After a shower and a change of clothes, Jack sat shaking on the end of his bed as Urtiga paced the cabin. He had a lot of questions, not all of which he was brave enough to ask. Eventually, he settled on the obvious.

“We aren’t going to Misian, are we?”

“No,” Urtiga replied. “Which is a good thing for you, because Rayker will have sent a kill-team there to welcome you off the ship.”

“You did this deliberately, didn’t you?”

“I want her chasing you around the sector, rather than thinking about where we are actually going.”

“Where is that?”

“That is something for you to tell me, with your insider knowledge of VennZech corporation.”

Jack sighed and tried to think. He hadn’t slept well in several days, and he was missing the usual alcoholic haze he needed to finish off the day. “Maybe we can go back to the bar—”

“Alcohol is for when things are boring. Things are about to get very interesting.”

Her tone suggested she wasn’t interested in a debate, and Jack decided to drop it. He left the bed and crossed the room, stepping out onto the balcony. A floor to ceiling glass pane stretched the room’s considerable length, separating him from the cosmic void. Stars drifted almost imperceptibly slowly against the stunning backdrop of the Milky Way. A light enhancing film coated the window, allowing him to observe celestial objects otherwise invisible to the naked eye. The room had certainly been worth the cost, even if it was only a decoy.

He sighed. “I never wanted something like this to happen. I just made deliveries.”

Urtiga sank into the balcony’s leather couch as she swept her black hair around her neck. “What you wanted is irrelevant,” she said dispassionately. “You outsourced your decision-making ability to someone else, and because you are a poor gambler, you chose someone who would dispose of you once you became inconvenient. Whatever angst you’re going through right now is the result of your apathy catching up with you.”

Jack shook his head. “You’re wrong. I didn’t go looking for Rayker.”

“Maybe not consciously. But you took the path of least resistance within a community dedicated to lawlessness. At the same time, you’re obviously a hardworking and skilled individual. By necessity, that would put you on the radar of ruthless and ambitious individuals like Rayker. I’m going to go out on a limb and conclude that you took a degree of comfort in the protection afforded by her capacity for cruelty. But don’t beat yourself up about it—you’re only human.”

“Because you just know everything about me?” Jack snapped.

Urtiga laughed. “How could I know anything about you? It’s not like you’re one of billions of members of the same species that frequently commit genocide, rape and subjugation, only to come out the other side blaming everyone but themselves.”

“I’m a good person. I didn’t… want to hurt anybody.”

“But your actions will.”

He sank his head into his hands. “It’s so unfair,” he said with a sigh.

“Um… no. Unfair is digging your dead child out of a bombed-out building because a bunch of narcissistic elites decided to squabble over power. Last I checked, it is not unfair to expect capable adults to put themselves in harm’s way to protect innocent people.”

“Oh okay. So, I’m a coward now—got it.”

“I don’t think you’re a coward. I think that society sold you a false understanding of what you could expect, and you need a bit of time to wake up from that. Admittedly, I don’t know that much about you, but if had to guess… I’d say nobody ever gave you a path in life. It’s a crazy universe, everyone needs direction, and when they don’t get one, it’s easy to feel lost. And you look around and see people whizzing past with lives of radical success, and you think it shouldn’t be that hard for you to find the same. So, you thought you were owed something, and that is the bait Rayker reeled you in with. How were you supposed to know the difference when nobody ever helped you figure it out?”

But one man did help me figure it out, Jack thought. I just recoiled in horror. Didn’t that make me a good person?

“I’m not saying it was supposed to be easy,” Urtiga continued. “Life is competitive and fast moving. If you’re slow off the mark, you will get screwed over. If you have been handicapped, you will most likely fall out of the race. So why care about the world that left you behind?”

Jack shook his head.

“Humans fall back on their instincts,” Urtiga continued. “When you don’t know what’s going on, you look for the strongest person in the room and you try to get closer to them. For you, that was Rayker. Then all that’s left is rationalization—I’m not really involved. At least she stands up to the Helvets. What they say about her is exaggerated. At least she protects me.”

