and cracked skin sloughed off to reveal stiff, pink scar tissue, pulling his posture into crooked positions before softening into silver lines painted over more operative arrangements.
Eventually, she could see his single eye darting beneath its lid, his breathing deep and unlabored.
Observation: The speed of his recovery increased after reducing gravity. Hypothesis: His healing factor doesn’t correct pre-existing conditions such as, in this case, Degenerative Proteome Syndrome.
As the third hour began, Aykhan decided much of what remained unhealed was probably internal. She snapped her fingers and made loud noises, but no sound engendered a typical reaction.
While she waited for him to come round, she tried to make an action list, but her mind kept slipping into a deadly mire of euphoria. It was a rare sensation, one that she had little experience with, and it seemed to make thinking through her current situation with objectivity and distance abjectly challenging.
She’d only felt that way about one other person before, and that person was now as distant from her as Zeru’s spirit seemed to be from his body.
This much, she knew with confidence: Caleb Zeru wasn’t human. But he wasn’t a true immortal either, not like her.
She mused, Is this how Homo Sapiens felt when they encountered Neanderthals for the first time?Kinship, curiosity, but wariness too. Neanderthals were just as evolutionarily successful for millions of years. It was only due to interbreeding that they disappeared from the record.
What happens when the scope of the selection is reduced?
Which of us will lead the other to extinction, I wonder?
Impatience needled her.
She stopped pacing and leaned over him. “I won’t let you yarn-spin your way out of this one… You might prick yourself on the spindle again, and then where will we be?”
He frowned. His jaw worked something over.
She rolled her eyes. Oh, don’t tell me.
His eye twitched again. Thin lips pressed into a dark line.
She crossed her arms. “I know you’re faking."14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQm9assmO6y
