There turned out to be no need for a set of amateur hands. Not right away, at least. And so, as Lesi hovered outside the ship, Saketa and Zamm each did their own bit of maintenance.
The ranger was away in the hangar, going over his bike and weapons, and doing repairs on his suit. Saketa had gotten a bowl of water and a rag, and was doing her post-battle purification, with her suit folded up on the floor next to her.
With each stroke of wet cloth over her bare skin, Saketa also tended to her spirit. She shone light into its recesses, seeking out anything that might want to hide; The dark, nasty aspects. There was anger at the raiders for their lack of empathy, and a certain vicious glee at the harm she had done them in turn. Neither were things to be embraced, but as parts of her they were not to be denied either. She slowly and methodically went over the battle and her actions during it. She looked for moments when she might have done better, or when she had struck with lethal force when a less serious hit was an option, without putting herself or innocents in undue danger. It was all an act of self-policing, and to keep from forming bad habits made up of self-justification and anger.
Overall, she was pleased with what she found. She had, of course, prepared for violence and human cruelty and suffering on her flight over to that planet. And thus armoured and disciplined, she had come away unscathed.
The hangar door hissed open and she heard Zamm’s footsteps at her back.
“Well, I have had all the fun I can with tools and other dead things. I… oh, uh… I didn’t realise you were… ah, what are you doing?”
“My people do this ritual after battle,” she told him. “And you needn’t avert your eyes for my sake. Kalero does not share those taboos.”
Zamm cleared his throat. She sensed a slight awkwardness, born out of a desire to be honourable, and since the Warden path was all about being honest with oneself, she allowed herself to be a bit amused by it.
“Am I distracting you?” he then asked.
“I am more-or-less finished,” she replied. “And I am a guest. Do not let me keep you from anything.”
She started the last few long, slow strokes, soothing herself, testing herself, and heard the ranger open a cupboard.
“That’s a… nasty scar on your back,” he commented.
“I got it in a nasty fight,” she replied. “But a necessary one. I bear it with pride.”
“Well, that’s good.”
He slushed a drink around in its mug, and she felt an addendum coming up. She let him get to it at his own pace.
“Violence has a way of scarring, in more than one way,” he eventually said in a sombre voice. “I suppose it makes sense that the Wardens would have a formalised way to deal with it. I don’t know that much about your people. It feels like no one really does. But… well, this seems very fitting for you.”
“The Akkian Rangers deal with no small amount of violence,” Saketa said. “And you had already cut down many raiders by the time I showed up. What about the Rangers? What is your way of dealing with it?”
“Talking,” he told her. “In the mustering halls, mostly. As rangers gather for less formal occasions, and the retired ones visit. That’s what we do. We talk, about what we have done and seen, and how it affects us.”
“Healing by community,” Saketa said. “It is a good custom.”
And I was a fool for ignoring that balm for so long, she thought, but without bitterness at herself. She had left that behind.
“Yeah.”
The man touched his chest. He’d taken his suit off, but it was the spot where he’d been shot.
“I am pretty sure I was about to die, back there. A valorous death, certainly,” he said, with a playful flourish. “A credit to the three stars, and my people. But a death all the same. This is all my overly wordy way of saying thank you, again, and properly. Thank you for saving my life, and doing my job for me. Death is a part of this job, one way or another. But I’m glad it’s not just yet, and I get to see home again. And I hope I can bring a tale of a full rescue, against all odds, through an unlikely stroke of fate.”
He let out a soft “Hah”, and Saketa saw a smile in a reflective surface.
“Your people… the stories carry far and wide, but the Fringe is big, and most people never actually see one of you. One doesn’t rely on a Kalero Warden showing up to save the day.”
Saketa dragged the wet rag down her face, down the neck, all the way down her chest.
