Chapter 4: Chapter 1 – Part 4

“Okay, you might want to grab hold of something.”

 

“Why?” came the voice of the redhead.  “Are you going to—”

 

The Daedalus dropped out into n-space with its usual, staggering lack of grace, and the PA erupted with the thunderous sounds of metal panels being tossed about.

 

“How about a little more warning next time?” she shouted, though her voice was awkwardly muffled.

 

Wren smiled as she leaned over the side of her pilot’s chair and tapped at one of her menus to bring up the camera system, but, before she could get through the action, warning lights fired off all around her.  She bolted upright, cursing repeatedly under her breath, and punched coordinates into her terminal like a woman possessed.

 

“Get into a suit!” Wren screamed.  The Daedalus lurched forward, rushing toward the asteroid ring system they were on the edge of, though the momentum shift barely registered to those inside.  “Right now!”

 

“Why?”

 

Wren whirled.  The redhead was jogging through the galley, one hand on the railing to come into the cabin.

 

“How did... never mind.  Suit.  Now.”

 

“What’s happening?”

 

“Pirates,” Wren said, staring at the angry red dot on her scanner.  A hundred clicks and closing rapidly.

 

Wren scrambled across the cabin to the locker against the bulkhead while the redhead followed Wren’s frantic pointing back into the hallway where a second suit was stashed.  The alarms became more insistent, and Wren cursed when her shirt got caught up in the neck of her suit.  The redhead was back, helmet in place and sealed, before Wren was done.

 

“Does this happen to you often?”

 

“Sometimes,” Wren said, as she vaulted back into her chair.  Ahead of them, one of the smaller rocks burst into a cloud of dust while the Daedalus wove a serpentine pattern toward the asteroid field ahead of them.  A gas hypergiant loomed within the center of the ring system, marked by yellow and gold striations in its upper atmosphere.  “You’re gonna want to grab hold of something.”

 

“Why?”

 

Wren shook her head and hit the big yellow kill switch beside her, instantly shutting off the grav generator and redirecting that energy into the gravshell.  The redhead bounced off the ceiling with a stifled yelp.

 

“That’s why.”

 

“What is with you and never giving any fucking notice before you do shit like this?!”

 

“I’m sorry, but you would have needed to pay for the bronze package on our flight to get answers to technical questions.”  Wren winced as the Daedalus bucked downward hard.  The gravshell was more than sufficient to deflect small caliber fire and glancing projectiles, but more direct hits sent out kinetic shockwaves that she felt in her bones.

 

“Why are you flying toward that ring?!” the redhead screeched.  “You can’t fly into an asteroid field!!”

 

“Says who?”

 

The redhead cried wordlessly for nearly half a minute, pausing only to inhale raggedly, as the Daedalus banked and dove under and around dozens of asteroids.  Wren sat at the controls, but her hands were on the input panel rather than the flight stick.  She made a few keystrokes, and the projected path ahead of them altered slightly.  Then she made a few more.

 

“They’re following us into the field,” Wren said, casually.  “That’s a fun twist.”

 

“Desperate times,” the redhead whined.

 

Wren looked back and smirked, not expecting her unwanted passenger to be clinging to the air vent in the ceiling to keep from bouncing around.  “Try not to break that.  It’s not really designed to—”

 

“Shouldn’t you be flying right now?!”

 

Wren put her fingertips to the sides of her helmet and closed her eyes.  “I am flying,” she said, “with my mind.”

 

“我操!!” 

 

Wren laughed maniacally, waving her hands in the air as the ship dove between two tumbling mountains of stone.   “Oh god, we’re gonna to die!”

 

More errant fire streaked past them, chewing into a large asteroid ahead of them.  The redhead pointed and screamed just as the Daedalus veered hard to avoid the cloud of new debris rushing out to meet them.  Another shot impacted hard against the gravshell, but the Daedalus used the momentum to dive into a corkscrew.

 

And then, as suddenly as it appeared, the red dot on their scanner disappeared.  One by one, the alarms subsided, and the Daedalus fired its retro-thrusters to match the speed of the rocky field around them.

 

“Well that was brisk,” Wren said, as she ran the post-combat checks.  “I think we’re okay.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“Don’t know.  Don’t care.”  Wren sat back and smiled.  “I mean, they probably bit into one of the big rocks, but if they decided to roll the dice and tried to jump out of the system then that’s just as good.”

 

“When is the gravity gonna come back?”

