Chapter 14: Chapter 3 – Part 2

Seventy-five hours, nine meals, five massages, and three marathon sex sessions later, the drones finally caught up with the Daedalus.  Wren was in the hold, bouncing on her toes with excitement.

 

“What is... with you?” Bonnie grunted, in between push ups.

 

“Are you kidding me?  This is like Christmas!  I get a new toy!”

 

Bonnie stopped and rolled back onto her knees.  “It’s not a toy,” she said, incredulously.  “It’s a guard droid.”

 

“Oh,” she said, with a wave of her hand, “same thing.”

 

“It’s not.  This one might explode.”

 

“Nightmare difficulty level,” Wren intoned, with a fit of giggles as she peeked through the porthole.  “We’ll get it all untangled.”

 

Bonnie dropped back down, and got through one-and-a-half more push ups before she said, “Wait, we?”

 

Wren scoffed.  “Yeah, I mean, chances are pretty good this might put a hole in the hull.  I would think you’d have more of a vested interest.  Plus, with your ordnance experience—”

 

“I mostly handled the ballistic rifles.”

 

“Still,” the blue-haired girl added.  “I don’t know the first thing about that kind of stuff.”

 

“Didn’t you say you rigged a tactical nuke to your asteroids?”

 

Wren smirked slyly.  “You’d be surprised what a few blinking red lights will do to the imagination.”

 

“Oh my god,” Bonnie said, blinking in sudden apprehension, “you bluff, like, everything, don’t you?  You’re like some kind of evil genius.”

 

Wren grumbled and shook her head.  “Whatever ends up being the least amount of work.”

 

“I’m glad you’re so lazy.”

 

“I wouldn’t say I’m so lazy.  More like... just lazy enough.”

 

“That’s gotta be a tough needle to thread,” Bonnie said with a smirk.

 

“We all have our crosses to bear.”

 

Wren’s giddiness reached peak girlish glee when the hull carried to them the vibrations of contact, as the crates settled into the airlock.  The drones returned to their docking, in what used to be the torpedo bay alongside the hull, while the airlock pressurized.

 

It was easy to tell the bits of cargo apart.  The large, shiny ferroplastic crate with the Torrentus logo emblazoned on every side held the unassembled pieces of an android, while the two metal cases that looked like they were old enough to have been made on Earth were clearly the bombs.  Wren dropped to her haunches and stared at them for minutes on end.

 

“The suspense,” Bonnie said, drolly, as she squatted down beside her.

 

Wren leaned over, conspiratorially, and whispered, “I thought of about a hundred ways this could work.  Or… like a hundred ways I could rig something like this given five minutes and the right materials.”

 

“Unhelpful.”

 

“Exactly,” Wren said, excitedly.

 

“You have strange reactions to things.”

 

Wren licked her lips.  “My scanner says there’s not a lot of explosive charge in there.  Some unstable nitrates and a pressurized vessel.”

 

Bonnie narrowed her eyes.  “So the nitrates rupture the tank, tank explodes, and... shrapnel?”

 

The blue-haired girl nodded.  “That’s about the size of it.”

 

“Well what if we just contain it?”

 

Wren turned back toward her.

 

“You’ve got all these crates of food.  Are any of them durable enough to just stick that thing inside of?  Let it go off and absorb the damage?”

 

Wren blinked.

 

“I mean, they’re not very big.  Can we just take out some of the foodstuffs?”

 

The blue-haired girl frowned, and walked over to the aisles of food crates.  “I’ve never paid much attention to these,” she said, as she rapped her knuckles against them.  “Not aluminum.  Probably some kind of steel.”  She frowned in thought.  “On the low side, that’s like… three hundred megapascals shear strength?  Small pressurized tank like that’s probably much lower, and the nitrates won’t likely yeah this will work.”

 

Bonnie just stared at her, and Wren smiled.

 

They quickly emptied two of the foodstuff crates, and hauled them over to the airlock.

 

“Careful,” Wren said, as they lowered the first metal case.  “Careful.”

 

Once they had the lid snapped into place, they went over to the second crate.  Wren was carrying over the lid and Bonnie was sliding the case a few inches, to be as close as they felt possible, when suddenly the first crate made a loud popping sound, deformed like crazy,  and jumped three feet in the air.

 

Bonnie and Wren only barely had time to look at each other.

 

“Throw it,” Wren cried, as she ran forward wielding the lid like a shield.

 

The redhead quickly tossed the second explosive crate into the empty case.  It made a terrifying rattle, but Wren dove over it with the lid underneath her.

 

BOOM

 

The next minute was very hazy for Wren, but she remembered laughing hysterically once she stopped rolling.

 

***

 

“Fuck,” Wren cried, as she threw the burned-out brushless motor across the hold.

 

“Ready to give up yet?” Bonnie said, seemingly putting emphasis on the final word to reiterate how many times she’d already asked.

 

“I don’t have the right skills to do this.  I’m an engineer, not a developer.”

 

“I don’t think Jackson was expecting you to have solved it by the time we got back.  He has people for that.”