“And now you are the strongest person in the room?” Jack observed, coldly.

She nodded. “Sim. But I have no easy solutions for you. I am not going to let you sit back and watch while I solve all the problems that you helped create. You are going to have to step up and get your hands dirty. And yes, you might screw it up and get killed. That’s just how life is, I’m afraid. You may have thought you could escape that reality. You were wrong.”

Turning back to the window and the sparkling clouds of light, Jack remembered the times on his own ship, when he had contemplated the sky, wondering what unimaginable wonder could be found amongst the stars. He now realized with a shiver that there must also be unimaginable terror in equal quantity.

“And you’ll kill me if I refuse?” he said.

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“You won’t refuse. I know that you at least want to be a good person. You don’t have to take me at my word either. If I could put you—with zero danger, and zero consequences—next to Rayker with a gun in your hand, would you pull the trigger?”

Jack was silent for some time. In his mind, a different face presented itself. “Yes,” he whispered.

“The path isn’t hard to see—just hard to walk.” Urtiga stood up. “Now, do you want to tell me where they are going to take that bomb?”

He shrugged. “They have dozens of research labs. It could be going to any of them.”

“Okay, so who will know which one?”

“What do you mean?” He turned back to Urtiga with a puzzled expression.

“Who in VennZech will know where a brand-new, top-secret research project will have been assigned?”

Jack rubbed his eyes. “The head of the research division, probably, but I don’t see how that helps us.”

“We can just go and ask them, obviously.”

Jack snorted in disbelief. “Oh, obviously. We can break through a hundred levels of Tier One security on whatever fortress world he is located, put a gun to his head and hope he decides not to lie to us.”

She chuckled. “It’s a solid plan. We can shave off a few rough edges, maybe add some frills, but I think it will serve.” She cocked her head. “Actually, that part will largely be on me. But don’t get comfortable.”

Jack dropped his head in despair, afraid to think about what he was getting wrapped up in.

“Why don’t you start by finding the planet?” Urtiga asked.

The next day, they stole one of the ship’s emergency life rafts. Jack stowed all the luggage they brought while Urtiga neutralized the ship’s alarm system and overrode the docking clamps. Soon, they were coasting in the blackness, engines extinguished as they watched the dark bulk of the starliner disappear into the void. It took them a day to reach a distant gas giant, and Urtiga flew them towards a bright white speck that soon resolved itself into an icy moon.

“We can use the survival equipment to get us to our destination,” she said, after touching them down on an empty white desert.

Jack didn’t ask for more details, numb as he felt to his new destiny. What use could his opinion be after all?

He rummaged through the craft’s stores, pulling out cold weather gear and food rations. When he popped the hatch, he shook as a chill wind invaded their warm bubble of comfort. Urtiga strode out into the snow, as comfortably as though she were out for a stroll in a meadow.

They walked for hours, until Jack thought he was dying. The life raft had contained waterproof boots, but walking through snow meant that every step was a struggle. His veins pumped acid while his heart seemed to want to explode. Every breath of icy air had become painful. When finally he felt that he couldn’t go on, he dropped into the snow, embracing the urge to sleep forever.

“It’s just over that rise,” Urtiga said.

“You’ve said that fifty times now,” Jack complained.

“Well, this time it’s true.” She continued up the slope. Jack waited as long as he dared, but the fear of hyperthermia filled his body with electricity. With another burst of effort, he hauled himself upright and trudged after her. She had waited for him a few yards up the slope, and when he joined her, he saw the black metal of a refinery poking out from behind the next hill.

When they got there, a friendly foreman ushered them inside and showed them to the canteen.

“A survey team?” the foreman—who introduced himself as Sevro—asked skeptically, as he poured hot chocolate into their waiting mugs.

“Our shuttle touched down near the Alpha rig, but we got lost in the storm yesterday.” Urtiga explained. “Our positioning system shorted out.”

“Hmm.” He nodded. “Been happening a lot with that new batch. R and D screwed up the design, though nobody in management cares. And, of course, they don’t tell me anything about surveys.”

