“Of course.”

Teek unhooked the small hose they kept clipped to the front of their flightsuit, popping the open end of it in their mouth. They sucked in water through the clear tube, attached to a rather hefty container they kept attached to one thigh. Teek had a rhythm to their drinking that could be either endearing or annoying, depending on the mood of the audience. Suck in water, swallow it, make the sound of four bubbles popping in succession, then repeat.

They went through this four or five times, their suspicious gaze locked onto the currently mildly irritated Vale. Finally, they clipped the hose back to the front of their suit and spoke again.

“Military spec shit. Can’t scan it. No heat coming from it. Nothing short of some very targeted explosives will open it without its consent.”

They took a big bite out of the tortilla. Chewed more, swallowed more, drank more water, made more sound effects.

Vale waited.

“The lock,” Teek continued, “has a simple interface, backed by some insane fucking crypto. And even if you know the code, and even if you’ve got the right fingerprints, it won’t open until its trigger hits.”

“Trigger, huh? I know about those,” Vale joked, but the smile that crossed her face was flat and didn’t reach her eyes. The metaphorical hair on the back of her neck was raised. Something hi-tech that Teek can’t get into, she thought. The fuck is this thing?

“I couldn’t find detect any way for it to send or receive,” Teek continued. “Based on the rest of it, that doesn’t mean shit. But let’s assume for now that it has the conditions for its unlocking locally set. Most likely that would be a timer of some sort. But again, all I can get to is the interface, and all that the interface will tell me is whether or not the trigger was pulled.”

“And that I can get in.”

“No, that you have the potential of getting in. You still need the code, after the trigger goes off. Or you need to be the person with the right fingers.”

Had Vale been operating under normal gravity, she’d have leaned back against the wall behind her. Instead, the best that she could do was a crossing of her arms.

“Shit,” she said.

Teak narrowed their eyes and cocked their head, peering at Vale closely, looking for clues in the middle-aged veteran’s face. Vale spread her hands in response.

“What?”

“What the hell did you bring on my ship?” Teek asked.

“Honest to God, Teek, I don’t know what it is, or why it’s here, or what will trigger it, or what the code to get into it would be,” Vale replied.

“K,” Teek said. Whether they were bored with the conversation, or didn’t care in the end, or didn’t feel like probing Vale any further, it was hard to tell. Truth be told, Vale was surprised not only by the fact that Teek seemed so put off by the crate, but that they seemed so very interested in its origins.

Vale racked her brain, trying to think, trying to imagine something outside of their precious systems screens and engineering problems that Teek had ever shown an interest in.

Peanut butter-marshmallow-honey sandwiches, she thought, and not much else.

“Look, Teek – against my instincts, I trust you.”

“Ja, ditto,” Teek said, returning to their screens and a few flashing lights that required their attention. Or didn’t, but could provide them with that sort of a cover.

“And if there’s one thing I’ve learned – you don’t lie to Engineering.”

Teek made a sound from antiquity, an “errit” that Vale understood to be something called a “record scratch”.

“Because first, Engineering will always discover the truth.”

“Errit.”

“And when Engineering isn’t informed of the truth right away, people can die.”

“Errote.”

“So I don’t need you to trush me, even though I trust you, and even though I’d like you to. But I do need you to trust that this is not...” Vale cut herself off. How much am I really going to reveal right now? She asked herself. She took a deep breath.

“I’m not fucking with your ship,” she said. “And if you have reason to believe that this...crate, whatever you want to call it, presents a danger either to the crew or to the ship, then vent it. I’m serious, I don’t care.”

Teek raised an eyebrow.

“For real, Teek.”

There was a moment of silence. Then the Chief Engineer made a few electronic noises and waved their hand, dismissing the whole thing. Whereas before, Vale hadn’t been sure of exactly where the engineer’s head was at, now she was certain that Teak had returned to normal functioning.

After all, Vale thought, they’re doing sound effects again.

“Thanks, boss. Oh, and is there any way that you can put some sort of a monitor on the keypad that will alert me once the trigger’s been activated.”

Teek looked at Vale as if the ex-soldier had grown an extra head in the middle of her speech.

“Oh, you already did that, huh?”

Teek nodded slowly, eyes narrowed in annoyance.

