She was born stunted. A runt. From her snub-nosed bridge, to her chubby rear thrusters. An ugly child, spat from the womb of a Martian shipyard generations ago. Now charred and pitted with craters, the scars on her battered titanium skin told a hundred stories.
A casual observer might consider the Vagabond nothing more than a derelict space freighter; abandoned after the exodus. Queued at Saturn’s Delta V station, waiting for her turn under the laser cutters.
Inside, grimy corridors throbbed with emergency lighting and echoed a monotonous wail. It came from everywhere and nowhere. An alarm.
Rat had squeezed into the tiny space behind an inspection plate in the bowels of the engineering section. A remarkable feat, made possible by his scrawny stature. He walloped his wrench into circuitry and the wailing subsided. White light replaced the bleeding red, and life on board the Vagabond returned to normal.
The little chief engineer extricated his limbs from the hole and crawled back into the service corridor. He retrieved his headset from the floor and slapped it over his sweaty scalp. “Killed the bastard. I think that was the last alarm.”
A gruff woman’s voice answered him, “Thank God for that. I have a bitch of a migraine forming. What was that one? It was louder than the others.”
“Hang on, lemme see.” Rat unclipped a worn and scratched tablet from his tool belt and swiped through the Vagabond’s sensor logs. “Oh, yeah, a hull breach. The AI thinks we’re leaking atmosphere into space.”
The woman shouted from his headset, “What the hell? