“What?” I snort, hoping I misunderstand. “You guys running around working in your birthday suits? No thanks.” I shudder for effect. And then I actually picture him unzipping that flight suit and shudder in real disgust. Please, no. Never, ever. Not on my watch.
He winks at me, making my stomach churn even more. I say the first thing that comes to mind. “If you don’t quit looking at me like that I’m going to stab you in the eyeball.”
He leans back and barks out a laugh so loud it makes me jump.
My hand goes to my chest as my heart races. Then I scowl when I realize how girly that made me look. “Crazy bastard,” I mumble.
He’s still smiling. “Birthday suits. Why not? It does get hot in here sometimes.” He continues on, pointing to a panel on the wall glowing with different colored switches and buttons. “That’s your docking panel.” He’s back to being serious. “You can go manual down here or work it from the flightdeck. Sometimes it’s a bit futzy, so I recommend you position someone down here, just in case.”
“What? Futzy?” I walk by it as he cuts off down a hallway. “What do you mean?” I stare at the panel, wondering what the hell is going on with this thing. Is it broken? Are all DSs like this? I never used the simulator to run the more mundane systems on the DS; opening cargo doors and flushing filtration systems were too boring to waste sim time on, or so I thought. Now I’m thinking I should have spent some of my hours on something other than flying. To my credit, though, I did start to max out the Skill Levels on my last few sessions. Hopefully that means I’ll be able to get the damn thing out of here and into the Dark without damaging her hull. There’s gotta be someone who’ll stay on who knows how to dock this ship, right?
“I mean what I said.” His response to my question bounces around the metal walls, floors, and ceilings.
“You said it’s futzy.” I jog to catch up with him.
“Yeah. She’s an old ship. That means futzy electronics and such. You’ll figure out her quirks once you’ve flown a few million light years on her.” He turns around and walks backward. “Just better keep it local until you do. You wouldn’t want to learn about her non-spark problem halfway to Andromeda, now would ya?”
My face blanches as I imagine being adrift in the middle of nowhere without a gravity field holding me to the floors, slowly turning into a jellyfish as my bones disintegrate. But I manage to answer with false confidence anyway. “Probably not.”
He walks normally again, laughing to himself. “Probably not,” he mocks, shaking his head. “Oh, this is going to be one for the record books, all right.”
I steel myself against his condescension. Leaving home at sixteen and surviving these three, long years on the outskirts of civilization, crawling and fighting my way to get to where I am today… that ain’t nothin’. I’ll overcome this obstacle just like I have all the others, and in the meantime, I’ll pretend like I know what the hell I’m doing. What’s the worst that could happen, anyway? I could die in a massive explosion and turn into a wisp of smoke in less than a second. At least it’d be a quick death.
“How old are you anyway?” he asks, stopping just outside a metal door with a round spinning lock on its surface.
“Old enough.”
“Old enough to play cards. But are you old enough to pilot this ship? Manage a crew of ten men who go long stretches without seeing a real woman? Feed that many mouths? How you gonna pay for food and basic supplies?”
I look at the door next to my tour guide and lift my chin, ignoring the dread that wants to fill me full of darkness. “What’s behind that door?”
“Engine room.”
I nod once. “Let’s see it.”
“You gonna answer my question?”
I glare at him, staring deep into his muddy brown eyes. They look as dirty as the rest of him. “You gonna get on with my tour? Because I don’t have all day.”
He shrugs, and rotates the airlock wheel, shoving the heavy door into the wall pocket with the help of his shoulder once it’s free of its locking mechanism. “Suit yourself.”
I walk into the dark space, inhaling the scent of warm machinery and buzzing circuitry, smiling as I realize that all of this glorious metal and polymer is mine. Every last stinking bolt and burning fuse has my name on it. My pride lasts all of about three seconds before a strange odor intrudes on my thoughts and something that looks out of place catches my eye. Is that smoke I see by that panel over there?
A noise off to my right pulls my attention away from the panel and the smoke. My eyes widen as the maker of that sound comes into view. Before I can think to keep my thoughts to myself, the words are coming out of my mouth.
“Holy shit, you’re a ginger.” I’ve never seen a real one in my entire life, although I’d heard stories about them: hair as orange as coppura wire, spots of dark color on their faces and arms, teeth yellow like a desert yew flower.
He holds out his hand and smiles. “Yes, indeed. Gus is the name. And you are…?”
Chapter Three
GUS SMILES, HIS TEETH GLOWING in the darkened room. They’re not nearly as yellow as the myths would have had me believe.
“Cass Kennedy,” I say, taking his hand in mine, gripping it like my father taught me an eon ago. ‘The power play starts at the introduction,’ he’d say.
I can’t believe there’s a ginger working on my ship. I’m trying not to stare at the spots on his face, remnants of Earthbound DNA that have been otherwise rubbed out through medical interventions over two centuries. Be cool. Don’t be a ginger-freak. I gaze around the room as our hands drift apart, taking in the wall of computers, the machines churning and humming, and the table to my right full of random parts and circuitry. The smoke has dissipated, making me think I imagined it. “You in charge here?”
“Sure am.”
I can feel his eyes roaming over my body, but each time I look directly at him, his attention shifts to the ceiling or the floor. I’m used to the attention, but I always ignore it. I decided long ago to trade on my intelligence and not any sort of feminine wiles I might have buried deep down inside, figuring the former to be more reliable and longer-lasting anyway. Besides, I was never much for flirting. Whenever I’ve tried, it’s come out awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved.
Instead, I’ve learned to stick with the things I’m good at, namely: playing givit, fighting —old school hand-to-hand combat being my favorite style—, reading people’s unspoken thoughts and using them to my advantage, and pushing toward my goal of captaining my own DS. What can I say? I’m not a very complicated girl; what you see is what you get with Cass Kennedy. I wear my knife on my leg so no one can claim surprise when they feel its blade.
“Like hell he’s in charge.” Another voice comes from behind the first, and a second glowing smile and shock of orange hair comes out of the darkness. “I’m chief here, not him.” He holds out his hand, ignoring my look of surprise at finding not just one ginger, but two, living on the ship, each a copy of the other. “I’m Tam, head engineer, nice to meet you.”
Gus elbows him in the ribs. “Mechanics engineer. Not electronics.” He winks at me. “That’s me. Head electronics engineer.”
“Clones,” I say without thinking. First gingers and then clones. Of course; it makes complete sense now. I’m only a little disappointed to find out this isn’t the universe’s work in front of me. All those years of the OSG’s careful DNA monitoring and attention to family lineage to keep the human race as pure as possible has had some negative effects — like no more gingers for us to stare at.
Gus scowls, while Tam leans over to spit on the floor.
“Clones?” Tam says, practically snarling. “Hell no, we ain’t no clones.”
Gus chimes in. “We’re au naturel. Check it.” He lifts his chin, keeping his eyes on me. His voice changes with the stretching of his throat. “See?”
I look for the telltale blue cloning mark and see nothing but a guy who really should check the creases of
his neck for dirt once in a while. Flaming dwarf stars, have mercy. Don’t they have water on this ship?
“What?” he asks, catching my expression. “What’s wrong?”
Tam looks at his brother’s neck and laughs. “You could have a tattoo of a fucking warship on your gullet and she’d never see it, you’re so damn dirty. Why don’t you take a shower once in a while?”
Gus flicks his brother with his rag, making it snap against his bare arm. “Why don’t you fix the fucking filter so I can take a shower, dick?”
I bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud, worried if I join in with the game they’ll think less of me. A captain has to be serious and above stupid conversations about taking showers if she wants to have the crew’s respect, and I really need to keep these guys onboard with me if at all possible. The friends who’ve committed to following me in this grand scheme have no training for running an engine room, and a DS is only as good as its engineers, that’s a fact. Without these two gingers or someone with their skills onboard, my DS will be just a floating tub of junk worth less than the crud under my fingernails.
I take a quick look at my hands. Ew. There really is a lot of crud under there. I should probably stop judging the creases in Gus’s neck. Or was it Tam’s neck? I look up and realize I cannot tell them apart. Just then, the reason for the dirty neck hits me.
“There’s a problem with the water filtration?” I look from one engineer to the other, waiting for an explanation. This could be a big issue, one that could keep us at this station for much longer than I’d planned. Water filtration hangups usually indicate a problem with the hydrothrusters, and even more alarming, the available water supply. Without fresh water, both crews and their biosystems die. Water flowing freely and properly for all systems is the number one priority on any DS that means to actually function as a drifter’s home. Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into?
“Not too big a problem,” Gus says —or the one I think is Gus— smiling much harder than he should. “Just need a few parts is all.”
“I hope you brought a bucket of credits with you,” Tam says, shaking his head slowly, “cuz we have a list a mile long of parts we need.”
“Parts you want, not need,” my tour guide says, annoyed, stepping back into the corridor.
I look from the twins to my guide, remembering my entrance minutes earlier. The gruff old guy turned the handle to not just open the door, but to unlock it. I turn to face him. “Wait a minute … you shut them in here and lock it?”
The guide shrugs, like it’s no big deal to lock crewmen inside a dark room all day and night. “Captain’s orders. Everyone who’s on duty, stays on duty.” He glares at the twins. “Some people have a tendency to stray when we’re docked, otherwise.”
The twins look at me, their faces the picture of innocence as they speak simultaneously. “We have no idea what he’s talking about.”
“Come on, Captain,” the guide says, gesturing down the corridor. “I have a meeting with a whore that starts in about an hour, and I don’t want to be late.” He walks away, leaving me in the doorway to the engine room feeling slightly queasy.
“Lucky girl, that whore,” Gus says with exaggerated wistfulness, his eyes following the man as he clomps away, his heavy boots clanging on the metal grate flooring.
I imagine that bow-legged, smelly, scarred-up old man standing in the middle of my bedroom, stark naked with expectations of sex, and simultaneously realize how close I came to sharing his whore’s fate today in that hand of givit.
My fingers go to my lips and press. I talk around them. “Oh, God, I think I just vomited in my mouth a little.” I can’t stop looking at the hunch-backed figure of the man who will soon be paying a ton of money for sex, because that’s the only way he’d get anyone to accommodate his needs.
“Awesome.” Tam starts tucking in his shirt like he’s suddenly in a big hurry. “Well, Captain Whatever-Your-Name-Is, it was nice meeting you, but I’m outta here.” He glances at the disappearing form of my guide and then grins at me as he steps out into the corridor. He’s centimeters away; I can smell the odor of ship mechanics on him, and it’s not entirely unpleasant. Obviously, I’ve been dreaming about owning a DS for way too long.
“Where are you going?” I ask as his brother Gus steps out into the corridor to join his twin and licks his fingers, using his spit to slick his crazy red hair down.
“Into the station,” Gus responds, buttoning the top of his work shirt. “Gotta find a job. How do I look?” He grins as he waits for my reaction to his hasty ministrations.
I have no idea what to say in response. His hair looks like it was washed two weeks ago, dried behind a DS thruster, and spritzed with a coating of pig oil.
“Uh… fine?”
He starts to walk away, but I grab the sleeve of his shirt. “Wait! Stay. Don’t go look for another job.”
Gus looks down at my hand and then up at my face. “You got money to pay wages?”
“I’ve got something better than that.” I lift my chin, hoping he won’t notice I’m shaking a little over that slight fib.
His eyes widen and then begin to roam over my body again, only this time he’s not trying to hide his interest.
I glare at him, ready for battle. “Not that, idiot.” If he even thinks about laying a finger on me, I will cut him to the bone, and it’s better he knows that right up front.
