Stare At God And Dream Of Space (Original Sci Fi)

[wrldrpblcblus]

Three thousand Earth cycles since the days of Hidegona Yoronashi. Three millennia since the Expanse was mapped by him and named after him: the stars, the nebulae, the rocks and the atmospheres.

Founding day, Hyacinth Garrison. Above the gentle clouds of Rainwater. Earth's lone outpost, a simulacrum of its fictional reign. Dragged into life wet and screaming, covered in blood. Born stationside, in the world of corridors curving forever gently upward. Grey walls and white lights, the persistent hum of air recyclers.

It was a military station. I never enlisted, neither did my family. Us blue-bellied civvies got our own slurs, and a lot of places flat-out refused to serve us. Not that the soldiers fought, either. They were a shadow of a shadow of a shadow of Earth's authority, the thousand light-year diaspora of a people they'd never meet.

Hyacinth raised not a single warship to contest its neighbours' skirmishes, inert for centuries at a time. And that suited me fine. I got a job as a civil engineer, and kept to myself like most civvies.

I remember renting my first place away from my parents, and when they died my younger sister Alice came to live with me. Spitting image of both me and our mother, they said. Looking at photos of her I couldn't help but agree. Same slightly wavy auburn hair and dark brown eyes, bright smile and sharp chin.

Work paid well and I spent just as much—I wasn't a frugal kid, and by nineteen I'd already racked up a gambling debt I never really paid off. I found it very easy to get lost in drink as well. There wasn't much else to do. But I didn't ever really fall apart or collapse. It's amazing what you can do when there's a cute kid with bright hopeful eyes who relies on you for everything, when if you fuck up they're fucked as well. Perhaps that's how parents keep going day by day without a bumper dose of combat stimulants—Alice was really annoying sometimes.

But hey, she smiled when I got home from work and we'd play stupid games on the entertainment system if I was sober, and if I wasn't I'd do my best to make her food anyway.

"Freya," she once asked, "why do grown-ups drink beer? It tastes yucky."

I looked up from my terminal. "How'd you know what beer tastes like?"

She looked down in a sort of false, mischievous shame. "I tried one of yours, while you were out."

"Okay, you shouldn't do that," I sighed. I kept too much beer to keep count of.

"I know," she said, "but answer my question."

"We drink it," I said, "for grown-up reasons. You'll understand when you're older."

"I'm eleven!" She protested.

"And that's not old enough." I finally turned to look at her properly, in the center of our shoebox apartment, and I got out the chair and kneeled down. "How about you deal with your schoolwork, hmh?"

Alice glowered, then, because of course she did. "I don't want to."

"But if you don't study, how will you grow up to get a good job like me? And earn lots of money, like me?"

"If you earn so much money," giggled Alice, "then why is our home so small?"

"Touche." I went back to the terminal.

"I want to be a space captain," said Alice.

"Even more of a reason to work hard in school," I point out.

"But school is boring," she groaned. "Being a space captain is fun."

"How does fusion power work, Alice?"

"Wuh?" She cocked her head with a confused smile.

I tried not to grin. "Fusion power. How does it work?"

"You made that up," she said, pointing her finger at me.

"Nope," I said. "It powers spaceships. And you can't be a space captain without knowing how it works."

She sulked. "I hate you," she said, finally, clearly not meaning it.

I wanted to say 'don't say that,' and then tell her off light-heartedly. But the lights went out and we both yelped in surprise instead.

"What's happening?" She squealed.

"Just a power issue," I replied instinctively, "nothing to worry about."

A big lie, of course. Hyacinth was—is—the most well-maintained military fortification in the Yoronashi Expanse. The lights didn't just go out on a whim.

Alice must've heard the doubt in my voice, because she crawled under the desk and wrapped her arms around my ankle. I didn't stop her.

The station intercom chimed. "This is the Garrison Commander," said a voice that very certainly wasn't the Garrison Commander. "The Hyacinth Garrison Station is currently undergoing emergency maintenance. Please return to, and remain in, your homes. A curfew is being imposed."

"I'm scared," whimpered Alice.

Shit, kid, I wanted to say, me too. But I didn't, because in spite of my best efforts I was a well-adjusted adult who didn't want to terrify my little sister. "It'll be okay," I lied again.

A few minutes passed with Alice hugging my ankle in a death grip. I lifted her up and took her in my arms and tried not to tremble. Then shouting came from the corridor. Gunshots rattled and screams followed. You could hear the bodies hit the floor.

Alice simply started crying. I hugged her tighter and she just cried harder, because she could tell that meant I was scared.

