SAL KONSTANZ
In the higher dimensions, we could hear the Intrusion roaring. The Trouble Dog piped the sound through to the bridge. It was like a blowtorch crisping the laws of physics. A vast unnatural puncture wound in the skin of reality.
“I’m picking up drive whispers,” the Trouble Dog said. “There were knife ships here.”
“How recently?”
“Within the hour.”
“Are they still on site?”
The Dog’s avatar shrugged. For some reason, she’d decided to dress herself in a white t-shirt and black leather jacket. She had a red bandana in her hair, and her eyeshadow made her look like a panda.
“It’s hard to tell,” she said. “I’ve got no echoes of them leaving, but something happened here.”
“How long until we have to emerge?”
“Thirty seconds.”
I took a breath. “Okay, let’s do it. But keep your eyes peeled, okay?”
“Roger that.”
Bronte Okonkwo was watching me. I suspected she was appalled by my lack of formality when dealing with the ship—or maybe my thoughtless use of the phrase “eyes peeled” had disturbed her, as I still had a patch covering the hole where one of mine had been gouged out.
I asked, “Do you concur with our approach?”
She glanced at the tactical display. “Perhaps I might have preferred something with a little more stealth.”
I smiled. “That’s not really our style.”
“So I gather.”
The re-emergence alarm wailed, and then we were dropping down through the dimensions. Ahead, stars began to gleam. And something huge and white blocked our path.
I opened my mouth to shout an order, but the Trouble Dog was way ahead of me. Thrusters fired, jamming me painfully into the arm of my chair, and the image of the shining wreckage slid from the view screen as we swerved to avoid it.
Something metallic scraped agonisingly across our hull.
And then we were free and spinning. The Dog corrected herself and the stars settled back to their former steadiness.
I said, “What the hell was that?”
“It seems to be the compacted remains of two ships from the Marble Armada.”
“No shit?”
“They must have collided.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Collided?”
The Trouble Dog made a face. “Improbable, I grant you.” She paused for a moment with her eyes rolled back in her head. Then she looked at me again, and said, “There’s a third one.”
I felt my pulse jump. “Is it still active?”
“Negative. It seems to have crashed into one of the Plates, breaking its keel.”
I exchanged glances with Okonkwo and saw her puzzlement as a reflection of my own.
“How the hell did that happen?”
The Trouble Dog shrugged her leather shoulders. A wicked smile played on her glossy red lips. “If I had to guess, I’d say somebody—or something—kicked their collective asses.”
“Any traces of what it might have been?” Okonkwo asked.
“Negative—although I am picking up a human distress call.”
“A warship?”
“No, an old freighter. The Gigolo Aunt. She’s been hit, and she’s leaking.”
“How far?” I asked.
“The other side of the system, near the Plates,” the Trouble Dog said. “We can be there in an hour.”
Okonkwo shook her head. “It might be a trap.”
I gave a sigh. “Listen.” I pushed back the brim of my baseball cap. “Firstly, this is a House of Reclamation vessel. We’re sworn to help, no matter the danger. And secondly, something took out those three knife ships. Finding out what that was has got to be our top priority.”
“Yes, sir.” The woman glared at me. Her nostrils flared, but she had the military self-discipline to keep further comments to herself.
“Set course for the Gigolo Aunt.”
* * *
As we accelerated across the system, I sat back in my chair and removed my baseball cap. Underneath, my hair was a mess. I shook a hand through it and turned my head towards Okonkwo. We had some time, and I wanted to clear the air. If we were going into a potential combat zone, I didn’t want a wedge of resentment between us. I wanted to be able to trust this stranger who’d walked into my life and taken the place of my dead comrade, Alva Clay.
“What’s your problem?” I asked.
She looked up, her face lit from beneath by the glow of her screens, her eyes the colour of autumn. “Problem?”
“You look like you don’t want to be here.”
“I don’t. I just don’t have any other choice. I thought I’d made that clear?”
I pursed my lips and sucked my teeth. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry if you have a problem with my conduct.”
I waved the idea away. “No, your conduct’s exemplary. I’d expect nothing less.”
“Then what is it, Captain?”
She was going to make me say it. “It’s your attitude. Every time I give an order or make a suggestion, you roll your eyes.”
“I apologise.”
“Am I really that bad as a leader?”
Okonkwo surprised me by smiling. “No, Captain, you’re not. In fact, I do hold you in some respect.”
“Then what is it?”
She clasped her hands on the console. “I am dealing with some personal issues.”
“I know all about grief, and you have my sympathies. But if you’re not up to this, you need to let me know.”
She drew herself up. “I’m perfectly capable of discharging my duties.”
“I’m not questioning your capability.” I spread my hands. “But I’ve lost people. I know how much it hurts. If you need to take some time…”
Okonkwo turned her head away. She bit her bottom lip. “It’s more than that.”
“How do you mean?” Had she lost a lover on the Manticore? Had her family been in one of the installations targeted by the Fleet of Knives? I watched her decide whether or not to tell me. The light shone on the delicate hairs along the curve of her cheek. Finally, she let out a sigh and her posture changed.
“Civilisation fell at an inconvenient time for me.”
I blinked in surprise. “I think it fell at a bad time for all of us.”
“Maybe I phrased that badly.” She dragged her teeth across her lower lip, and I felt a shiver between my shoulder blades. “It’s just I’d come to a big decision. I was going to act on it, but then everything went to hell and there wasn’t time. And now I feel I’ve been cheated out of what was rightfully mine.”
I exchanged glances with the Trouble Dog, who’d been watching silently from the main screen.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. What decision?”
Okonkwo tugged the hem of her tunic, straightening it. She clapped her hands together and pressed the fingertips to her lips. “I’m not really a woman,” she said.
I frowned. “Okay.”
