"Uh…" you rub your palm against your cheek. "...Sanngriðr." You flick your finger just above the controls, the system detecting the movement and bringing up the simplified two dimensional plotting system - babies first orbital chart. You make a tugging motion and it goes from 2D to volumetric, filling the air before you in the cabin with shimmering lines and glittering dots. If they had been to scale, then your ship and every moon would have been nearly invisible dots, lost in the vastness of space, with only the massive gas giant Geirskögul being even remotely visible.
They weren't though.
Humans of every type could squish space down until it made sense.
Arren nods.
"It's the closest trading port," you say, quickly, as if you had to explain yourself - nervousness burning in your stomach like spiced fish. "We can burn at point one…point two Gs for a few hours. We've got, uh, about two hundred and ninety KPS, so, we can spend…" You do some math, nervously, tapping at the touchpad to make sure you're not messing it up. Only after the computer and you agree do you nod. "Okay, eighteen hours at point one G…uh…" You blink. "Oh. We'll be there."
Arren nods. "It's just Sanngriðr, it's not even that far." He smiles at you, gently. "We'll get there. Just a few hours."
"Right," you say. Your hands are shaking. "This is my first time I've ever been in space, you know?"
"Yeah, mine too," he says, and your cheeks darken.
"Then why are you so calm?"
"I'm not," he says, then blushes. "Just. Trying to be cool for the prettiest girl in the village."
Your fingers, which are trying to input the drive commands, flash up the coordinates of
fhuvbgdaskd,l;bijh. Your hand goes to your scar as you hastily delete with the other. Arren takes your hand, leans over, and kisses you.
Right on your scar.
Uhh…
Radiators are deployed, right? Right. Yes. Radiators are deployed.
Cabin hot.
Uh.
"S-starting burn!" you squeak. The acceleration pushes you back. Just like home. You breathe in, then out. "Okay." You look at Arren. "Now, we check the rest of the ship!"
Arren unstraps and you and he walk to the ladder that leads from the cockpit to the living quarters. They're…pretty tiny. Even by your standards. There's a single sleeping bunk for the three person crew - they hot bunk, apparently, with two on shift and one sleeping, alternating as needed. There is a small kitchen nook that has a heater system for turning prepackaged meals from inedible to hot but inedible. There is a bathroom that doesn't even have a door - a zero-G toilet and a curtain is all you really get. Then there's the bulkhead leading down to the reactor and engineering and machine shop level, and the two doors to the 'left and right' that let you access and maintain the sandcasters.
This means that a worrying portion of your living space is dominated by the internal machines of guns - heavy loading racks, full of the thick, dull brown containers that hold the ammo for the sandcasters, curled up on the walls like big coiled snakes, ready to be fed into the weapons. A sandcaster might not…seem like a dangerous weapon compared to heavy coilguns and guass cannons and missiles and nuclear bombs but you knew the basic math - at the velocities space combat tended to be fought at, even ferric sand could ablate armor off, rip hull plating to shreds, blow off antennas, smash drive cones…
Their main issue was they were short range.
"Look at our very own James Holden," Arren says, teasing. "Already steely eyed, evaluating our weapons."
"Shuuuuut uppppp!" you say, elbowing him. He laughs, catches your elbow. He's strong and remembering that strength makes your cheeks flush. "I am not."
You kind of are. You'd read the
James Holden Adventures like…fifty billion times.
"Still, it's…not bad," Arren says. His family was richer than yours, by a bit, so you can tell he's trying to be optimistic. "And we can expand it when we make it big. Maybe get an Epstein drive, then attach more compartments…"
"Get a real bed," you say, softly, looking at the bunk. It's just a sleeping bag with a bunch of velcro straps.
"Nah," Arren says. "That one's good."
"Really?" you ask, laughing and turning to face him. You flash a toothy smile. Your belly feels warm. But it's not a sick warm. It's…tingly. Your cheeks heat as the thought begins to drum into your head.
Alone on a ship with Arren. Alone on a ship with Arren.
Your skin tingles.
"Yeah," Arren says. He takes a step closer to you. He's taller than you. Stronger than you.
Like him.
No. Shut up. Shut the FUCK up, brain, you will not do that. You try and force down the tiny spurt of panic, but somehow, strangling it just makes it wriggle harder. You breathe faster - and Arren reaches up to caress your cheek. You flinch. He draws his hand back, then smiles, gently.
"It's okay, Isa." You blush, looking away, then force yourself to press your cheek against his palm. Arren leans down and he kisses the top of your head. Gentle. His kiss then moves from your hair to your forehead, tracing a line of soft, warm pressure against you. You close your eyes.
Murmur something unintelligible.
His mouth and yours meet.
His tongue dips in.
Your toes curl and your head spins.
Arren draws back. He's quiet. "I know…I don't know exactly what Father Richter…did. But I know it was bad. And…I can, you know. Wait as long as i need." His cheeks are flushed and it's…it's funny, Arren is doing his best to be the sweetest, best boy in the solar system.
But he's still a nineteen year old virgin and you can
fucking tell.
You giggle. Then murmur, softly. "I, uh…I know one way…um…" You bite your lip.
"Oh?"