At some point, the doors all opened, and light seeped back into the room, a hellish red from the station ring's emergency light. A giant shape crashed into the room and I screamed with Alice, but I fell silent when the lights in my apartment came on again. I saw the hulking, blue-grey power suits of the Hyacinth Space Marines, and relief came to me for the first time in a long while.

"It's the Kayeviki!" He yelled, gesturing with a heavy hand downring. "Evac now! Head towards the escape hangar!"

Though Victor Kayev was long dead, his lieutenants had maintained control of much of his formidable pirate navy—but Hyacinth? Hyacinth seemed above their pay grade.

Not that I had time to think. I grabbed Alice by the hand and ran past the hulking mech suits of the station cordon, one foot ahead of the other in the dim red station twilight. I soon became part of a crowd, the small civilian population being escorted off-station.

Explosions rocked the ring from not far behind us. Alice yelped and struggled to keep up, and I just dragged her along faster. Eventually I became enveloped by the crowd, a pulsing mess of limbs and bodies. All the soldiers were currently dying elsewhere, and had left the sheep to fend for themselves against each other.

Someone twice my size forced themselves past me and I nearly lost my grip on Alice's hand. "Fuck!" I yelled. "Fuck you!" They didn't hear me.

I gripped her by the wrist, tighter, and ran faster. Shoving, pushing, yelling. "Get out of my fuck— fucking way! I have a kid! A kid!"

Nothing changed in the human current as we crowded toward the hangar door. Nobody cared, or if they did, they couldn't do anything. Stampeding humans cannot be reasoned with, and I simply did my best to keep Alice close. "A kid!" I screamed raw, my throat in tatters. "I have a fucking kid!"

Eventually, I just screamed it because I could, and it didn't rise above the other shouts and screams, and maybe other carers with other kids. But I kept Alice close and didn't let go, trying to look back to check on her while also pushing forward. I'll never forget the terror in her eyes. "A kid!" I yelled again. "Fuck you all, you selfish fucking bastards!"

Gunfire raked the ceiling above us from behind. The change was instant. The crowd bulged like a swelling river, pushing its banks to bursting point. We were packed each shoulder to each shoulder, each chest to each back, and I was carried forward, forward with the current, crushed between those around me. An elbow smashed me in the face. I could taste blood in my mouth.

Another flash of gunfire, another swell. My arm was squashed between two bodies and I lost my grip on Alice.

Everything else in the world stopped mattering. Three billion stars under human hand and they could all go to hell if I could just get my hand around her small wrist again. "Alice!" I shrieked. I tried to run back, defy the current, defy the laws of physics with sheer superhuman strength, try to clamber over the packed stampede. But the guns were firing and people were falling, and nobody, least of all me, knew what was going on. Only that the Kayeviki, for some nightmare reason, had made it on board, and the word Kayeviki meant death: shattered families, and empty stations.

And now my little sister was behind me in the crowd. And try as I might, I could not defy the stampede, the tightened panicked masses who swelled forward, the river rushed and I was carried along with it. "Alice!" I shrieked the name again and again as if it would change a thing. "Alice! Come back! I'm here! I'm here for you!"

I didn't stop shouting, even as the screams turned to sobs. The tide broke upon the pressurised half of the vast hangar, and I was flung onto my back. I leaned on my elbows and rolled onto my knees immediately, before standing up once more. Around me, soldiers shouted—unarmoured conscripts, desperately trying to restore order to the evac effort. One of them was yelling at me, but I stood there, dazed, barely noticing the tears dripping from my chin. Alice would stagger through there, stunned but okay. I knew it.

Darkness ate at my peripheral vision. The last thing I remembered before I passed out was arms grabbing me under my shoulders from behind.

* * *​

The beleaguered evac pilots took us to Danakai, the nearest inhabited system. By some coincidence, it was also where the Kayeviki faced their last major defeat, and the Astanis were willing to have us as refugees. We were dropped off at Hwera Station, in the orbit of a gas giant in the inner system.

Fed, clothed, assured that everything would be okay. Aid workers with sad smiles trying to reckon with people whose entire lives had just been burned down. Folks who'd done it before. Folks who'd do it again. Who'd been trained to wear those sympathetic expressions and speak in those sympathetic tones. They were trying to make the world a better place, and I hated them.

Hwera was a civilian station, and I found myself missing the enlistment posters and gruff manner of the station guards. They kept us in the cheapest parts of the station by maintenance, where conduits ran bare along the low-ceilinged tunnels. I started working as a bar sweep by week two. The boss was sympathetic, but it paid poorly.