“There are many ills, and many villains,” she said. “And only a few of us. Much as with your own Rangers. There are many that go unrescued. But we shouldn’t think of that as a failure. What good we CAN do, Wardens, Rangers, Chainbreakers and others… it means a great deal to those affected by it. Each life saved is a universe. A precious piece of the Glow. I can tell you are upset about the current state of things. It is a credit to your goodness. But do not forget those one-thousand who would be on the freighter right now if not for the two of us. Whatever else happens, they get to continue their lives as free people.”
“Yes,” Zamm said in a somewhat melancholy tone. “I am aware of that on a, uh, logical level. It’s just hard to internalise, when the bad outweighs the good by actual measurable numbers. But yeah. It’s best to try to focus on what went right.”
“Yes,” Saketa said, as she gave the rag a final twist and put it away. “I will work on it myself.”
She got up and began the process of putting her suit back on. As it was designed to do, it clung to her skin, almost bonding with it, and worked to enhance her connection to the universe itself, and its energies. It was always a slight relief to take it off in the evening, but still she always felt most herself while wearing it.
She ended it all with a big stretch, and then turned to face the ranger.
“Would you join me for a sip?” he asked. “It’s non-alcoholic.”
“I would like that, thank you.”
# # #
“We are going to live,” Lesi announced, as she took her space helmet off. “That’s the good news.”
“As good news goes, that is pretty good, you have to admit,” Zamm snarked.
Her visible irritation was visible for an instant, like a fish snatching a fly on top of a pond.
“There is micro-damage in much of the overall structure,” she then went on. “Another ejection like that would probably rip it apart. These are rare events, but the ship’s overall service life has probably been greatly reduced. The outer plating is also pretty mangled. We do need to fix that before any lengthy trips. The thrusters got bent some, and I’ll need to replace some of the gyros. That’s a relatively minor job. A bigger problem is the main guns.”
Lesi inhaled.
“The wrenching hit them pretty hard, because of the way they stick out from the main body. Their gyros are also damaged, and I do have replacements for those two. A bigger problem is the plasma stabiliser.”
She held up a hand in response to a worried look from Zamm.
“The tank itself is safe. It’s contained. But I had to disconnect the guns from it, because it just isn’t safe to fire.”
“How bad is it?” Zamm asked.
“You don’t repair a damaged stabiliser,” Lesi told him. “The tiniest, tiniest imperfection can cause a rupture. We will need to get a new one. And… we don’t have a replacement on board.”
She tried to shrug, although it didn’t really work in her bulky suit.
“This is a rare sort of damage, and usually when it happens there’s a rupture. We got lucky and unlucky.”
“In case of some minor issue…” Saketa said, “... a small pirate ship or two, I can Shift onto the bridge and bring an assault to a stop. What is it?” she then asked, at the sight of Zamm’s little grin.
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“Minor issue,” he repeated. “That just amuses me. But yes. We really should not be flying through dangerous space without proper guns. Lesi: What is your overall conclusion?”
“We can fly again in a couple of hours. The drones are already doing the rough work. I’ll go back out and do the fine work myself. But for long flying, and intercepting that freighter, we will need a proper repair. In a dock. If we can hire a repair crew, it should only take a few hours. Five, maybe, if they know what they’re doing.”
“That’s not so bad,” Saketa said. “That still leaves us with a chance to catch the freighter.”
“It does, and so I’ll not waste any more time.”
Lesi put her helmet back on and sealed it.
“Oh, and I do want an extra set of hands now. Out there. Warden: Are you space-trained?”
“I am not, honestly,” Saketa said. “I have only ever been a passenger.”
“Then it’s you, Zamm,” Lesi said. “Hop hop.”
“I’ll hop,” the man grumbled, and headed towards the suit closet by the airlock.
“You two are siblings, aren’t you?” Saketa asked.
“How did you ever guess?” Lesi replied.
# # #
The days of a new lane being found by explorers every week were long gone, although it still happened on occasion. Far more common was for lanes that led nowhere useful or inhabited to be all but forgotten, used only by those who had reason to stay away from the gaze of wider humanity: Outcasts, mad cults, fugitives, and lesser pirate groups. In the half-dead shadow areas of the starmaps they gathered into communities of sorts, like condensation. Too far from functional authorities for easy rooting out, yet not quite so distant as to become hermits and self-sustaining farmers. Inner conflicts and the occasional pushy law-fleet kept some amount of movement going, and so places were abandoned and rediscovered, mostly out of sight of ‘proper’ society.
