Scott Delaney
I won’t lie to you – my conscience – whatever was left of it – was playing on me. As I prepared my ship – a small class S transport with three decks and 40 rooms – I kept palming my brow. I sunk my nails into my temples and dragged them down – but it wasn’t like I could dig out my better reason.
“It wasn’t like you could do anything about Maro’x. That girl – whoever she is – is on her own. Like we all are in this galaxy.” I was confident enough in speaking to myself considering I was ensconced underneath the primary piloting console in the cockpit. None of my other crew ever came in here. I could fly this rust bucket on my own. They were there to keep the clients happy, run the engine, clean the place, and otherwise ensure the ship actually flew.
I pulled out a handful of sparking wires. I had a specialized gauntlet on. Not only would it stop me from becoming electrocuted, it instantly sapped any excess energy in the conduit.
When I docked the glove in engineering later, it would pump all of that stored energy back into the ship’s control crystals.
For what good they were. They were all I could afford. Back when I’d been a security officer, I’d flown in ships that had possessed the greatest propulsion technology the galaxy could offer. Sorry – the second greatest technology. No one, no matter how stupid they were – used the most powerful propulsion technology out there. Because it would cost them and the rest of the galaxy everything.
I stiffened. I shouldn’t have gone down that rabbit hole of thoughts.
Long ago, back when I cared about this galaxy – back when I’d actually thought I could change it by joining up with the division – I’d seen what had happened to a world that had flirted with Atlantean tech. We’d had to destroy it. Every person, every house, all the gear – even the gardens. We’d had to strip the hydroponic units, the personal quarters, the holographic photos – every damn thing.
Anything that had been in contact with the banned tech had been incinerated.
I hadn’t been the one to give the order or anything like that. I’d only been involved in the aftermath. I hadn’t even seen when the people had been cleansed. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the footage. I’d just been one of the guys to go through the colony’s houses and outposts to ensure that not even a glimmer of Atlantean energy had survived.
I stopped what I was doing. I stared up at the boring internal contents of the console.
I closed my eyes.
I let my hands flop. My gauntlet, with the now-dead wires in its grip, dashed against my chest. It felt like a handful of spaghetti.
“Get over it. That’s the cost of this modern galaxy. If you want to live, you get rid of Atlantean tech. Everyone knows that. You didn’t do anything wrong. You did what had to be done to ensure peace for all.”
I opened my eyes to get back to work. And yeah, I could see the irony. I had not repeated that particular phrase for a very long time. Ever since I’d marched into my superior’s office and quit suddenly.
That was the oath of the division. It was one I had realized was bullshit long ago. But at least it was one that got me working now.
I had a grand total of 10 minutes to get out of here.
The door to the cockpit opened.
I rolled my eyes. It would be dear Miss Fielding. She’d already complained about her quarters. She wanted more wine. She wanted a bigger bed. Really, what she wanted was more money and not to be in trouble with the law. I didn’t point this out.
With a sigh, I pulled myself out from underneath the console. “Miss—” I began.
It was my second in command – Darcy White. She was also human. And just like me, she had a checkered past. She’d been a security officer, too. But her exit hadn’t been voluntary. She’d been kicked out. The way she described it to me, her jealous colleagues had faked drug charges. I kinda knew the truth. She had been doing illegal scandium tar. She was good now, though. She’d been off the tar for a long time.
I didn’t judge people on their pasts. And I certainly didn’t judge them on small crimes like that. All I cared about was how they worked together as a team.
Still, I frowned at her. “Shouldn’t you be doing the last engine diagnostic?”
“I found you another transport.”
I frowned. “A customer? How did you find one? You were in the engine room, right?”
She scrunched her lips together. “Okay, she found us.”
“I don’t like drifters—”
“She’s got money,” Darcy spoke right over the top of me.
“I don’t mind drifters,” I corrected as I flopped a hand at her. “But she must be into something heavy if she voluntarily came to us.”
Darcy shrugged. “Just accept her ticket and check her out later. If she’s got an active bounty,” Darcy shrugged once more even more passionately, “you know what to do.”
I chuckled. I clapped her shoulder as I walked past. “Yeah. We both do. What do you say if she’s got a big bounty that we split it in half?”
Darcy arched an eyebrow. “I found her.”
“Nah,” I said as I shot her a fake compassionate smile, “too late. You already admitted she found us. And I’m the captain of this rust bucket.”
“Fine, 50-50,” Darcy conceded even though I was about to take that particular deal off the table.
Whatever. I’d wait to find out how much this woman was worth.