When I wasn't asleep or at work, I searched for Alice. Begging the port authorities for news, bribing access to security footage, checking lists of confirmed dead. I began to exchange information with Miranda, an older lady I vaguely knew from Hyacinth. Her husband Iosef had gone missing, and her husband was her everything. As two lost souls looking for the only other two people in the world who meant a damn to us, we began to mean a damn to each other in turn.

It became clear not every civilian had left Hyacinth in the evacuation. The Kayeviki had been working with an inside man: a certain Battlefleet Commander by the name of Mikhail Artov, who utilised the chaos of the raid to take over the garrison, while giving the Kayeviki advanced technological blueprints and materiel. The threat of war now boiled between the pirates and Astan.

When Artov expelled the remaining civilian population of Hyacinth, Alice was not on the list of new arrivals in Hwera. Neither was Iosef.

Eventually, the search became rote. Not a desperate, frantic, all-consuming thing towards which all energies could be dedicated. Something I did. Simply because I couldn't admit to myself that she may be gone, and indeed Miranda couldn't accept Iosef was the same way as well. For what if we gave up and moved on, and then one day a little miracle shuttle arrived at Hwera, and then Iosef and Alice got out, and then they found their loved ones had abandoned them?

It took over a year to come to terms with it. No stranger to alcohol, I eventually found drinking was the only thing I wound up doing. Staying up in bars, telling anyone who'd listen about the woes of my people, and asking after a little girl nobody knew.

"She's— she's jus', she looks like me, y'know?" I slurred.

"I'm sorry," said the man next to me, getting up from the bar. "But I haven't seen her."

This went on and on, until eventually I didn't turn up to work enough to keep my job, and all I could do was spend my dwindling savings at bars. I stopped looking for Alice. I just drank. I stopped meeting Miranda. I just drank. Waking up each morning with an agonising hangover and with shaking hands, and the only cure I knew was to go and set my brain on fire again. It didn't feel nice, it didn't feel good, it just felt like the only thing I could do, because there's a raw, horrifying freedom in letting go, and that's better than looking at things the way they are and not how they ought to be.

I woke up one morning to the buzz of my door's intercom. "Freya!" Miranda's voice came from the other side. "It's me!"

"Open the doors," I said. My room recognised the voice command, and the door to my hovel slid open. Miranda walked through, wearing her stationsider's jumpsuit garb, her face worn and distressed. Greys now dashed through her short brown hair. The search had aged her.

"Iosef's dead," she said.

I bolted upright and looked straight into her eyes. "You received any news?" I blurted, not bearing to hide the distress. My head felt like I'd been hit with a mallet.

"No, I haven't received any fucking news." Miranda sighed. "That's the point. They're dead, Freya—"

"They aren't!" I screeched, launching myself to my feet and standing opposite her. She took two steps back, clearly shocked but not surprised. "How could you say that? All the time we spent looking—"

"Won't make them any less dead," she said. She looked around my tiny room full of broken furniture and strewn clothes, then back at me. "Though if you want to join them, you're on the right track." Sympathy was smuggled through the bitterness in those words, but I didn't hear it. I slumped back into the foam mattress on my bed and started sobbing.

"You can't know that," I heaved. "You can't."

Miranda gave me a moment, as I sobbed weakly into my reeking sleeves for a few minutes. She sat down next to me after a while, and put a hand on my shoulder. "Human beings aren't meant to live like this," she said, softly.

I looked up at her with wet eyes that still hurt and said nothing.

"Constantly afraid. Poisoning themselves. You carry on like this, it won't matter whether she's dead or alive. Nothing will matter."

"I don't," I sputtered. "I— I don't care. If she's dead I want to join her."

"You won't join anyone. You'll just make the world a worse place," she said.

"How?" I asked.

"I know you're a good kid, Freya. A world without you is worse than a world with you. I'll promise that," she said.

"Spare me," I said, and rolled over, face in my pillow.

Miranda sighed gently, and said nothing for a moment. When she did, her voice was softer. "This has to stop," she said.

I rolled onto my side. "Spare me the lecture," I said. "Think I haven't heard it before? Think I haven't heard folks tell me drinking will kill me, and all I haven't seen in that is a ticket to heaven?"

"I've heard heaven described in lots of ways," muttered Miranda. "None of them looked like this, young lady."

"Whatever you say, I've heard it before."

"Even if you hear it from me?" She asked.

I froze for a second. "Huh?"

Miranda leaned in, and her gentle touch on my shoulder became firmer as her sad brown eyes found mine. "You can't let the darkness win, Freya. You can do anything you want, die however you want, so long as it isn't this. You need to find whatever you need to find to keep going, no matter what it is."

