Trusting is Good… Not Dying is Better
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His soiled sneakers fidgeting on the dashboard, Miles cartoonishly snored in the cockpit. A Bonanza rerun, the humming of the AC and the blinking LEDs of the Forlorn doing her daily checking had put him back to sleep.
The grinding computer concluded its routine. A shrill beep made the pilot and his feathered comrade jump. The less grumpy of the two toggled a set of switches, and the old silent TV series disappeared from the main screen. The ship displayed a long report featuring, for instance, a list of maintenance requirements and an analysis of the coolant reserves.
“Nothin’ vitally important…” Miles moaned, skipping the ammunition inventory before the computer highlighted a warning message. A large chunk of the seal framing the cockpit windshield threatened to come off. “...yet.”
Tearing the packaging of an odd-smelling jerky stick, he propelled himself towards the heights of the command deck. And indeed, after a close inspection, the moldy rubber was starting to fray. Naamah’s clumsy repairs had been severely damaged by the controlled explosion on Enceladus.
Fate appeared half a Martian minute later through the hatch. She wore the old ship’s yellow and brown overalls from the times it belonged to Yoyodyne Corp. The frayed sleeves knotted around her hips, she preferred covering herself with a rudimentary crop top she made from her black body. She had left the machine gun below.
“Righteous look. You sure love your turtleneck,” Miles said.
Rolling her eyes, she flew into the cabin.
The pilot swallowed the end of his carcinogenic stick. Laughing, he twirled to face the windshield. Running his index against the rubber, he stopped when he met an ice cone. A perfectly round drop of space water escaped his nail when he snapped his fingers. “There’s a slight problem with the joint...”
“How serious?”
Miles dived towards a tape-covered lever which turned the bridge into ‘cockpit mode’. “Not that bad…” he sighed.
She leaped on the pilot seat, gauged the faulty rubber seal gradually getting closer to the dashboard. “Not that bad?” She cursed in Japanese, glanced at the screen and opened the flickering damage report.
“It can last a couple more days.”
“No, it will not. Math never lies. Are you suicidal?”
Miles didn’t answer. A thin crack silently ran across the windshield. As the temperature dropped, the computer emitted a loud alert.
“I’m going out to fix this. Do you mind staying in the cockpit? I could use an extra hand from within.”
“Sure about that? It’s blowin’ up a storm.”
“We do not have a choice. Plus, the shower did recharge my batteries,” she said while getting up. “I know what to do, and I wish to stretch my legs. Does it bother you?”
Miles responded with a thumbs up and turned around. “Suit yourself, Lady Trouble.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He laughed, walking towards the passageway. “Speaking of suits, mine’s in the locker. The same you found the overalls for your fashion show.”
“Noted.”
“Mind pursuin’ our little chat while you risk your life out there?”
“If you want...” Ignoring his hand, she leaped into the oval hole.
Wearing Miles’ space suit, Fate stepped outside with a box of tools clipped on her left thigh. Thanks to the magnetic boots, she quickly reached the pelican’s beak. For her, a space walk seemed like a stroll in Central Park.
Once she checked her radio, Miles went back to the conversation they started earlier: “Your friend—I’m assumin’ he’s a corpo, lookin’ at his suit and tech. He knows you fled on my ship. I’d like to understand what’s your beef with him. Who was that guy to begin with? What’s his name?”
Fate crouched above the windshield and waved at Miles. He couldn’t see her face because of the reflection of her visor’s spotlights. A veil of ice also slowly started flooding the armored glass.
Inside, the spacecraft’s radio crackled: “He has no known name.”
“Saw that coming from a lightyear…” He coughed before crunching a sugar pill. “For how long has Mr. Turban been chasin’ you?”
“Uranus.”
“Hell of a trip.”
“The yakuzas wanted to drop me on Titan.”
“Trendy place.”
“That was their mission—originally. There, I should have caught a shuttle at Shangri-La and slingshot towards the belt.”
Miles raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean ‘originally’?”
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After clamping herself to a hook on the hull, the skilful woman took a small gun-like heater from the toolbox and turned it on. A sparkling pink flame rose from the tip. “They forced me to work for them instead. That was ‘the price for a ticket’, Goro said…” Panting, she started painstakingly cleaning the ice before partially melting the faulty rubber around the windshield. “For two years I worked for them. I made some cash—a lot. Enough to disappear once in Ceres. But—”
The radio sizzled as a hail of dust suddenly struck the ship. Quick thinker, she ducked and covered her visor with her hands. The suit offered a meager protection against icy grit going a thousand miles an hour. However, protecting the weakened part of the windshield with her body probably saved both their lives.
“You good up there?” Miles asked as the computer warned of another cloud of bigger debris. “One more run like this and we might have tea with Darwin…”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“Sounds like a weak ‘yes’. You insisted.”
“I did…” Fate resumed while starting surgically spreading a gray glue on the leak. “You know… unlike you, the yakuzas never fully trusted me.”
“Is that why they locked me on the ship?”