As we walked down from the cockpit, I arrived at the most irritating part of the ship. It was a warren. I said it had 40 rooms – what it had was 40 spaces distributed through a complicated mazelike set of corridors. Not all of them were straight, either. And there was only one lift. It led from the luxury room down to the mess hall. There wasn’t one that led directly to the cockpit. There was, however, an old ladder. I turned around and took it without climbing down a single rung. There was always a protective mesh over my fingers, so I didn’t cut my hands open as I slid down the supporting struts.
Darcy had advanced knee joints. She just jumped down the distance and landed beside me with an almighty bang.
“I need to get me some of your knees.” I cleaned off some dust on my hands by wiping them on my pants. I cared about my uniform when I was out trying to get transports – but I didn’t give a shit when I was back on the ship. I had been a little honest with Miss Fielding. Not completely, but when I’d mentioned that my crew and I were pretty greasy, I’d been bang on the money.
“You couldn’t afford them, sweetie.”
I chuckled. “No need to rub my nose in it. Speaking of which, what did you quote our mysterious little drifter?”
“She’s got money – I already checked her credit chip. There are hundreds of thousands of dollars there.”
I pressed my lips together and whistled. It quickly turned into a happy tune that continued as I grabbed an open door frame, whirled around it, reached another ladder, and jumped down this one. I shoved up. I dusted off my pants from where I’d smeared the grease earlier. I rubbed my logo. “Well, you better show Miss Drifter – sorry, Miss Wealthy, a good time. And check the bounty boards immediately,” I added. “I think we might have another Miss Fielding on our hands. Speaking of which, prep my room.”
“You’re going to offer up your own sleeping quarters?” Daisy locked a hand on her hip and arched an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged expressively. “What? They’re the nicest quarters aside from what we’ve got Miss Fielding in.”
“If you mean by nice, you have a window, I guess you’re right.”
“Out of the other 38 crappy rooms on this equally crappy rust bucket,” I made my point as I rapped my knuckles on the wall loudly, “it’s the best she’s gonna get. Now, where did you put her—” I rounded a corner into the cargo room.
And there I came face-to-face with my conscience.
The woman – the human female who’d been captured by Maro’x – was standing right there.
She was no longer in the medical jumpsuit she’d been wearing earlier. She’d done something to her hair, too. Apart from that, it was the same woman – aside from a credit chip gleaming in her hand.
She held it tightly. Her eyes opened wide as she clearly recognized me.
She got a furtive look in her eyes, and she straightened up. “If you can’t offer me transport—” she went to turn.
I quickly closed the distance between us and locked a hand on her shoulder. It was the same woman. I didn’t need my hand and the specific heat that transferred into my fingers to tell me that.
She stiffened. She was breathing hard – though judging by how she was holding her chest, she was trying to hide it. “I changed my—”
“Mind? Don’t. This ship is leaving in five minutes. I get the feeling that you want to leave here as fast as you can,” I said, my voice dropping.
Daisy had stopped in the doorway. She had pretty good hearing, but I hoped she hadn’t picked that up. Especially the way I’d said it.
I was legendary for not showing any compassion. It had been squeezed out of me years ago.
I heard the woman take another hissed breath. She was clearly trying to figure out what to do.
I dropped my hand even though all I wanted to do was keep it there. I’d been running from my conscience all day. Now it was rising up inside me. Even though I tried to silence all thoughts of Maro’x, I hadn’t been able to think of anything else since getting aboard. “What happened to the pirate—” I began.
She turned. She was holding her credit chip so tightly, I thought she’d break it.
Daisy cleared her throat and walked in. “I know I quoted you 10,000 for transport earlier, but we had a last-minute rush. We only have the luxury room left. It will be,” I watched her gaze dart up and down the woman’s figure as Daisy tried to figure out how stupid she was, “25,000.”
25,000? You could buy transport on an actual reputable ship for that. It was exactly how much I was charging Fielding, and she didn’t have to sleep in my crappy quarters.
“I don’t care. There’s that much and more on this chip.” She hesitated, then she opened her hands.
I looked down at it.
I looked up at her.
When I’d met this woman, she’d been terrified. She’d also acted as if I was the first human she’d ever seen in years. Now she wouldn’t make eye contact with me.
I looked down at her credit chip. I looked up at her. My intuition flared. “Where did you get this credit chip?”
I looked into her eyes. I didn’t want to miss a thing. I didn’t have to watch her that carefully, though. Her fear catapulted across her expression. I watched her gaze flash toward the open hatch down into the docking ring. I could practically feel as her brain tried to estimate how long it would take to run down there.
I cleared my throat quickly. “I mean, it’s a version I haven’t seen in years.”