 

Wren shook her head, and made a gruff sound in her throat.  

 

“Also, maybe unhackable really means unhackable.”

 

“Nah,” Wren said.  “The guy who designed these is a loser.  I know his work.”

 

“You know him?”

 

Wren frowned and picked up one of the bot’s arms.  “Jyi Bao has been trying to buy my scanning platform for years.  One time, they brought me into this lab space on Port Houston that they shared with Torrentus and… uh... Capet Industries, and I met a bunch of their engineers.  This pompous douche walks right up to me and shows me an early prototype of this exact unit.  Said it was going to be ‘free of all the usual weaknesses that guard droids suffered from’.  He even let me have a go at it to see if I could crack it.”

 

Wren licked her lips and sat back.  “Now, I don’t know shit about droids so him challenging me was bullshit from the start, but I wanted to bust his bubble so bad.  He was pointing at the console, trying to get me to white hat his code for him, but instead I took a flat head screwdriver to the torso casing, popped out the back plate, and shorted the battery to one of the control boards.  Burned it out hard.  Place went dead silent.”

 

She sat back, chuckling and feeling very proud of herself, until she realized that the current iteration of said droid was stymieing her.  Then her sour mood returned.

 

***

 

“Have you met this guy before?” Wren said, trying to look around as discreetly as she could.

 

“No,” Bonnie said, “and stop doing that.  You’re as subtle as a herpes outbreak.”

 

“Ouch,” Wren said, laughing.  “Fine!  I’ll just sit here and drink my beer.”

 

Bonnie rolled her eyes and sipped from her smaller glass of spirits.  Wren hadn’t recognized the name of it, but it looked like whiskey and smelled like welding torch fuel.  

 

Of course, Wren couldn’t really stop looking when there was so much to see.  She had long since stopped going into the bars at the stations she stopped at after her mining hauls because the clientele there tended to be too mundane.  A corporate bar in a corporate town.  They invariably piped in commercials for themselves when they weren’t actively patting themselves on the back.  The lower class bars tended to be only slightly less obnoxious, and it was never unclear that ‘they’ were watching.

 

In her myopic misanthropy, Wren had overlooked the fact that spacer bars were much more colorful.  The augments alone were worth the price of admission.  Several people had colorized their skins to fantastic greens and blues.  Some had tattoos that glowed, and one woman in the corner was either flexing constantly or her tattoo was moving.

 

Either way, Wren was pleased.

 

Wren’s blue hair had been inherited.  Her mother had augmented her own hair when she’d been younger and wilder, and the trait passed on.  For the first time in a long time, Wren looked around and felt like she’d maybe found her people in the larger sense.  These were Bonnie’s people.  This was Bonnie’s crowd.  These were the people she fought for.  These were the people they fought for, even if the corporations had no idea they were at war at all.

 

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They would, eventually, but for now all the jobs they were pulling were very small.

 

“Alright,” Bonnie said, looking down at her p-comm.  “Payment confirmed, and the shipment delivered.”

 

Wren blinked.  “That’s it?  We’re not meeting them here?”

 

“You watch too many vids,” the redhead said, smirking.  “Professional courtesy.  We give them some time to clear out, then we’ll head back.  The stuff will be waiting for us in the airlock.  We’ll take it inside, confirm the manifest, and let them know everything was good.”

 

“But that’s so boring!”

 

“Weapons purchases involve a lot of well-armed people who want something from each other.  This is the clean way to do it.”  Bonnie took another sip and stared over Wren’s shoulder for a moment.  “Hey, I know we were going to go shopping, but I might have found a way to make this layover a bit more exciting.”

 

Wren sat forward, eyes wide, and smiled.

 

The redhead licked her lips, and ran her tongue along the tips of her teeth.  “Back at Chen Shih station… when we were in front of that transparent wall…”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Is there a… an exhibitionist side to you?  Like, did being watched do much for you?”

 

The blue-haired girl frowned in thought.  She didn’t think she was ready to dive into the unasked question, the deeper question that this conversation would inevitably lead to, and instead played for time.  “It didn’t not work.  I liked that it seemed to work for you, but honestly, once I pop those pills I lose a lot of awareness.”

 

Bonnie laughed.  “Yeah, I’ve noticed you kind of hulk out.”

 

“Oh, I like that.”  She smirked and raised her arms in a double biceps flex, nodding even though she knew her arms were nothing special.  Not like Bonnie’s.  Still, it was a good feeling.

 

“The reason I’m asking,” she said, “is because although exhibitionism and voyeurism are two sides of the same coin, they don’t always overlap.  In fact, I bet they only rarely overlap.”

 

Wren furrowed her brow.  “Are you asking if I like to watch?”

 

Bonnie bit her lip hard, and glanced over Wren’s shoulder again.  Wren started to turn, but stopped when Bonnie spoke again, saying, “Ordinarily, I’m not one for sharing.  I had a guyfriend who was poly once upon a time.  He tried to get me to be okay with it, and I didn’t handle it well.”