“Well thank you.” Vale turned to leave, but then changed her mind and turned around once more.

“Hey, also,” she said, “can you have the ship alert me – loudly, if I’m asleep – if either of the Thomases get close to me without me realizing? I don’t want...”

Her voice trailed off as she realized that Teek had crossed their arms, head thrust forward, the look of annoyance even more profound than before.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Took care of that too, huh?”

Teek nodded, again slowly. Vale shook her head.

“See,” she said, “that’s why I love ya, Teek.”

Without changing the expression on their face, Teek slowly uncrossed their arms, pressed their thumbs and the nails of each of their fingers together, making a heart shape that they slowly pulled back to their chest.

“Later, Teek.”

“Vvvv vvv,” Teek whirred.

----------------------------------------

It was another twenty minutes or so before the call Vale expected came.

She’d gone back to her sleeping quarters after seeing Teek, stopping briefly by Diego’s pseudo-medbay in order to pick up her glove, refilled with perp-control goodness. Closing the door of her personal cubby behind her, she slid into her comfortable sleeping cocoon, still fully-clothed, allowing herself to doze lightly while she waited for the call to come in.

“Vale,” came the quiet, but firm voice of the captain, coming through the speaker in the wall.

“Yeah,” Vale replied, “on my way.”

She pulled herself out of the cocoon regretfully, checking her hair in the mirror briefly, and made her way up to the command center. The lights on the ship had been dimmed – which never made sense to Vale, seeing as how everyone in their sleeping quarters had control to change their personal lights to any setting between “complete darkness” and “supernova”. The passengers had been well conditioned on their flight out to Uranus to seek out the evening’s sleep right after the evening meal. And for the most part, the crew – if they didn’t have any tasks that needed finishing – followed suit.

The captain, instead of sitting in the cockpit where Vale had found him earlier, flirting with Philippa, was right outside of it, floating with arms crossed and facing Vale as she came up the length of the module.

“Captain,” she said with a nod.

“Vale,” the captain returned. The two regarded each other for a moment. The man was a drunk, and a flirt, and inappropriate, and didn’t seem like he’d be able to do anything without the assistance of the autopilot. But he definitely had a captain’s persona – something that he kept hidden beneath his many vices, except for those moments where he needed to bring it out to help him with something.

And that was what he was trying to do now. The twinkle in his eye was gone, and the corners of his lips were pressed together tightly. Vale recognized how that sort of an aura would work on a good many people – but it wouldn’t really do too much for her.

I wonder if I knew less about him, if it would, she pondered. Probably not. The captain was shorter than her, and although she didn’t let on, she knew what did in the religiofascist uprisings – drove cargo ships for the military, and did so in parts of the system where the fighting was lessened. She would never denigrate a fellow soldier’s service – but seeing as how he’d never seen any of the fighting up close, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was one of those who had a soft spot for the chrisfash who took so many lives.

She’d seen it before. Sometimes, the ones furthest from the action were the most rabid and ravenous when it came to the chrisfash – and sometimes, they fell hook-line-and-sinker for their lowgrade propaganda, comments on forums on NH focusing on-

-a marketplace, the smell of smoke, the smell of blood, the stained floor and stalls-

-the supposed atrocities that the military itself was committing in their overeager zeal to eliminate the threat. And besides, the former type would have never in a million years allowed chrisfash aboard. The captain was willing to play the game at least a little bit – which meant he was either a complete sociopath, or a sympathizer, or even a member of the chrisfash. Latent. Lying in wait. Waiting for an opportunity to strike.

“Why did you bait him,” Patek said, clearly annoyed. “You’re my Security Officer. You’re meant to help keep the peace. Not taunt another passenger into attacking you.”

“I’m...sorry sir, but I didn’t bait Thomas into attacking me,” Vale replied.

“Oh really?” Patek said. “Really.”

“Really, really,” Vale lied. “Sir.”

“Because I took another look at your file, Vale,” the captain replied. “And guess what? You weren’t on Springfield-6 from DATE to DATE.”

Vale opened her mouth, ready to protest. Oh, I was there, you boozed up, aging, son-of-a-

She stopped herself. No. “I” was not on Springfield-Six. “I” was someplace else at the time. That’s what the record Lee created for me was very clear about. And what I completely ignored just so I could knock out a man who’s a bit younger than me, a lot shorter than me, but who probably weighs just about the same.