She calmed – though only slightly. “I’m not from around these parts,” she said quietly. “You said you could leave in five minutes.”
Daisy was paying attention to the conversation, but less so now she’d gotten this woman to agree to an exorbitant fare. Judging by the glazed-over look in Daisy’s eyes, she was probably looking the woman up to see if she was on any of the boards.
“What’s your name, anyway?” I asked.
“Jenny…” she clearly wanted to add something, but she trailed off. “Jenny,” she repeated.
“Okay, Jenny. What’s your last name? I guess it doesn’t matter. It will be on your credit chip.”
I went to grab it from her, but her fingers tightened around it.
Her cheeks became a little slack.
“I need to actually access your credit chip in order to take the funds off it,” I explained in a patient tone – one I would never use on an ordinary customer. If they displayed behavior like this – and if I didn’t care about their fare – I’d kick them out. With Jenny – or whatever her name was – I just looked at her, and you’d be forgiven for thinking my expression was actually compassionate.
“You do want to come aboard, don’t you?” I clarified.
She looked around once more. Her gaze darted from Daisy over to me. She looked back at the docking ring. She appeared to make a decision. But her hands were still clamped around the credit chip. Her knuckles were practically white.
I didn’t need my intuition to tell me what was going on here. She’d stolen the credit chip. It was written all over her face. She clearly wasn’t from around these parts – just as she’d said. Stealing credit chips was a completely useless waste of time. The identity of the person it belonged to was hardcoded into it. You couldn’t just fob it off as your own. I had never heard of a single successful hacking case.
“I need the credit chip,” I said again, my voice dipping low, not in warning, but just to get her attention. She had this kind of glassy look in her eyes.
She grabbed hold of that credit chip even harder. She even turned from me slightly. “Come on,” she muttered under her breath.
I placed a hand on her shoulder. “If you can’t pay,” I began, about to let my hard-nosed businessman side rise up and kick her off, even if it went against my better judgment.
She let out a gasp. Though it sounded crazy, I almost thought I felt something pass through her. It was this imperceptible jolt. It was like a tiny charge of electricity. I couldn’t pay too much attention to it, though – because it didn’t last long. It was instantaneous and over in a blink.
It was enough that it made me drop my hand.
She turned. She shoved the credit chip at me.
I was so surprised, I let it fall to the deck.
I plucked it up, a frown spreading slightly over my lips. I looked at her, not knowing what to think. Then I walked over to the nearest computer panel. I usually charged a customer’s credit chip somewhere a lot nicer than the cargo bay, but I needed to know exactly what was on here. We really did have to leave soon. I would have to chuck this woman off for credit fraud long before then.
Knowing exactly what I would find, I hardly held my breath.
I half wondered – though it sounded mad – if this credit chip belonged to Maro’x. He was a relatively good pirate, from what I’d heard. It would make sense that he would have hundreds of thousands of credits.
And considering he had an active bounty on his head, maybe it also made sense to believe that he’d dropped his credit chip – after being strangled or shot or plain killed in some other fancy modern way. Maybe Jenny here had just picked it up afterward, not knowing how easy it was to track fraud.
The name of the owner of the chip flashed on the screen. I almost didn’t read it. I started turning around, getting ready to kick her off, but then I jerked back around. I read the name. Jenny Smith.
There was even a date of birth, though the location of birth was unknown. It wasn’t that unusual. You got that sometimes. But the unusual bit was that this card actually belonged to her.
I turned back around, flabbergasted. My instincts were never wrong. Now they hadn’t been even mildly right.
This woman wasn’t a drifter – she wasn’t poor – and she hadn’t stolen from Maro’x.
So why had Maro’x been with her in the first place?
Jenny stood there, holding her hands tightly, rubbing the thumbs back and forth over one another. She turned back toward the open cargo door. Maybe she heard something because she took a solid step into the room. “You said that we could leave in five minutes? That was two minutes ago.”
“Hurry up and charge her card,” Daisy said. She had a perplexed expression on her face. She was clearly looking up the bounty boards. And just like me, she clearly thought she’d find something. Judging by her expression, she was coming up blank.
I didn’t know who to trust – Jenny or my instincts. I had to go back to the fact you couldn’t hack a credit chip. So maybe… maybe everything I thought about Jenny was wrong.
I came to a decision. To be honest, I’d actually come to the same decision the second she’d walked in. Though I wanted to pretend I could kick her off, something was rising inside me that I hadn’t seen in years. It was the same sense of idiotic goodwill that had gotten me to join the security division in the first place. It hadn’t reared its ugly head in a long damn time. But now it was here, it would be hard to kick out.