"I have nothing," I said, already too tired to cry. The hangover was pounding the inside of my skull, and all I wanted to do was roll over and not have to think of anything at all.

"Then find something. Anything. Just so long as you turn away from this. This is not any way to exist." Miranda stood up to leave. "I'm moving off-station. Maybe a nice, sunny world. I've always wanted to see a horizon." She turned to me with a weak smile. "Perhaps you can visit me one day."

She walked back through my door and it hissed shut.

* * *​

I did eventually get back on my feet. Whether because of what Miranda said, or because I was just sick of dying slowly, I eventually managed to emerge from the wreck.

It wasn't easy and it was far from immediate. There were many times I nearly righted myself, but collapsed all the way back to square one. Crying and bawling in bars and in my room, so drunk I wouldn't remember what I was crying and bawling about the next morning.

And my heart always felt empty, because by then I knew Alice was probably dead, and the faintest possibility she could be alive would forever be an uncertainty I'd have to live with. Everyone carries scars on their souls, I supposed.

The path out of hell is long and winding and full of pitfalls, but I made it, even if I left a part of myself back down there. I decided I should go see space, that Hwera reminded me too much of Alice—not the Alice I lost, but the ghost Alice I chased for fourteen months.

I got a job on a rinky-dink freighter run by a dirty old man called Igor, who called his ship the Lady Royale. He needed a second hand, an engineer, someone to make sure his girl's leaky reactor didn't blow on jump.

The fact I was a girl several decades his junior probably didn't hurt my chances. Igor thought of himself a bit of a silver fox, with old-fashioned rugged charm. I doubted that a lot, but I wouldn't know, as I never had much time for men in that sense. He found that out on our third voyage when I let it slip. He saw it as funny, if anything. "Clever woman," he guffawed, stroking his silver beard, "were I a lady, I'd want ladies too." He winked, and I couldn't help but laugh.

We could agree on that, at least. Old Man Igor knew what he was, and took pride in living up to expectations. I learned to enjoy his company, in large part because there was no-one else to talk to on those long voyages through the stars. The war between Astan and the Kayeviki had broken out, and that meant there was money to be made. Igor didn't run a totally legitimate operation, and we could probably have been called smugglers. He taught me the tricks of the trade—how to bluff past port authorities, how to disguise contraband and best organise cargo holds to confuse inspectors.

At one point, he even taught me how to use a sidearm. He bought an old-fashioned powder lead-spitter at a pirate port, a Tecza 12, and gave me a lesson on how to shoot at a range. "Not a half-bad shot," he said afterward, whiskey on his breath. He patted the gun as it rested in my grip, and passed me a simple nylon holster. "Keep that thing. In case y'find yerself in a world where there ain't no old Igor to protect ya," he grinned.

I agreed, and from then on I slept with the damn thing. I practised when I could, and once even used it to intimidate some folks. Igor got too rowdy at a dockside bar, and pissed off a few other clients. Drunk, but not as drunk as Igor, I waved my old Tecza in their direction, the colour left their faces, and they quickly left. "Thanks fer the save," he said after he'd sobered up. "But I'd've had them bastards, you'd've seen."

"Of course you woulda, Igor," I smiled. "But let's not do that ever again."

"Aye," he laughed. "Let's not."

I served on the Lady Royale for a good two years, and would've gone longer had Igor's time not come. I found him lying dead in his quarters, a big stupid smile on his face, and a bottle of booze on his desk. To my surprise, I found his will sent to my local network.
Dear Freya,

My wife's dead, my folks are deader, and frankly my idiot son can go eat rocks. You kept an old man company, and that was damn sweet. I know I paid you enough already, and I was quite the generous employer, but heck, have the rest. I weren't a rich man anyway.

I hope you find a nice girl out there. A better choice than a man, I'd wager. As an authority on men, being one myself, I think we're all more trouble than we're worth.

Yours,
Captain Igor

In Igor's will was a modest amount of cred, the rights to the Lady Royale, and a few of his personal possessions. This included a weird stuffed mammal I'd never seen before, and the two bottles of Whiskey he had left. Cheap, nasty stuff. I drank both the night he died, while crying.

I buried Igor at vacuum with the dregs of the bottles, and gave him a small salute as he floated out the airlock. A horrible old bastard, and my friend.

* * *​

A tentative peace was soon signed between Astan and the Kayeviki, with little having changed in the way of borders. More ports opened up, then, but a fuel tank malfunction left me running on fumes on the fringes of the Astani Republic.