She looked down at herself. “I mean, physically I am. I was born female. But that’s not how I see myself. That’s not how I am.”
“You’re transgender?”
“Yes.”
I laughed with relief. “Is that all?” I’d shipped with trans crewmates before and it had never been a big deal, especially in the Outward, where people had always been free to be whatever the hell they wanted to be, as long as they weren’t hurting anyone else.
“You don’t understand,” Okonkwo said. “It’s more than that.” She frowned down at herself again. “I was going to have complete realignment surgery. I’d notified the navy, spoken to my colleagues and superiors, and the Manticore had agreed to perform the procedure. But…”
“But the Fleet attacked before you got the chance?”
Her face tightened with controlled emotion, and I felt a sudden rush of sympathy. “Yes,” she said. “And now I feel tricked. My life was about to change. I was about to become the person I am inside—but now I’ll never get the chance. I’ll die like this.”
She closed her eyes. I wanted to reach out and touch her arm, but she was too far away.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. In the Outward, changing your sex was almost as commonplace and easy as getting a rejuvenation treatment or changing the colour of your hair. Maybe things were a little less casual in the Conglomeration, but they had the technology. Modern medicine could reprogramme cells and sculpt flesh. Given enough time, I suppose the Trouble Dog could even have cultured me a new eyeball and optic nerve—although it would take a surgeon far more gifted than Preston to reconnect them to my neural tissue. Up until now, this kind of technology was something we had all taken for granted. But seeing Okonkwo desolate at the thought of losing her chance to change brought home to me how many people out there must be in need of all sorts of treatments that were no longer available. On some of the backwater planets, there might be no advanced medicine at all, now the trading ships had stopped calling. All they’d be left with was whatever they could print, and whatever rudimentary first aid skills they might possess. But people with heart conditions, the parents of premature babies, men and women with actual cancers growing inside them—how abandoned they must feel. How aggrieved that the securities of modern life had been snatched from them just as they needed them most.
Okonkwo forced a smile. “It’s just one of those things,” she said. “Just bad timing. I’m feeling stupid for letting it bother me while there’s so much else going on.”
“But it does bother you.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you’ve been so uptight?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Uptight?”
“Yeah, a little.”
“Perhaps.” She smiled. “Or maybe you’re just not used to having someone onboard who knows how to behave professionally?”
We looked into each other’s eyes, and for a second, everything else fell away. I could hardly breathe.
On the main screen, the Trouble Dog cleared her throat. “I could do it,” she said.
I shook myself and looked at her. “You could?”
“I know the procedure. I’ve done it before. It’s just a matter of altering the body’s hormonal balance and tinkering with the chromosomes, changing an X to a Y. After that, it’s mostly cosmetic. Nothing too complex. With Preston’s help, we could get it done in a couple of hours.”
“That quickly?”
The Trouble Dog shrugged. “There would be some recovery time.”
“How long?”
“Depends on how badly Preston fucks things up.”
I glared at her. “Seriously.”
She grinned, full of mischief. “We could have Commander Okonkwo back on her feet within a few hours—although some of the chromosomal changes will take a while longer to fully manifest.”
I looked across at Okonkwo, who was listening to our exchange open-mouthed.
“Well?” I said. “What do you think?”
She laughed incredulously. “Now?”
“Why not?”
“But, the Gigolo Aunt…”
“If it does anything threatening, we’ll blow it out of the sky—and we don’t need you here for that. You report to the sick bay. By the time you get there, Preston will be ready for you.”
Okonkwo thumped a fist to her chest. For a moment, her lips trembled with barely restrained emotion. Then she rose, snapped her heels together, and threw a crisp salute.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, sir. You don’t know what this means.”
I returned her gesture. “Welcome to the House of Reclamation,” I said.
She gave me a questioning look.
“It’s what the House has always been,” I told her. “A chance to leave the past behind and reinvent yourself.”
She gave a slight bow—an inclination of the head that said more than words ever could—and left the bridge.
When I heard her reach the bottom of the ladder and pass through into the corridor that ringed the ship’s waist, I settled back into my chair and said, “That was a nice thing you just did.”
The Trouble Dog nodded. “It seemed the kind thing to do.”
I suppressed a grin. “I like this new side of you.”
“New side, Captain?”
“You’re becoming more considerate. You saw a person in emotional distress, and you sympathised with her.”
The avatar’s expression hardened. “I know what it feels like to be trapped in the wrong body. Since I joined the House, I’ve been a killing machine fitted out as an ambulance. When my weapons were removed, they itched like severed limbs.”
“But now you’ve got some of your ordnance back?”
“I feel more like my old self.”
“And that’s why you helped her?”
The Trouble Dog smiled. “You said it yourself. Everybody deserves a second chance. Hasn’t that been the point of everything we’ve been through?”
I looked out at the cold, unblinking stars, and thought of everyone we’d lost and found since first taking flight together: George and Alva; Preston Menderes; those two agents, Childe and Petrushka; Johnny Schultz and the Adalwolf; Lucy and Riley Addison; and even Ona Sudak. Every one of them had been looking for a way to ditch their history and become something more than the sum of their former deeds.
“I guess you’re right.”
“And that’s why I offered to help.”
I pulled the shabby old baseball cap back onto my head and tugged the brim. “You’re a good kid.”
Out here on the ragged edge of human space, caught between mythical beasts and implacable alien war machines— between the personified forces of chaos and order—all we could rely on was each other. And I was glad to have Trouble Dog as my friend. She might be mischievous and deadly, but she was never purposefully cruel. She seemed to grow more rounded, and more fully human (to use a rather self-centred definition of sentience), with every day that passed.
In that moment, I was as proud of her as I’d ever been.
“Captain?”
“Yes, ship?”
“That distress call. You’re not going to believe it.”
“Believe what?”