And now the damaged Ranger ship was taking them through one such area. The abundance of heat traces, fading away in the vacuum, made it clear that for being quite out of the way, it was fairly heavily trafficked. There were two neighbouring lane entrances, but most of the fading heat made a stop at a large asteroid on its way between the two. And as they drew nearer to it, the place glowed with plenty of heat of its own.
“This is probably Zintu Rock,” Zamm said to Saketa, who had continued her residency in the copilot’s chair. “I have, well, the Rangers have heard of a port in this general area.”
“And have you heard what we might expect?” she asked.
“Only vaguely. I do not think this is a full-blown pirate port, but it isn’t far from it. Suffice it to say, I do not think this is a place with any love for Rangers or Wardens.”
“But we must stop, if our chase is to continue,” she said.
“According to Lesi, yes. And she is the engineer. So we stop.”
As most ports did, this one beamed out information to approaching ships. There was the usual mess of competing advertisers, offering goods and services, hinting at a fairly large population. The size of a tunnelled-out asteroid was not a great indicator of its population, given how tightly humans could cram themselves, but to Saketa it seemed there had to be at least a few thousand people here.
More relevantly, there were ads for three separate docks, two of which promised repair facilities. A quick check in with both of them revealed that only one had a team ready to go immediately, and so that settled their choice.
Zamm only introduced them by the ship’s name, Runner, and neither person he spoke to demanded anything more. It was another thing quite typical of a certain type of port.
The dock was very much intended for smaller ships. The entrance consisted of three airlock tunnels, which Zamm had to carefully manoeuvre the ship into, wait for pressurisation, then steer them through the inner door. They entered into a huge cavern, hundreds of metres across, that had the appearance of being largely natural.
The dock itself was set up on a cliff’s edge, separated from the entrance area by a great chasm. Lights were set up there, and only there, making the whole place seem like some little mini-world suspended in nothing. Six other ships were docked, with room left for perhaps three more.
A green, blinking light called them to a particular dock. Zamm set them down and shut off the engine.
“Well,” he said, as the two of them joined Lesi in the main room. “We are in not-quite enemy territory. I don’t doubt that there are people here who’ll recognise a Ranger ship for what it is. But we might have stolen it. Who knows?”
He patted his chest. He had changed his armoured uniform out for a generic dark-brown spacer suit with no markings.
“Let’s just not advertise, and hope for the best. Now a Warden…”
“... is sworn to walk in truth, in all things,” Saketa told him. “I will not lie. But there is nothing wrong with staying silent.”
She opened one of the little leather pouches on her belt and took out a tightly-packed poncho of thin plastic. She threw it over her head, so it hid most of her suit, and the hilt and handle of her sword.
“I’ll take it,” Zamm said, though he didn’t sound entirely happy about it.
“I will reveal myself only if trouble calls for it,” she assured him. “The sight of my kind often prevents violence altogether.”
“But it… causes some, too,” Lesi pointed out. “Right? Because you folks do inspire a lot of very hot hatred.”
“I will use my judgement.”
“Right,” Lesi replied neutrally. “Anyway, I have all my drones ready. They will be watching the outside. I’ll claim it is for repair purposes, but this way we’ll know if anyone tries to fit us with a tracker or a bomb or something like that.”
She herself wore the same, unadorned engineer’s jumpsuit she’d worn from the start, and only added a few belts and tool holders to it. As well as, Saketa knew, a hidden gun.
“Let’s just all do what we need to do, and get going as fast as we can,” Zamm said, and led their little group to the airlock.
They were greeted outside by a big, slow-moving hulk of a man and an assistant so much smaller as to make the pairing ridiculous. Both had that particular pallor often seen with people who lived with substandard artificial light, and looked rather scruffy and worn.
