Chapter 5: Chapter 1 – Part 5

“How’re you doing over there,” Wren said, as she watched her mining drones scurry off.

 

“Really good,” Bonnie replied, without sounding good at all.  “Are you sure this thing can fly itself?”

 

“Technically, the Daedalus is the one doing the flying, but yeah.  I’m sure.”

 

“How does that work?  Exactly?”

 

Wren smiled.  “Are you asking because you really want to know, or do you just want to be distracted?”

 

“Distracted.”  She sounded like she was talking through her teeth.

 

Wren’s drones circled her target, and the scan of the asteroid on her primary display started rapidly gaining in resolution.  She identified a few useless areas, rocky outcroppings and air pockets that were devoid of useful metals, and the drones quickly went to work excising them.

 

“Well, the Daedalus has a pretty sophisticated scanning system that I designed.  Right now we’re kind of stress testing it by using it for your navigation, my navigation, and my compositional scanning simultaneously.”

 

“That’s nice tell me more.”

 

Wren shrugged and smiled.  “It’s sort of like ladar on steroids.  It watches for subtle shifts in the way different light frequencies are affected by small-body gravitational forces.  And then, on top of that, it’s tracking and identifying the different bodies it detects, and predicts their paths.”

 

“That’s nice tell me more.”

 

“How are you so bad in space?”

 

“That’s nice tell me more.”

 

“I swear some of those tattoos you have are from the Marines.”

 

“I don’t like null grav, alright?  It makes me sick.”

 

“Really?”

 

“You know what doesn’t help?  Talking about it.”

 

Wren laughed.  Her drones worked on carving another slice from the target asteroid, and she was excited.  Every layer of scan told her a little more about the elemental composition.  “Yeah.  This is gonna work out really nicely.”

 

“Are you talking about me or the asteroid?”

 

“Yes,” Wren said, leaning back.  Her hand moved without thought, reaching for a bowl of cereal that wasn’t there, and when she realized she was grabbing at nothing she gave serious thought to getting herself another bowl.

 

“Whoa.  You should see this wreck.”

 

Wren half-turned, without really taking her eyes off the scans of the asteroid, to half-look at Bonnie’s camfeed.  “It’s just debris.”

 

“Yeah, but—”

 

“If you’ve seen one wreck, you’ve seen ‘em all.”

 

“This is ancient.”

 

Wren reluctantly looked more closely at the feed.

 

“See that there?” Bonnie said, pointing.  “See where that cannon came loose on impact?  That was mounted on there with fucking rivets.”

 

“So?”

 

“So why did we run from this thing?  This shitheap must be a century old or more!”

 

“Uh... duh?”  Wren shook her head and rolled her eyes.  “Because they were shooting at us?”  

 

“Yeah, but why didn’t we shoot back?”

 

“The Daedalus doesn’t have any guns.”

 

“Yes you do,” Bonnie said.  “I saw them!”

 

“Not ones that work anyway.”

 

“What is the point of buying a gunship if you’re not gonna use the guns?!”

 

“Super cheap at surplus auction,” Wren said.  “Plus there were other perks.”

 

“I can’t believe we ran away from this thing.”

 

“Even if I did have guns on here, a shootout’s not my style.”

 

Wren reclined in her pilot’s chair, enjoying the way her drones danced about around their target.  Their precision and unity gave their movement the appearance of choreographed dance, and little by little they carved the asteroid down to size.  Of course, the Daedalus was capable of hauling a load many times larger than that, but Wren had negotiated contract bonuses for reaching different yield percentage thresholds.  The less actual rock she brought, the better her pay.

 

“You know what?  I take back what I said earlier.  What I can’t believe is why would this flying wreck take on an XN-92?  They had no way of knowing your guns don’t work.”

 

“You said it yourself,” Wren said.  “Desperate times.”  She looked back over to find Bonnie pulling herself down the twisted remains of a corridor.  “Do you see anything in there to make it worth the trip?”

 

“They have some firearms.  Rifles and pistols.  Do you have any of those?”

 

“Don’t need ‘em.  I have contingencies that prevent boardings.”

 

“So that’s a no.”

 

“I mean, I assume you came on board with a gun and that it’s stashed in the hold somewhere, but other than that...”  Wren received silence in response and nodded.  “That’s what I thought.”

 

“The whole cabin is completely crushed, and all of these terminals are dead.  So much for trying to salvage any information.”

 

“I’ll bet it’s a pistol.”

 

“So far, I’ve found... four bodies.  There’s no way to know for sure if that’s all of them, but it looks like the galley is set up for a crew of four.”