“Yes.”
The first whirling volutes missed their target and froze in the void. The crack on the windshield grew, reaching the opposite side. Immediately, another cone started growing there.
“Our situation’s quickly turnin’ sour...” Miles worried. The temperature dropped again, and he started shivering.
“Almost done.”
“The yaks knew about the suit guy?”
“Of course,” Fate went on. Her second batch successfully insulated the area around the first ice cone. The latter immediately started to melt inside. Throwing the empty resin bottle into the void, she walked towards the second leak. “My ‘help’ appeared to be worth the risk…”
She carefully sat on the hulk. She found duck tape after rummaging through the toolbox. Fighting the weightlessness, she applied half a dozen of bands on the leak after torching the rubber. Once the leak sealed, she added a couple more crosswise; just to be sure.
“I am done, and heading back,” the resourceful yet illegal passenger resumed, standing up. After rubbing her sore shoulders, she scraped the little bluish clouds still gripping her nylon sleeves.
“Impressive.”
“I did that a couple of times for the yakuzas. This is just a quick fix. We ought to stop somewhere, because the moment we push a g, the windshield will shatter. And I do not want to be by your side when it happens.”
“Roger that. Just one thing to check before we part.”
Miles left the cockpit, following Fate’s heavy footsteps on the hull. Once back in the hold, he bolted the space door of the airlock.
“What are you doing?” she reacted, tapping the porthole. “Do not leave me here! Another hail of dust is on its way!”
“What about the corporation behind Mr. Turban? Why would they be after you exactly?” Miles seriously asked for the first time. He suspected Fate of eluding the subject by shunting the conversation to the Japanese mobsters.
“Open at once!” she panicked.
Watching from an ajar kitchen drawer, the duck quacked.
Seeing Fate panickingly banging on the door, Miles knew he went too far and stepped out of the airlock where he closed the first metallic door. With his elbow, he unlocked the entrance and the equalization of pressure began.
“Bakatare…” she mumbled on the radio before striding in.
The airlock decontamination proceeded. She joined him a minute later. Helped by the Forlorn pilot, she unscrewed the space suit’s helmet.
“You crave to know, uh?” she roared, pushing him.
“Who wouldn’t?” he reacted, thinking about his hands dissipating under a munching skin.
Fate looked daggers at him. She furiously unknotted her belt and dropped the bulky space suit on the metal floor. She only wore black military underwear and her roll-neck top beneath. On her belly, her scar shone like a soldered joint. And so does almost her entire left leg.
Miles frowned by sitting on the bottom bed. It wasn’t an implant, but a real member with sporadic chrome stripes.
“Fulfilled?”
“What’s this? A custom pirate pegleg?”
“No.” She stopped. “Is everything a joke to you? My limb got severed on a mission around Miranda two months ago.”
“Impossible. Normal reconstructive surgery takes more than a year unless you have access to R&D tiers tech.”
“Which you do not have while running away across the Rings with mobsters!”
“Alright. I get it...”
“Judging by your funny comments, you don’t!” she yelled, ripping off her soaked black top.
Fate straightened, revealing a metallic lurex expanding from her chest to her spine. Every time she inhaled, shiny lungs filled her metallic thoracic cage. A gold-circled armored window on her solar plexus between her breasts allowed Miles to glance at a real oozing heart pumping inside the woman’s shell.
Fate then tucked her chrome-colored hair behind her ears, allowing the Alliance man to see what was once hidden beneath the turtleneck. There, like on her other limbs and hips, smaller cracking metallic spots keep appearing before vanishing, swallowed by the surrounding synthetic flesh. Only a few burned marks from radiation seemed to resist the rejuvenation. Her entire body was turning into a machine, and coming back to organic life every second, like a clockwork. Regenerating at ultra-speed, her medi-shots traces had already disappeared.
“Do you still want to know more?” Fate resumed.
Miles quietly got up and climbed towards the cockpit after his copilot fluttered on his shoulder. On their way, they stopped at the lockers and the Alliance envoy took a brown overalls and threw it at the girl below. As she dressed up, he reached the cabin and leaned on his chair.
The duck quacked but his friend only answered with an absent look.
A silent minute later, the woman sat next to them in the copilot spot.
“You dying?” he asked.
“Why would you care…” she gulped. She zipped the overalls up to her chin, hiding her chrome spots beneath the stand up collar. “What about you? You don’t look very healthy either.”
“Yeah. Should probably stop the jerky sticks and the sugar pills. Got more than Carter, them pills…”
“Beef jerky doesn’t make you look like you’ve been through a meat grinder. What about your scars?”
The pilot wanted to answer but another alert warned them again of the inbound cloud of debris.
“One horror movie at the time. Ain’t no double feature tonight,” he said, buckling up and waking the nuclear reactor. “We gotta hit the nearest station—fix the joint before the windshield cracks for good. After that, I’ll drop you on Titan. Free of charge.”
The next coordinates entered were those of a small town named Old Dodge, a giant yet mostly disused city-protein farm.