“And because you couldn’t possibly have been on Springfield-6 then, that means that you lied. And you lied for a reason – to get Thomas to deliberately to attack you. Correct?”

Close enough, Vale thought. “Yes, sir.”

“So, again,” Patek said, pulling out a flask and opening the top. “My question is – why?”

What to say, Vale thought to herself. What to say. The truth? The truth is that still, after how many years of the religio-fascists being defeated, after how many psychotherapy sessions, that I still hate their fucking guts and enjoy – seriously, enjoy – fighting them, even though I know I shouldn’t?

She mulled it over, ignoring the expectant look on the captain’s face. Does it even matter? She asked herself. Does it even matter if I tell him the truth? Or if I make something up? Or if I apologize, and ask for forgiveness, and promise it won’t happen again? I’m set to disappear after this job, I don’t need this sympathizer’s fucking reference, I can...

She sighed. Christ, she thought, I’m so...fucking...tired.

“I lost a lot...to people like him,” she said. Don’t say this, said a small part of her brain. What are you doing? He doesn’t care. And he doesn’t deserve to hear.

“We all did,” the captain replied. Anger flared up in Vale. It wasn’t just the passengers’ backgrounds she knew – Lee had given her access to the crew’s data as well. Captain Patek was a low-level shuttle operator in some backwater occupied space around one of Jupiter’s moons, space that was maybe identified as musfash, but that received too many benefits from things the way they were to really commit. He was friendly with the locals, even spoke a couple of their dialects, and at least once had to make arrangements to deal with an...”unexpected result” from his “friendship” with the daughter of an important local merchant.

Yeah, you lost a lot, said the rage voice in the back of Vale’s head. Flying shipments of spice and luxury goods while drinking with the locals and fucking their sisters. You really lost a lot.

She realized, suddenly, that the captain hadn’t stopped speaking after her comment. There was stuff about duty, and compassion, and past transgressions, and him still having a ship to run. Fortunately, some subroutine in her brain had started her nodding at each of his points while her consciousness took a dip in the vast, underground ocean of rage she fought to keep at bay most days.

“...okay?” the captain said, finishing his speech.

“Of course,” Vale heard herself reply. “I’m sorry, captain. It won’t happen again.”

“Good,” the captain said. He pulled out his flask and took another tug at the burning liquid inside. Vale did a little bit of math in her head. How many more hours does he have at the helm until he hands over the watch to Nought? she thought. And how drunk is he going to be by then?

“I’ll talk to Thomas in the morning,” the captain said. “Pastor Lorence as well. I don’t think he can control the man any more than Thomas himself can, but...well, at least I can say that I’ve tried my best.”

Vale remained silent. Lorence was, at best, a useless enabler of the worst aspects of his flock. It was infuriating that the captain saw the same thing in the weak-willed man that Vale did, yet continued to play along with the “most appropriate” thing to do.

“As long as they don’t give me a reason to believe he’ll be a threat to yourself, or others, I’ll let him go.” Vale could feel the captain watching her closely. She nodded slowly, doing her best to keep her feelings off her face.

There’s a reason I don’t play poker, she thought to herself. Whatever did make her way to her face, however, wasn’t enough to have the captain prompt her for anything.

“We’ve both met people like him before-“ Patek continued.

Met? Sure. Dealt with? Only me, cap.

“So he probably wants to get back at you. But without documentable reason to keep him locked up until we reach Cyton...” He spread his hands.

“I understand, Captain,” Vale replied flatly. “I’ve already arranged for him and his son to be tracked through the ship, and to alert me if there’s the chance of me be ambushed by them.”

Patek nodded. “Yeah. Not a bad idea. You probably shouldn’t join any further group meals, though.”

“Fine by me.”

“And...although it had annoyed me previously, it’s probably best if Teek doesn’t join either.”

“Fine by them, I’m sure.” Vale knew, that just as with the dinner they’d just had, that Teek’s absence would keep their name in the passengers’ mouths...and that in order to avoid any further violence, the likelihood of Patek, Nought, or even Diego so speak up on their behalf was essentially nil.