He smiles briefly, maybe a little ashamed. “Oh. Sorry.” He cringes as the next words come out of his mouth. “But honestly, that’s the only thing I know of that’s better than straight up gencredits or foodcredits. No offense to your ladyness or whatever.”
“Forget that shit,” I say brushing off his awkward apology. “I’m talking about something much more valuable than credits. More long-lasting. I’m talking about freedom.” The fire in my belly lends a fervor to my words that I feel with every nanogram of my soul. I’ve been dreaming of this event for so long, it’s engraved in my mind. I know exactly how it needs to happen and how to get to my destination. I just need like-minded people to buy into my vision and help me. This is a journey that cannot be taken alone.
The brothers exchange looks.
“Freedom?” Tam asks.
“Tell us more,” Gus says, moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with his twin.
My words come out in a rush. “Stay and work as engineers for me, and together we drift. We do our own thing.” I nod at the heavy steel entrance to the engine room. “And your door stays unlocked.”
“But what about sex?” Gus asks. “Because if I don’t get to a settlement once in a while, I…”
Tam punches him in the back. “Shut up, dick, just listen to her.” He drops his voice and speaks softly out of the side of his mouth. His gaze is fixed on me but his words are for his brother. “It’s time to negotiate.”
Gus nods slowly, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah, riiight. Okay.” He turns his attention to me, his grin back in place, but this time, it’s decidedly sharp. “What else besides freedom and the drifting stuff?”
I shrug, trying to calm my racing pulse through sheer power of will. “What else do you want?” Anything but sex or money. Say anything but sex or money, and I’ll find a way to make it work.
“A take,” Tam says in a rush, “of whatever you bring on board. To do with what we want.”
Boom, goes success. I just got my hands on his givit, yeah baby.
I fight to keep the smile off my face. “What if I take cargo for transport to outer settlements?” I clamp my teeth down on the inside of my cheek waiting for his answer.
“Why would you want to do that?” Gus asks, bewildered.
Tam nudges him, but keeps his attention on me. “We’ll take a percentage of the transport fee.”
“What if it’s hard goods for sale?” I’m definitely warming to the idea of a split. This could make my complete lack of funds a non-issue, or at least less of one. Not that I have any cargo or goods to sell or anything else, but I can
get some. I know I can. I have friends, I have connections, and I have desperation, which is a pretty powerful thing in the hands of this girl.
“If you have hard goods, we could take a share and do what we want with it. Sell it, use it.” Tam shrugs. “It would be ours.”
Gus points at me, sounding tough for the first time since I met him. “And no take-backs. Blood contract. Nothing less.”
“You coming or not?!” my guide yells from around the corner.
“We’ll discuss the percentage when you get back,” I say in a low voice. “I have to finish the tour and get the keycodes. Don’t be late. We take off in two hours at zero three hundred.”
Gus and Tam exchange looks and devious smiles.
“She thinks she’s getting keycodes,” Gus says.
“Silly little girl,” Tam says.
Less than a second after that last word leaves his mouth, I have Tam shoved up against the wall with my knife at his throat. My blood is boiling in my veins, and I’m completely committed to the idea of spilling some of his. He’s just found one of my hot buttons and pressed it, poor guy.
He looks down at me with surprise and fear in his eyes. “Uhhh…”
“Don’t ever call me that again.” I growl my words so softly only he can hear. Silly little girl. I haven’t had the luxury of being one of those since I was two years old. That’s when my world changed forever and I was forced to become something else entirely.
“Ohhhh kaaaaay.” Tam’s trying to smile, but failing miserably. “Noted.”
Gus looks away to hide his grin.
Sheathing my dagger at my thigh, I leave the gingers to their business. Gus’s peals of laughter follow behind me, but I ignore him. Better that they know right from the start that I’m a crazy bitch who’s a little sensitive about certain kinds of name calling. That way, when they sign their blood contract with me, they won’t be able to back out later crying foul.
Chapter Four
“SO THAT’S IT,” THE SMELLY tour guide says. “You’ve seen most of her. And it’s time for me to go, so…”