“We can catch a ride on the next tanker, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

Sevro shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me or the crew. You been out here a year, you run out of things to talk about.” He laughed. “I suspect they won’t leave you alone for news of the outside world.”

“I don’t follow the news, but if you’re into combat sports, I can talk your ear off,” Urtiga said.

Sevro shrugged, apparently not a fan.

“They keep you out here a year?” Jack said, appalled.

“Well, it’s a high demand resource, deuterium, but difficult to keep the rigs going in the cold. You need constant supervision to keep everything humming along. It’s alright; the pay’s not bad.”

“Must be nice to be separated from the chaos out there.”

“Not really. I miss my family.”

At that moment, some of the refinery’s workers filed into the canteen, grabbing hot drinks and snacks. They joked back and forth, and Jack found himself feeling jealous of their camaraderie.

“Must be nice to be working together as a team?” he ventured. “Advancing humanity into the stars.”

Sevro looked him up and down suspiciously. “You a politico?”

“No, I just… well, it just seems… romantic, I thought.”

“He’s just a dreamer,” Urtiga explained.

“Well, this crew of tossers are a bunch of smelly loudmouths, but we keep each other alive.”

Some of the workers cheered. “We love you too, Sev,” a man shot back.

Jack’s face fell. “But if you don’t like it, why did you choose—”

“Oh Christ, you are a politico, aren’t you? Or an idiot,” Sevro snapped. “Who chooses anything in this day and age? I did my qualification exams at eighteen, same as everyone else, and got slotted into resource extraction.”

“Oh… sorry.” Jack winced, realizing that his own background had protected him from the usual Helvetic social management.

“Hi,” a man smiled as he sat down across from Urtiga. “What’s a beautiful young woman like you doing in a shithole like this?”

“Survey work,” Urtiga said with a warm smile, “And I’m not into guys.”

The man sank his head into his hands. “Just my luck, isn’t it?” He continued sinking until his forehead came to rest on the table.

“Don’t mind Foggy there,” Sevro said. “He’s just the galaxy’s whipping boy.”

“Aren’t we all Sev? Go on, I know you want to tell them.”

Sevro grinned. “So, Foggy used to be a mid-level manager. Until he ran afoul of a senior executive.”

Foggy sat back upright, shaking his head. “His wife was having a bad day. And this was the company Vice President, by the way. Well, she wanted to make him jealous for some bloody reason, and she started flirting with me in public. Once word got back to him, he made a few calls and… poof. Twenty years of my life down the drain.”

“That’s awful.” Jack frowned, though he had heard many similar stories.

“Yeah, well, there’s plenty who have it worse, isn’t there?” Sevro said, eyeing him with an annoyed expression. “That’s the way of the world and no-one can say anything about it, so I don’t know who you are, going on about choice.”

“Here, you’re not connected, are you?” Foggy asked, his expression growing anxious.

Jack vigorously shook his head, keen to deny any suspicion of him being a cartel member.

“We’re contractors. He used to work for VennZech,” Urtiga explained.

“Lucky sods. So, you get to work for whoever you please, and you chose the kiddy snatchers, right?” Foggy said as he glared accusingly at Jack.

“I never had anything to do with that,” Jack said hurriedly, glancing desperately back and forth between Urtiga’s raised eyebrow and his interrogator.

“It’s funny,” Foggy went on menacingly. “Because they all say that.”

Jack thought quickly. “They wouldn’t be so stupid as to bring a contractor in on that kind of business, would they?”

Foggy seemed to accept this, to Jack’s relief. He had been lucky that Rayker had kept him away from VennZech’s more sordid trafficking ventures. The rumors abounded that boys and girls were being taken for the secret enjoyment of the elites, though he had never seen real evidence of that crime.

Later, when they were alone, he confronted Urtiga. “If you’re part of some secret organization running after alien weapons, surely you would know something about human trafficking?”

For a moment she said nothing, but huffed and stared into the distance. “It’s not supposed to be our responsibility.”

“But it could be?”

She didn’t reply.

“Is that one of those rationalizations you were telling me about?”

She glared at him. “I don’t need to talk about this with you,” she snapped.