 

“I see you using like a .50 caliber handgun.”

 

“They were all in their suits.  I mean, we got to ours too so I guess there was more than enough time to suit up once we got here, but I get the feeling they were ready to engage us.”

 

“I bet you look sexy as hell with a cannon like that in your hands.”

 

“I can hear you.”

 

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“I should hope so!” Wren laughed.  “I’d have already tried to start something if you hadn’t gone out there.”

 

“Sorry sweetie.  I don’t do clams.”

 

Wren bit her lip and smiled.  “I see.”  Her drone swarm was reporting a 78% completion rate on its scanning and a 14% completion rate on the excess removal process.

 

“You wouldn’t be the first to ask.”

 

“No?”

 

“It’s an occupational hazard.”

 

“Do you get more men or women that come onto you?”

 

“Women.  A lot of men are intimidated.”

 

“I bet you leave a trail of broken hearts behind you.”

 

“There was certainly a time.”

 

Wren sat forward, tilting her head slightly.  There’d been something in the way Bonnie had said that, rather than what she’d said, that felt like a thread worth pulling.  19% excess removed.

 

“So when you had me in the hold earlier...”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“...and you asked if I knew the person who shot me.”

 

“Oh.  Yeah?”

 

“Why did that matter?”

 

“I figured, if you were close enough to see the person when they shot you, the bullet would travel more or less straight across.  Straight through.  You would have been eye-to-eye.  A shot from anywhere else would probably have hit you at a different angle, and I’d have had to go rooting around to find the fragments.”

 

“Lucky me.”

 

“I wasn’t trying to be cold,” Wren said, as she shifted in her chair.  22%.  23%.  24%.  “Just... efficient.”

 

“Efficient is good.  Cold is good.  I need that.”

 

Wren raised her eyebrows and watched.  28%.

 

“Alright.  I give up.  I don’t even know what I’m looking for out here.”

 

There was a palpable sense of defeat in her voice, and it tugged on Wren’s heartstrings.  “Hang on.”

 

“What?”

 

She reluctantly turned her attention toward the feed and took a long breath.  “What do you think was the original make on that ship?”

 

“I think it was a Wulfhardt.”

 

“Fuck,” she grumbled.  “Have you seen anything that looks like a nerve center?”

 

“No.  The cabin was completely caved in.”

 

“Well, I never worked on a Wulfhardt but I rode on one once.  How old do you think that thing is?”

 

“A hundred years.  Easily.”

 

“The one I rode on was pretty old too.  They’d had to rig it quite a bit to keep up with regs, and the engineer showed me where they’d had to rip out a bunch of old scrubbers to make room for their nav.”

 

“I didn’t understand a word of that, but I did see a bunch of mismatched equipment mounted together on the forward wall of the hold when I crawled in.  Should I go down there?”

 

“Yeah.”  Wren leaned back and licked her lips.  “Most of the time, scavs are out here living hand-to-mouth, but every once in a while you come across one that’s just a little bit smarter.  Someone who doesn’t mind looking broke while they save up their creds.”  32%.

 

“Okay,” Bonnie grunted, as she worked her way from handhold to handhold.  “What am I looking for?”

 

“That greenlit rack.  The one in the middle.”

 

“Okay.”  She floated over and opened the door.

 

“Start ripping out blades.  I’ll tell you which one is important.”

 

“Just rip them out?”

 

“Yeah.  You’ll fuck up the mounting brackets, but that won’t matter.”

 

Bonnie grabbed the uppermost blade right in the middle, and gave it a heaving tug.  The hinged arm on the left side snapped immediately, but the right side clung on stubbornly.  She had to give it one more good tug to pull it free.

 

“Flip it over,” she said, and then added, “Nope.  Next.”

 

Bonnie pulled the second blade out much more easily.  “What do you think you’re going to find here?”

 

“Some account numbers, and maybe some transaction information.  You never know.  The owner of that rig might’ve been a trillionaire.  Next.”

 

“And you want to empty their coffers?”

 

“Like you said.  It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.  Next.”

 

“I gotta say.  That’s pretty—”

 

“There,” Wren said.  “That one.  That one has storage on it.”

 

“What about this one?” Bonnie asked, ripping out the last blade.

 

“Nah.  The bottom one is usually just processors mounted in parallel.”

 

“Alright then.  So long, suckers.”

 

“See you when you get back.”

 

Wren leaned back and stared at the holographic representation of the composition of the asteroid.  She reached out a hand and swiped it lazily to the side, sending the hologram spinning on a theoretical axis.  Behind her eyes, her mind raced.

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