I have nothing left to do. I lay the Lady Royale in course to a nearby backwater nowhere-station, and prepare my next move.

Thanks to those imperfect yet kind souls, Miranda and Igor, I've put my life back together. I'll try my best not to lose it all again.

 

[wrldrpblcblus]

Traffic control crackles over my inter-ship radio. "Lady Royale, this is Rostov Station. We are receiving your transponder code. Do you intend to dock? Over."

"This is Captain Freya Cazacu of the Lady Royale," I say back. "I confirm my intention to dock." I pause. "Over."

"Do you have any cargo to declare? Over."

"Negative. Over."

"Initiating long-range scan. Please do not adjust velocity."

The cargo bays are empty. I was on my way to pick cargo up when my thrust systems decided to burn most of my reaction mass without warning. Nothing gets flagged.

"Looking good, Lady Royale. You're cleared for docking port five. Cause no trouble now. Over."

"Roger that, Rostov Station. Moving to dock. Over and out."

Gravity falls away gently as the thrust cuts, and I begin to float in my seat and harness, gently tossed about by directional thrust.

I think back when this first happened to me: I vomited, and Igor laughed. "Not used to space, are ya?" I remember him saying. "Too much time on them spinning rings, I'd say. Don't worry, lass, it'll be second nature before ya know it."

I close my eyes and smile. It is second nature. The soft sway of zero-g manoeuvres tells me I'm a spacer, and I'm at home.

The gentle drift is interrupted by a jagged lurch as a docking clamp arm seizes the Lady Royale, and she's dragged to one of those simple airlocks at the edge of the station ring, the crude mechanism of the station's ageing machinery vibrating to the extent even I can feel it. Gravity returns as I'm pulled with the spin, and I'm pushed back into my seat by the centrifugal force.

Even the Lady Royale—a ship without a doubt over three times my age—has the same universal docking port as all but a few vessels of her size, and the shudders wane when she docks. I climb out of the coffin-sized piloting deck, and ascend the rusted ladder two flights to the upper airlock. I pass through the airlock with no dramas, and enter the 'hangar', a small room with curved corners and a lone traffic control operative in a booth behind a wire-mesh fence. He's middle-aged and bald, wearing the sad eyes of a long shift.

"Hey," I say.

He gives me a lazy salute with two fingers. "Captain Cazacu," he nods. "Nice little planet-hopper you got there. You from in-system?"

"No, 'cuz that's no planet-hopper," I say. "The Lady Royale can run the republic from Esteban to Danakai, despite how she looks."

He raises an eyebrow and looks at me straight. "Scans didn't pick up e-mat capacitors, captain. You hiding something from me?"

"I tripwire the jumps," I admit.

"All the time?" He doesn't pretend to believe it. "Hard to see how you ain't a cloud of atoms by now."

"Had an older mentor, a man of different times. He taught me things."

The operative leans back, conceding. "Can't tell if you got balls of tungsten or if you're just plain stupid." He cocks his head. "Y'know, some would say running that thing over c is illegal."

"You gonna arrest me?" I smile.

"If they paid me more I would," he laughs, waving me on. "Go on, I didn't see nothing. Welcome to Rostov Station."

I turn to leave. "Have a good one yourself, sir."

There's two men and a woman by the airlock exit to the main ring corridor, openly armed and wearing trouble. The lady stands straight, and swaggers with clear drunkenness toward me. She's wearing a hacked-up pilot's outfit adorned with makeshift gang symbols I don't recognise, bright red hair looking like it spends its time squashed beneath a helmet. Her toadies follow her, while she smiles.

"Captain Cazacu, whazzit?" She snaps with a relish.

"What's it to you?" I put my hand on my holster.

"Easy there," the lady holds her palms up, "there ain't no need for violence."

"Depends what you're asking," I say.

A smile crawls across her lips again. "We're just keeping the peace. That means there's a toll."

"I'm skint as-is," I say.

"Ain't my problem," she says.

"It sure as hell could be." My hand twitches atop my Tecza.

I faced folks like this with Igor before. He only paid when they meant business. These guys don't seem that serious, and they're clearly drunk. They'll back down if it escalates. I shout back to the traffic control man. "It true what they're saying?"

"They got guns and I don't," he yells back. "Do the maths."

"See?" Says the leader. "Pretty little thing like you don't wear bruises well, so how about you just give us fifty and we'll be on our way."

"Awful confident, you," I say.

She pops one of her knuckles. "You don't look like a fighter, young lady."

