16: Rebeka

Rebeka stopped again but couldn't keep her foot from tapping. She glanced over her shoulder. Alek was struggling to keep up, despite her shorter stride. Her lips twisted in a grimace...she was working out some of her vexation by getting her heart rate up, but his long legs should have been able to out-pace her. She'd brought him along for muscle, to carry either the gift she was picking up or the tool Tink swore she needed back to the ship — something called an industrial chain ratchet.

At least that's what Rebeka told herself. If she were honest, she could easily carry them both, but she wanted backup in the narrow lanes of the Bowels. Every station had similar levels down below — and it was down, even though there was no down in space. Whatever the name on the map said, they were all called the Bowels by residents and spacers alike, a term likely coming as much from the foul miasma that hung in the lanes and the unidentified, viscous liquid that tended to drip from the pipes overhead as from its location in the belly of the station.

Her eyes narrowed as Alek came towards her. She tipped her head sideways, homing in on his legs. He straightened up and walked more purposefully, perhaps noticing her scrutiny, but she could have sworn he had a slight hitch in his step. Maybe I should have brought Severn instead of sending him with Kandi and Ish on the resupply run.

A flicker of movement behind him drew her attention. Spying the soundless urchin, she opened her mouth to give warning, but was stopped short.

"Touch it and I'll blast your fingers off," Alek said without turning around, grasping the small hand that reached for his weapon. The blaster Kandi had lent him only after stern exhortations to bring it back in better shape than he got it. The child's eyes went wide as he dragged them forward. Almost imperceptibly, he bumped his wrist to theirs. Rebeka's eyebrows pulled together. "Go and don't come back," he said as the kid pulled their wrist back, looking at their patch with a confused look on their face.

"You shouldn't give the street rats anything," Rebeka said as he caught up with her, no sign of a limp in his step. "You just encourage them."

He shrugged a shoulder. "My chits, my choice."

Rebeka didn't say anything more, instead focusing on checking the doorways and alley entries as they descended further. The lights became more sparse and less bright. The shadows deepened and the reek grew.

"How far down are we going?" he asked, his voice low. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him performing the same scans of their environment she was.

"Scared of the dark?" she scoffed, glancing at him. Her eyes flicked left at a scratching up ahead and a sense of shadows gathering behind them. Rebeka lowered her voice. "You might want to get your weapon out."

"You think things are about to get kinetic, Captain?"

Her eyes narrowed at the use of kinetic, a term she hadn't heard since her days in the Legion. Though she was glad to see him pull out the blaster.

Rebeka heard the whine of the borrowed gun powering up and a soft click as he checked his charge. My new pilot knows a thing or two about weapons. Good to know. She readied her own blaster. Wonder if he learned that from the same place he picked up military slang.

"You didn't answer my question." He shifted around so his back was to hers. "How far?"

"We're already there." She glanced left, and the door beside them opened, casting a green halo that was soon blocked by a large man.

"Mino!" His voice boomed, echoing down the lane.

"Arjen, your timing is impeccable." Rebeka lowered her weapon a few degrees but didn't holster it.

"Come, come." Arjen's voice turned sharp as he continued. "Scat! Shoo!" There was a skittering as the shadows hurried to do his bidding. "Good for nothing guttersnipes," he mumbled.

Rebeka snorted, knowing Arjen fed and clothed many of those 'guttersnipes', then she shifted, stepping towards the door. She sensed stillness behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she beckoned to Alek, whose eyebrows drew tightly together while his lips pulled into a severe frown.

They got safely back to the ship, the riff raff no longer bothering them after seeing who they'd visited. No one who knew him messed with Arjen, despite his resemblance to a teddy bear. Back aboard the Lyra, Rebeka decided she'd rather be back in the Bowels: the ship had descended into chaos. Tink was still grumping and grimacing at having someone else, let alone a crew of someone elses, touching her engine.

Kandi returned shortly after they did, with a chest full of charges for blasters, large and small, as well as pulse rifles. Alek started to help Kandi stow those safely. Instead Rebeka conscripted them both into getting the canister she'd picked up from Arjen secreted away: a gift for Tink that it would be better if the Engineering Guild, whose members currently crawled all over the ship, didn't know about. They didn't take kindly to unauthorized plasma boosters on impulse engines.

They'd just finished hiding it away when laughter travelled up the gangway, followed by the clomp of boots and the rattle of wheels. Severn and Ish had returned with food. Real food to replace what had gone off in the chiller when the power was down as well as a restock of the nutrient packs and unflavoured bug bars they'd had to resort to. Despite being sweaty from lugging the heavy cart around, they wore smiles that made her happy.

Rebeka's lips lifted in response, but that was tempered by the hand Severn laid on Ish's back. It's probably just friendly. She forced the smile back to her face. The last thing I need is a lover's tiff on the ship. Let alone a love triangle, she thought as she followed Severn's gaze as Tink stomped into the cargo bay, coming right towards her.

"Do you know what they're doing?" She waved some widget in Rebeka's face. An algal tech in his green coveralls and green-tinged skin trailed Tink, his shoulders slumping as he sighed.

"Fixing the algal generator," Rebeka said with a slight shake of her head. "As contracted."

"I need..." The man reached for the widget, but he was even shorter than Tink.

"They're unhooking my juice box from the impulse jumper!"

"It's against regulations!" The man shot Rebeka a pleading look.

Pulling herself up tall and drawing her shoulders back into her power stance, she turned to Tink. "Give the man his widget back." She used her most authoritative voice, and almost smiled to see the man inch away.

Tink blew a lock of hair from her face. "It's not—"

"I don't care what it is. Give it back. The sooner they're done, the sooner they're off the ship." She stared hard at Tink, giving her head a slow nod. Tink started to open her mouth, then snapped it shut, perhaps reading the subtext: the sooner you can reconnect things.

Tink looked askance at the man, but in the end held out the tool for him to take.

"And the sooner we get out of here, the better," Rebeka said.

"Hail Hecate to that," Alek added, quietly enough he might not have meant it to be heard.