 

“I’ve never given it much thought,” Wren said slowly, “but I’m not really built for jealousy.”

 

Bonnie reached across the table, and laid her hand on Wren’s.  “That’s a bigger conversation, and really getting into that would maybe miss the point entirely because they might be leaving right now.”

 

Wren turned, following Bonnie’s extended pointer finger, and found herself staring at a thin, short blue-haired girl in a white shirt and blue shorts.  It was eerie, but not so eerie as to enter the realm of disbelief.  She was shorter than Wren, with a smaller bust, but it looked like she was wearing a costume.  A Wren costume.

 

“That’s how he had thirty of them,” Wren whispered.  “He’s selling them.”

 

“How would you feel if I fuck her while you watch?”

 

Wren nearly gave herself whiplash whirling back around.  “What?  No!  What?”

 

Bonnie’s face lit up.  “Oh my god.  Did I just rattle you?”

 

“No!  I—”

 

“I did!  Holy shit.  I need to understand this!”

 

Wren swallowed hard.

 

“You have ice water in your veins!  I’ve seen you play chicken with death and win.  I mean, she’s cute, but she’s a copy of the original at best!  Why did that rattle you?”

 

“It’s hard to explain,” Wren said sheepishly.  “I just… I’ve been…”

 

Bonnie licked her lips and leaned over the table.  “This is fascinating.  Look at you blush!  What sorcery is this?”

 

“Look,” Wren said.  “I’m riffing here so this might not make sense, but I’m quite comfortable with being me, and me marches to the beat of a different drum.  I mean, it’s not like I go out of my way to think outside the box, I just don’t see the box at all.”

 

“And now here’s this little cutie,” Bonnie said, leaning to the side and smiling into the distance, “suddenly marching right behind you, and you don’t know how to feel seeing me be attracted to them?  That about the size of it?”

 

Wren turned again, this time more fully around in her chair, and the Wren-alike was looking their way.  She gave Wren a big, goofy smile and a nervous wave.

 

“She thinks we’re both playing dress up too,” Wren said, turning back.  “Is this a thing?  Looking like me?  This is too much.”

 

“I hope you’re being metaphorical about it being too much, because she’s on her way over here.”

 

“What?!”

 

“Just be cool,” Bonnie said.  “Here she comes.”

 

“Hello,” the newcomer said nervously, waving now with both hands.  “I love your costumes so much!”

 

Wren and Bonnie shared a muted glance.

 

“You two looked really cute together from across the room.”

 

“Well thank you,” Bonnie said, smiling a bit more widely with every passing second.  “You hear that?  She’s much better at compliments than you are.”

 

"Oh, I'm a he, actually,” the boy said, even more sheepishly.  “I'm just a big fan and it's not safe to do this back on my home station.  For, like, a whole slew of reasons."

 

Wren blinked slowly.  “I’m not sure I understand what’s happening here… like… at all.”

 

“Well, I mean…”  He trailed off and blushed.  “Crossdressing… I can’t… Not at home.  It’s not…”  He took a quick breath to compose himself, and added, “Plus, home is on Europa.  We’re surrounded by Corps.  I can’t wear this until I come out here on shipment runs.”

 

At Wren’s confused look, Bonnie said, “You wouldn’t know this, but Kathmandu station is somewhat independent.”

 

“Oh,” Wren replied, processing.

 

“But I come here once a week,” he added brightly.  “It’s a good market for us.”

 

“Well, I love your costume,” Bonnie said.  “You even got the shoes right.”

 

Wren, still too overwhelmed with the strangeness of it to say much, was happy to let Bonnie take charge.

 

“I'm glad you like it!  I worked hard on it, and I have to keep it low-key at home.  Not safe to show support, y'know?  Especially with the protests going on.”

 

“I bet it cleans up out here, though,” Bonnie said, with just the slightest arch to her eyebrow.

 

The boy blushed, and his eyes darted back and forth between them.  “I do alright,” he said.  It seemed like sheepish was his default tone.

 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Wren, but he’s cuter than the real thing.”

 

“Oh yeah,” Wren said, nodding.  “Boys make the cutest girls.  I can’t compete.”

 

The boy blushed and bit his lip.

 

“So you said you volunteer for the shipment runs,” Bonnie said.  “Are you a pilot?”

 

“Y-yes.”

 

“Are you bonded?”

 

“...Yes?”

 

At another confused look, Bonnie said, “Can’t be bonded until you’re at least eighteen.”

 

“Ohhhh,” Wren said, and then barked out a laugh.

 

“You know,” the boy said, “you two have a really unique energy.  That’s so cool.”

 

“You come stand next to me, cutie,” Bonnie said, holding one arm out beside her while she flagged the bartender with the other and ordered another round.  “So what’s your name?”

 

“Quentin,” the boy said, “but everyone calls me Q.”

 

“Well, I’m Bonnie, and this here is Wren.”

 

Quentin laughed.  “No, but really though.  What’s...”  Then, when neither of them did more than smile lightly, he blinked.  “Wait.”

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