 

“In a minute.  It’ll just be 0.2 g until we exit the field, so the gravshell can keep us from getting crushed.”

 

The redhead pushed herself down from the ceiling with a grunt.  The maglocks in her boots grabbed the deck plating with a solid chnk.  “And what exactly are we doing in the middle of a goddamn asteroid field?!  This is fucking suicide!”

 

“We’ll be fine,” Wren said.  “I come out here all the time.”  She took off her helmet and set it next to herself as she pored over a readout on her right.  Her inner ear twinged, and she rolled her jaw for a few seconds.  “Tungsten.  Tungsten.  Tungsten.”  Suddenly, she half-turned and glared over her shoulder.  “If I asked you nicely, would you get back in the hold?”

 

“No!” the redhead shouted, indignantly, as she took off her own helmet.

 

“Alright,” Wren said with a shrug, and went back to her work.  “Well... welcome to the rest of the ship!”

 

“You might be the worst jailer ever.”

 

“That can’t be true.”  Wren frowned as she scrolled, not finding what she wanted.  “Just from a statistical standpoint, it seems... uh...”  She shook her head dismissively and kept up the search, and when she continued her voice was barely above a murmur.  “Just seems highly unlikely.”

 

The redhead crossed her arms and looked around.  “So now what?”

 

“Now... I find what I came here for.  Then we go back.  Rinse and repeat.”

 

“Back to Luna Two?”

 

There was a hint of something in the redhead’s voice that tickled Wren’s curiosity.  “That’s the plan.”

 

“What about me?”

 

“What about you?”

 

“What am I gonna do?”

 

Wren sat up and tilted her head.  “There’s always cake in the airlock.”

 

“Ha ha.”

 

Wren smiled and went back to her work while the redhead stalked around.  “That’s biometrically tied to me,” she said, watching the interloper from the corner of her eye.  The redhead frowned and stepped over to the index library.  “That too.”

 

“I get it,” the redhead said drolly.   “Fuck.”  After a few moments, she came and stood behind Wren.  Which, Wren immediately decided, was fine.  “So what did you come out here for?”

 

“I’m an asteroid hauler.”

 

“A rock jockey?”

 

Wren smiled.  “Pretty much.”  She hummed to herself as she homed in on a few potential targets, and behind her the redhead began to roam.

 

“This is a nice setup.  I’ve hitched a ride on a few haulers, and they were all held together with spit and string.”

 

“Grab hold of something,” Wren said, and this time the redhead did.  The Daedalus eased forward, less dramatically than before, through the ever-shifting anarchy of the fast-orbiting ring system and toward a strong candidate.  With the grav system working overtime elsewhere, the shifts in momentum were significant inside.

 

“I’ve never heard of going into one of these nightmares for a rock,” the redhead whined nervously.

 

“Nobody but me,” Wren said proudly.  She leaned back, watching a highlighted speck in her viewport grow larger and larger.  “Yeah, the Daedalus is a little old, but I keep her in good shape.”

 

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“What is this?  An XL-92?”

 

“XN-92.”

 

She tilted her head, staring up at bulkhead walls.  “Trimark sure knew how to build ‘em.  In another life I had a few combat drops in an XT-90, and that was a lot like this.”

 

Wren nodded in satisfaction and stood up.  “I’m getting some food,” she said, as she started peeling out of her suit.  The redhead blinked, and when she didn’t start undressing Wren added, “Do you want to come?”

 

The redhead pinched the bridge of her nose and held up her other hand.  “So am I, like, free now?”

 

“I tried getting you back in your cage,” Wren said, stepping out of one suit leg, “You said no.”

 

“Are you going to pull a gun on me?”

 

Wren shrugged and shook her head.  “Not really my style.”

 

The redhead blinked at her as she started across the cabin toward the mess, and her posture changed.  “And what if I pull a gun on you?”

 

Wren stopped and turned.  The redhead had her fists on her hips, head cocked.  “If you were really that dangerous, I’d already be dead.  And technically, you would be too.  You wouldn’t know it yet, but the Daedalus would be your coffin.”  She started to turn, and then bounced right back.  “How did you get out of the hold anyway?”

 

The redhead’s jaw sank.  “SOP on a boat like this.  Opens any closed bulkhead doors in an emergency, to facilitate rapid manning of battle stations.”

 

“Really?”

 

“How did you not know that?”