I pull out my Tecza and press it inches from her face. She flinches. The two goons draw their pistols and point them at me. "They'll be scraping you off the floor," I say.

The woman hasn't got much in the way of words and her eyes are wide. "You some sort of psycho?" She asks, finally, failing to keep her voice steady.

"This barrel can spit a diagnosis," I respond.

They know the score. We all got our fingers on the trigger, and we're all quick on the draw. "Anyone shoots, that's two dead ladies in the hangar," I say. "Think it shakes out better for all of us if you jog on." I put on a practised smile. "I got piss-poor trigger discipline, so count your chances quick."

A war plays out on her face. Fear conquers uncertainty. Frustration conquers fear. "Move back," she tells her goons with a snarl. "This ain't the end," she says to me.

"I ain't staying long," I tell her. "Happen to know where a girl can get some reaction mass around here?"

"Eat shit," she snarls. We all holster our pistols at the same time, and they quickly walk out in defeat.

I let out a deep sigh and wait for the adrenaline to seep out my system. My heart rate slows after some heavy breaths.

A shadow breaks apart round a shallow corner and a man in deep blue spacer garb steps out. He dresses like military, but he doesn't look like the kind of guy to get that stripe of medals on his chest. He's got a turkey's neck and he's tall and lean, like he's from a low-gravity planet, and indeed his movement seems strained in the full one gee of the station ring. He's smiling at me, like he's just witnessed a clever joke.

"Army, huh?" I ask.

He nods. "Yeah."

"Coulda helped me out back there," I say.

"Left me rifle at the bar," he says. "Handled yourself well, anyway."

"They gonna be trouble in future?" I ask.

He nods. "Local VAs, if you believe it."

"Vac Angels? All the way out here?"

Another nod. "They get everywhere."

"Well shit, did I piss off someone important?"

He belly-laughs. "Captain, that is Natasha Greaves, and she runs Rostov more than station council."

"She didn't seem like she takes that job seriously," I note.

"That's why she's here on Rostov, not Kygar or Vanhelm," he says.

"Good point." I size him up. "So what's your business, huh?"

He pauses, a thoughtful look on his face. "You a patriot, lady?"

"Not at all," I say.

"Why's that?" He asks, seeming genuine.

"Haven't got a bad word to say about your republic, soldier, but I'm not Astani. Hyacinth civvie, before Artov had his way."

"Huh," he says. "Don't see much of you, but I'm sorry about your home."

"It was nearly four years ago," I say, trying not to think about Alice. "I've moved on."

"Aye," he nods. "Take it you ain't exactly got posters of Victor Kayev next to your bunk, huh?"

"Kayeviki are kill-on-sight," I confirm. "Whenever I can."

"How many you got?"

"I've sent four to hell. Intend to send more." I haven't killed any Kayeviki, but something about this man makes me feel like I have to prove myself to him.

He extends a hand and nods with a measure of respect. "Lieutenant Casper Kvoss, UARS Bedlam. I may have a job for you."

I take his hand and shake it. "Captain Freya Cazacu, ISS Lady Royale. That job being?"

"Come with me," he says, leading me to the exit. "Gotta get you talking with the boss."

* * *​

It looks like it'd've been a quiet bar without the five navy spacers there. A shallow ceiling spits dim light from dying bulbs, the bartender is listless and demonstrably depressed, and several of the steel stools dotted around have crooked legs. Looks like the kind of place I'd go to unwind, which is no great endorsement of the establishment.

If Lieutenant Kvoss is from a low-grav planet, Captain Roper was probably born on a high-grav one. He's relatively short and squat, but with heavy-set brawn, broad shoulders, and thick bones, by the looks of it. He inspects me with the keen eye of a military officer, but they also have the opportunistic glint of a career pirate. "So," he says, "the El-Tee tells me you told Natasha fucking Greaves to piss off, and stuck a barrel in her face."

"That's correct, captain," I say.

"He also overheard you admitting you tripwire your jumps," he says.

"Also correct, captain," I say.

"You tell him you killed four Kayeviki," he says.

"Coulda been more, but I don't like getting 'em asleep," I say.

Roper frowns. "Why's that?"

"Kayeviki are everywhere, and they're always recruiting more. Not gonna change the world by killing 'em every now and then. I kill them for catharsis, captain, and that means seeing the life leave their scum eyes." I've learned I'm a good liar.

"Aren't you a little psychopath?" He grins. I realise, in the world of Captain Roper, this is a compliment. "Kvoss says you're from Hyacinth. They make you this way?"

"The Kayeviki made me this way," I correct him.