You grab him and spin him around. Arren, more surprised than anything, stumbles, and falls against the velcro wall. Your grin can best be described as…gremlinish as you lock down the straps, pinning his arms above his head. You lick your lips as Arren struggles weakly.
"There," you say as you drop to your knees. "...safe."
"...oh…" Arren says, his eyes wide.
The sound of a zipper is shockingly loud over the hum of air recyclers.
"
Oh."
You grin, then pause.
"Uuh, okay… so, what do I do now?"
—
HEINRICH
You're spooning noodles into your mouth before they get cold, your eyes skimming your newsfeed, when Shaddid enters your office with a look like she was smelling something bad. You sigh, quietly, then look up at her, slurping the last noodle into your mouth. You hold up your finger before Shaddid says anything, chewing. Swallow.
Shaddid's got a face built for frowning. It's all angles and edges, with lips that come to thin little lines. In an earlier era, you might have measured her skull and decided she had the brainpan of a police chief. Now, you just had to look at her haircut - which was cop as they came.
She flicks her finger on her hand terminal. "We have a job for you."
Your terminal flashes the file up - it's a case file. You don't even open it as you slide your half eaten noodles away from you and point the recyclable bioplastic spoon at Shaddid like it's a weapon.
"You are not my boss,
setara mali. I-" you flip your wrist to your chest, palm flat against your heart. "I am engaged in my own private investigation firm, as you well know."
You've tried this excuse out a few times.
It gets the same result.
Those thin lips get thinner and she tilted her head. "No. Your company was bought out by my boss' company when they moved into Sigdrifa and now, you are also Star Helix, no matter how much you
whine about it, Heinrich, you asshole. So do your damn job if you want to eat this week."
You've already tapped open the case and are starting to read it. Your brow furrows. "Julia Sigaurd Thele-Mao, runaway daughter…" You keep reading. A very, very, very wealthy member of a very large corporation based on the shambled wreck that was Himmilguard, back on Erde, wanted his daughter to come back home. You read the age. She was twenty two. You sigh, slowly. "...you want me to abscond with her, to return her home in bondage?"
"It's a kidnap job," Shaddid says, with her normal complete lack of anything approaching diplomatic tact or empathy.
…really, what were you expecting, she's a cop.
You lean slowly back in your seat. "I could find new employment at any time if I so wished,
setara mali," you say.
That was a threat you hadn't brought out before. Star Helix was running ragged on the station. Nearly three million people lived here, even after the War, and Star Helix had the dubious privilege of providing the dubious idea of 'security' to all of them under the auspices of the Sigdrifa Colonial Administration. The fact no one really knew who the SCA even was the colony
of anymore just meant this station was like thousands of others spread across the solar system - everyone trying to keep the names and props of the old world order going, purely because the alternative was to let everything fall to pieces.
You were all on very tiny, very thin, very sharp knife edges, and everyone had gotten far, far, far too close to slipping off during the Starving Years after the War.
…god, you were such a pretentious little prick, weren't you? You had been
two at the time, what the fuck did you know about it?
Shaddid doesn't even flinch.
"Then I give the case to Müller," she says.
Silence.
You sigh, then rub your thumbs against your eyes. "Well. If you are going to stoop to such low forms of extortion and-"
The door shuts behind her. She's already gone.
You mutter under your breath. "
Xélixup, unte gonya mi ge da stars tu? wupo fo wa thousand mothers. Welwala piece of…
" You finish it off with a double bird at the door, before punching the air, just to get all the mad out of your system.
That done, you settle back and start actually reading the casefile.
Julia Sigaurd Thele-Mao, daughter of Julius Von Thele-Mao. He'd been born on Erde with more money than any particular God you wanted to reference, and had run a shipping empire so vast and powerful that even the bones of it were bigger than you. Julia was the middle daughter - she had two brothers named Peter and Michel, and an older sister named Clarissa and younger sister named Herja. Okay, so, middle daughter, surrounded by siblings all clamoring for the parents attention, tons of money. You already had half an idea of what she'd be like just from this.
You keep reading.
She'd been spotted on freighters throughout the Belt after dropping out of a college course being run on one of the institutes that was still operational on Elbe, some of them more closely affiliated with the OPA than others. You started by immediately cross referencing to see which part of the OPA the freighters had been in - because there was OPA, there was OPA, and there was OPA. Were they the kind of genocidal lunatics from the Free Navy who thought throwing rocks at planets with billions of people on them were a great way to something something secure independence of the outer planets, or were they just barely reformed pirates like Golden Bough or lovable mercs like Checkmate.
Hmm…
Looked like closer to Checkmate than Free Navy.
Good.
Well, not good, it meant that Julia was doing something she actually believed in and you were being compelled by the merciless gears of capitalism to go and drag her home. You put your hands against your face, rubbing them. The spin-gravity of Sigdrifa feels weirdly heavy - as if rather than just a standard third of a G pushing you down, it's the entire weight of a dwarf planet on your shoulders.
"I hate my job," you whisper.
Worse, your noodles are cold now.
—
Where to begin investigating first?
[ ] Stick to the computer investigations. Try and narrow down the most recent freighter she's been on.
[ ] Hit the streets. At least two of these freighters have been to Sigdrifa within the past month, they have to have talked to people.
[ ] Write in
)