 

“Well I don’t really do passengers, and I can’t even remember the last time I had a door locked for any reason.  I don’t know that I’d have noticed if an alarm opened something that was shut.”  Wren turned toward the mess, and the redhead fell in beside her.

 

“Do you get attacked like that a lot?”

 

“I don’t know what constitutes ‘a lot’.  More trips than not I run into someone out here.”

 

“That’s a lot.”

 

Wren shrugged and opened up the first cabinet.  A half-dozen cereal boxes of different colors sat before her, and she smiled.  She liked to have choices.  “I’m gonna have the red,” she said, after a moment’s deliberation.  “Do you want the red?”

 

“I-I guess?” the redhead stammered.  She slipped her arms out of the sleeves of her suit, and let the upper part of it hang around her waist.

 

“There’s two kinds of pirates out here,” Wren said, as she grabbed bowls and spoons.  “Thieves and scavs.”  She poured each of them a bowl, and sprinkled in a heap of dehydrated milk.

 

“Holy shit, you have milk out here?!”

 

“I don’t know how you eat cereal,” she said, handing the redhead her bowl, “but you’re doing it wrong without milk.”

 

“It’s so expensive!”  She held the bowl in front of her like it was made of gold, and Wren laughed.

 

“Better not let it go to waste then.”  Wren hopped up on the countertop, legs dangling, and smiled.  “Do you want to rehydrate that or just have it dry?  It’s pretty good either way.”

 

The redhead shook her head slowly.

 

“Suit yourself.”  Wren turned and held her bowl under the running faucet for a moment.  “So what’s your name?”

 

“Xylia.”

 

“Bullshit,” Wren said, around a mouthful of cereal.

 

“How is my name bullshit?”

 

“That’s exactly the kind of exotic, unnecessarily-complex fakeness that someone would make up for themselves if they were on the run.”

 

“I am on the run.  Remember how I got shot?”  She emphasized her point by pulling up the bottom of her tank top and exposing the bandage.

 

“Yeah,” Wren said, taking another bite. “That’s how I know you’re lying.  How’s that healing, by the way.”

 

“It’s fine,” she answered, tersely.

 

“I’m not asking what your name is so I can paint it on the side of my ship for the whole damn galaxy to see.”

 

The redhead hesitantly took a bite of cereal and chewed slowly.  “Bonnie.”

 

Wren looked her up and down, and nodded.  “You look like a Bonnie.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

Wren just shrugged and took another bite.  “Nothing?  Everything?”  Both of them turned at an awful yowl in the next room, but she forestalled Bonnie with an upheld hand.  “No.”

 

“But wasn’t that your cat?”

 

“Have you ever seen what a cat does to a room in null grav?  It’s the stuff of nightmares.”

 

Bonnie furrowed her brow and tilted her head.  “Does that happen every time?”

 

The blue-haired girl shook her head and took another bite.  “Ushuwally he has enou’ time to ge’ into his ‘ittle box,” she said, and then after swallowing added, “He knows what the alarms sound like, and he’s got no one to blame but himself if he didn’t make it.”

 

Mr. Cat warbled angrily in response.

 

“I’ll clean it up later.”  Wren took another bite, and watched Bonnie surreptitiously.  The redhead’s exposed, tattooed arms had some ferocious definition, and Wren barely suppressed a shiver.  It didn’t matter if they belonged to men or women; Wren had a thing for arms.  The way they shaped a chest when folded over themselves.  Shoulders were a part of it too.

 

“What are you going to do with that ship?”

 

“What ship?” Wren asked, shoveling another spoonful into her mouth to cover the lapse.

 

“The one that was chasing us.”

 

“Nothing?  That asteroid we’re heading towards is worth way more than anything we’ll find on some scav rocket.”

 

“You don’t know that,” Bonnie said with a smirk.  “You’re just guessing.”

 

“It’s an educated guess.”

 

“Educated bullshit.”

 

Wren shrugged and nodded.  “Yeah.  Sure.”

 

“Yeah sure?”

 

Wren laughed.  “It’s really bothering you that I’m just gonna leave that there, huh?”

 

“Yes!  We shouldn’t just let all that scrap go to waste!”

 

“I’m not changing course.  Do you want to suit back up and take the skiff out there?”

 

“I’m not a pilot,” Bonnie said, though her cheeks flushed with color.

 

“The skiff flies itself.  You just have to strap in.”

 

Bonnie stood up a little taller and nodded.  Twice.  “Alright,” she said, finally, and Wren smiled.

 

“This is gonna work out.  I’m excited.”

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