He smooths the stubble on his chin with a leathery hand, criss-crossed by scars and rad burns. "War's over," he says. "Can you believe that?"

"You gave as good as you got," I say.

He waves the very notion away. "Nah," he says. "Admiral Kordovskaya's lost her bloodlust. In the last war, she burned us straight to Yunoshichi and we saturated Kayev's World with fusion bombs. Now, she parades that treaty around and calls herself a peacemaker."

"They have our tech," I remind him. "From Hyacinth."

"We have more ships, with better soldiers," he says. "And we're reverse-engineering their shit. In a few more years we'd've been on even footing. But now we're letting 'em regroup, even when we got 'em on the ropes."

"You really think that?" I ask. "I thought they were about to knock at the doors of Danakai again."

"So say the strategists," he concedes, "who've never been to the front. But us out here, we know they were about to break. It's an instinct," he sighs, "civvies don't get it." He looks at the wall, and I imagine his gaze is piercing through into space. "We got a state-of-the-art combat frigate out there. Ylton-class. Torpedo bomber and gunship capability, boarding pods, long-range fire support, capable of sustained high-g manoeuvres beyond what the human body can stand. A shame to leave her sitting pretty."

"What are you getting at?" I ask.

"We need someone with guts and engineering expertise," says Roper. "All your tripwiring, I'd be surprised if you don't know your way around a starship."

"I was a civil engineer at Hyacinth," I respond. "I worked for the Lady Royale's previous captain for two years. I've never worked on anything military, but I doubt it's that different."

Kvoss whistles. "Hyacinth engineer, cap. Don't get much better than that."

Roper nods in agreement. "I'm willing to offer you a job," he tells me.

"How much you paying?" I ask.

He smiles. "Depends. Your opinion on chits?"

"Frontiersmen?"

"Yeah," says Roper.

"My old captain had no time for them. Apparently some chit hotshot shot his previous engineer up in a bar to stick it to the republic, or something. He once drew his gun 'cuz someone said Alahan had a point." This is all more-or-less true.

"I like this guy," chuckles Roper. "What happened to him?"

"He's dead," I say. "About a month ago. Dunno whether it was his age or the drink. I'm no coroner."

"Condolences," says Roper, now serious. "Sounds like an honest man."

"He was a smuggler," I say.

Roper smiles slightly. "A good man, then."

"He was a two-bit womaniser as well."

"Your friend, at least?" Asks Roper.

I sigh. "More or less."

"Then my condolences." He raises his glass. "To the captain."

I nod, raising my own. "To Igor Hashimoto."

We drink, Kvoss watching silently. There's a devil in his eyes, dancing to our conversation.

Roper wipes his mouth. "Where was I?"

"You were talking about chits."

"Ah," he nods. "We can't take the Kayeviki head-on. So we've scoped out a chit station. It's lightly-guarded, but we got intel that there's a lot of cred on their databanks."

"How much cred?" I ask.

"A decent amount." Roper pauses. "If we get it all, we're looking at a few million in station funds, which could keep the Bedlam flying for months, with enough left over to cover your services." He levels his gaze. "We'll do it on a standard pirate contract. Two shares for me, one and a half for the El Tee, and even split between everyone else."

I start thinking about how much money that means for me, and I suddenly realise it means quite a lot. "You know," I begin.

"What's that?" Asks Roper.

"I've always wanted to eat at a high-class Kygar diner."

Roper grins.

* * *​

The Bedlam's crew are nice enough. Kvoss gives me orientation and shows me to my bunk, which is utilitarian but comfortable. I bunk with Mixie, an eccentric woman with long dark curly hair and a mean smile. "Hey," she says, looking me up and down and grinning.

"Hi," I say, trying not to faint. I haven't really talked to a woman in several years and it shows.

There's also Lauren, a very chatty heavyset former marine, and Kamau, the pilot. He has a dark, cloudy expression, and looks like he's considering how best to kill everyone around him at all times.

Our voyage is to head to the jump point, then do a long string of high-frequency jumps across the Ester Stellar Corridor until we reach the Vosatyni system. Then, we move on Hargo Station, our target. All in all, it'll be a month to get there, and a month to get back.

"I hear you tripwired your last boat," Kamau warns me once. "Pull any shit like that on my baby and I'm throwing you out the airlock myself."

"Understood," I say, unsure how else to respond.

The Lady Royale is currently accumulating docking fees at Rostov Station, but I don't really mind. If all goes to plan, I'll have more than enough to pay them off.