“No plasma outside the ships!” the big man announced, the first of anyone to speak. “Anyone caught with plasma beyond the docks risks seizure of their vessel!”
“We know, we know,” Zamm said. “No one wants a vacuum incident.”
“Well, everyone gets told!”
He wasn’t shouting in anger, Saketa decided. His voice was just naturally set to a powerful volume. As Zamm assured the man, truthfully, that they had left all plasma weapons on the ship, and went through the basic procedures of paying for dock, recharge, and a repair crew, Saketa looked around, carefully scanning their new environment.
The ship wasn’t drawing immediate attention. Lesi had glued plastic sheets over the Ranger markings, but couldn’t do anything about the ship’s distinctive profile, and there wasn’t enough time for a paint job. But if there was to be an incident, it seemed they would at least get the repairs started first.
The other ships were old models, one of which she hadn’t even seen before, and much repaired and scuffed, held together with mismatched parts. The crews that busied themselves with the ongoing upkeep were much like the vessels themselves; grimy, weary-looking and not uniform in the slightest.
Beyond the dock were two openings in the asteroid rock that presumably led into the wider tunnel network. Foot traffic was modest. Overall, there wasn’t much to see with the human eye that wasn’t typical for a grotty backwater.
But her awareness…
There was a discordant vibration to this whole place, to the web of thousands of people and the invisible effects they had on the universe. There was tension, fear, anger, and all at a dangerous volume. Far too much to be caused by the arrival of a single small Ranger ship.
“Is this a bad time for us to arrive?” Saketa asked the big man, during a momentary silence between him and Zamm.
“What?!”
“Is there a problem here?” she asked. “In this habitat? Is there something we should know about?”
He shook his head, but only after a slight hesitation, and looking away.
“No! No problem!”
Saketa didn’t press the issue. The other two had seen his reaction, after all.
They finished the final details, Zamm paid for the services with spending cash that was kept on Ranger ships in case of events like this, and the big man called in a repair crew. The four people who came walking over were about as neat and tidy as everything else in this place, but at least seemed to carry their tools with familiarity.
Saketa positioned herself so that they would brush right by her on their way to talk to Lesi, their temporary project manager. Her awareness did not allow her a glimpse into the feelings of individuals, but her eyes caught hints of that general tension in the air. They weren’t in a state of imminent panic, but whatever was going on, they were definitely aware of it..
Zamm gave her a subtle gesture and she walked over to him. They were relatively alone, and the sounds of engines and machinery and chatting voices, all echoing in this great cavern, covered up their conversation.
“What is it?” he asked. “Because it sure is something.”
“It is,” she admitted. “I think something big and dangerous is close to happening here. Or at least the people believe it is. Which, of course, can cause big and dangerous things to happen, all by itself.”
“You… think?” he said.
People’s starting attitude to her powers was often scepticism. Until she displayed them, at which point it often switched to some combination of fear and confusion. Zamm wasn’t afraid of her, from what she could tell, but wasn’t immune to the confusion.
“My awareness,” she told him. “I cannot explain it to you in scientific terms, if that matters to you. But there are dangerous stirrings here. And that really is all I know with certainty. Just be on alert, and I will do the same.”
“That was the plan,” he said, and patted his hidden gun. “And we need that part. But thanks.”
“I feel I should mention that when it comes to my Shifting, I need to have a clear idea of where I am going. So if you get into trouble, I cannot just appear beside you.”
“Hey now,” he replied good-naturedly. “I appreciate your help, but I have survived all my other missions without you.”
“I simply felt you should know.
“And now I do.”
He took one last look around the dock, and Lesi and her hired repair crew.
“Keep my ship safe, please.”
He started to leave, then stopped.
“Oh, and my sister too, if you can,” he added with an impish grin.
“I will tell her you said that,” Saketa said.
“Good. I want you to.”
He walked away, into the asteroid’s tunnel system, and Saketa stayed behind. That ill feeling remained with her.