Just like Jenny Smith.
I walked over to the door control panel. With a few quick commands, I got it to close.
Jenny became immeasurably relieved, though she still stood exactly where she was. Her gaze was cast to the ground. It looked as if she was concentrating on something. Not that I could tell what that would be considering that particular patch of floor was plain as all hell.
She could’ve been using a neural chip, but she didn’t look like she was. When people used neural chips, they got a distinct look in their eyes.
Daisy let out a sigh. It was frustrated. I’d known her more than long enough to appreciate it meant that she had found nothing on the bounty boards. She turned to me. “I’ll get the guest’s room prepped.”
I nodded. “I’ll get the ship in the air.”
Daisy shot Jenny one more morose look, then wandered off. Jenny, for her part, continued to stand there, her hands clamped together, her gaze cast to that exact same patch of nondescript floor.
I cleared my throat. “You don’t have to wait here until your room is prepped. You can head to the mess hall. You hungry?”
She shook her head. She didn’t make eye contact with me. She was either too scared or too distracted.
I wasn’t about to leave it, though. I cleared my throat again. I opened my mouth to ask why she’d been with Maro’x, but I quickly thought better of it. We hadn’t left the planet yet. Yeah, I’d just closed the hangar bay door, but I got the impression that didn’t matter. Jenny seemed to be good at running.
“Daisy didn’t tell me where you’re headed. This ship is currently on route to Alpha Four—”
“I won’t get off there,” she said quickly – way too quickly.
“So you want to negotiate for further transport?”
“Maybe with this ship – maybe with another. We’ll see.”
She took a step. Then she stopped. She went back to staring at the floor. She was distracted. She had to be concentrating, but I couldn’t tell what she could be concentrating on.
“Then I’ll be sure to show you a good time.”
It took her a long time to react. She clearly wasn’t cogent enough to actually listen to my words in real-time. She had to replay everything back in her mind to figure out if I’d said anything important.
“Your credit chip has been debited now.” I finished the process and handed it over to her.
She grabbed it up and shoved it into her pocket.
I waited to hear a click as she put it into a personal locking field – a safe wallet or something. There was nothing. She just put it in her pocket as if she wasn’t carrying around $700,000 worth of credits.
“I’ve got to prep the rest of the ship now. I can’t leave you in the cargo bay.”
“I’ll head to the mess hall, then. No – somewhere private,” she spluttered quickly.
“The rest of the guests have boarded—”
“I just want to be on my own right now,” she whispered.
I nodded. “Fine.” I had to rack my mind to think of a room that would be private enough for her. She couldn’t go where the crew were – they were too busy, and she’d just get in the way. She couldn’t go to another guest room because they were either full or on the seedier end of what I offered. There was a personnel storage cupboard, of course—
“A storage cupboard will be fine,” she said quickly. Her gaze was still locked on that apparently nondescript patch of floor.
Mind readers did not exist. I mean, they could technically exist if you hooked a poor victim up to enough tech and started to control them – but I knew I did not have that kind of tech on board. What she’d said was a coincidence.
A specific one. Not all ships had personnel storage cupboards. They had cargo bays for supplies. Personnel storage cupboards tended to have beds and desks as well as whatever else you wanted to keep in there. I had one because I was used to them from security division ships.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” She made her first and final eye contact before she started to walk out of the room.
I got to stare at her briefly. I got to wonder what the hell was going on in her mind before she strode on past. She took a left, which was incidentally the correct direction toward the storage cupboard. “I can—” she began, but she stopped.
“You can what?”
“Stay in the storage cupboard for as long as you need,” she said quickly. I got the distinct impression that she’d been about to say something else, but I didn’t know what that was.
“You won’t have to. Daisy will be done soon. It’s this way.” I led her.
She was several steps behind me. I wanted to see her face, but I had to put up with just catching glimpses in reflective panels we passed. And even those were few and far between, considering the lack of cleaning aboard here.
We got to the storage cupboard.
She didn’t look at me. I had never tried harder to make eye contact with someone, but she simply stared at her hands.
There were no marks on them. Occasionally she glanced under her sleeves as if she thought something would be there. But she didn’t find anything.
“I hope you have a good stay with us, Jenny.”
“So do I.” She shoved past.
I lingered in the doorway. She went straight over to the bed, pushed the junk on it to the side, pulled her legs up, and locked her head on her knees.
I wanted to ask if she was okay. She would not tell me. And maybe I didn’t want to know. Because whoever this Jenny was, it was clear she was in trouble. Of what kind, I’d just have to wait to find out.