Roper's a natural leader. He's no stranger to camaraderie, but I find myself incapable of refusing any order when he does give them out. "Cazacu, check up on the reactor." "Cazacu, we got a micrometeorite impact, put on your vac suit and check the hull." "Cazacu, police action nearby, get up a spoof of our transponder codes."

Sir, yes, sir. Everyone in the ship is clearly willing to follow the man out a damn airlock, myself included.

Mixie, for her part, is a natural lover. By night three she's teaching me a lot about my own biology, and I learn several things which probably make me a more complete person. It's not love, but I'm not about to say no to a pair of arms to lie in. The nice girl Igor wished for me will have to wait, but at least I'll have a lot to teach her. The point of two bunks seems moot, as we seem to spend every night in the same bed.

"You're not acting yourself," she says one night, stroking my neck.

"I've been thinking," I say.

She chuckles. "That's your problem. Thinking. I abandoned myself to fate long ago."

I sit up. "I'm serious, Mix."

Mixie sighs. "What's wrong?"

"Several million in cred on what's supposed to be a backwater station? Something don't add up, Mix."

She puts her hand on my shoulder and pulls me down gently. I let her. "Roper knows his stuff," she says. "I haven't even told you about Gon Rola. Johan Roper is the kind of man who doesn't take half-measures."

"What happened?"

"I hate war stories," she whispers, placing her hand on my stomach.

I take the hint, and roll back into her arms.

* * *​

It's onboard night time when I meet Roper at the bridge. "Get bored of Mixie?" He cackles.

My face goes red. "You knew?"

Roper bursts out laughing. "Cazacu, we have ears."

"Right." I try really hard to initiate a one-woman tripwire jump, but alas my body is not independently FTL-capable. "Nah, she's just tired and I can't sleep."

"Hope you haven't come here expecting the same thing," Roper snorts.

"Don't flatter yourself," I tease. "Never liked men."

"It's funny," says Roper. "She used to look a lot like me if I'd grown up somewhere closer to one gee. Folks said we coulda been brothers."

"No shot?" I sit down. "How much cred did the treatment cost her?"

"Came for free under her military healthcare package," says Roper. "Best surgeons in the Expanse. Astan used to give a shit about its soldiers, you know." His tone is genuine, and somewhat pained.

"It take some getting used to?" I ask.

"What do you think?" Laughs Roper. "Turns out my best friend's actually a lady, and gets a grade-A rack to boot."

"I'm not complaining," I say, smirking.

"Neither is she," says Roper. "She was a proper wreck beforehand. Having that sort of self-conflict destroys you."

"I can imagine."

We sit in silence for a while, gazing out at the electronic camera display, showing us the star-studded blackness of space. Roper ducks down suddenly, and pulls out a bottle of whiskey from under a console surface. "That's where I put it," he says. "You want some?"

"Sure," I say. He opens the bottle and takes a swig, then hands it to me. I do the same.

"Nervous?" Asks Roper. "We're a week out."

"Somewhat. But hey, only chits, right?"

Roper nods. "The galaxy's never seen a more pathetic people. I ain't saying it's innate, but the way I see it, if you grow up on a chit station, with chit parents, being taught everything you know by chits…" He sighs. "Past a certain point, can you be salvaged?"

"Heard nothing but bad things about them," I agree. I'm actually unsure about his point. Astanis and Frontiersmen are oil and water, for sure, and Frontiersman leadership seems to consider blowing up Astani merchant convoys a matter of principle, but he seems to hold hatred for even those born on one of their stations.

"They talk a big game," he says. "Defending the periphery, stopping the supposed woes of civilised life. Well I say I like civilisation, and I say they only say it's bad because they're incapable of self-government." His face turns into a snarl. "Give anyone this side of the dead zone a half-decent world or station, and they can make it a place worth living in. Only exception is chits. You could give them Eden and they'd ruin it. They enjoy living in their own filth." He looks me straight in the eye. "Cazacu, I don't believe in God, but if he do exist, then I say you're doing the Lord's work on this mission."

"Aye," I say, suddenly believing I'm doing the opposite of the Lord's work. "Forgive me though, cap, I'm mostly here for the cred."

"Appreciate your honesty," he says. "Better to know what you are than be something you aren't."

"Amen to that," I say.

We sit there the rest of the night, drinking until we fall asleep. I wonder how many innocent people I may end up killing.

 

[Solarshade]

I try really hard to initiate a one-woman tripwire jump, but alas my body is not independently FTL-capable.

Click to shrink...

lmao this is a good reference.

 

[wrldrpblcblus]

lmao this is a good reference.

Click to shrink...

what if neriene rao was a lesbian space pirate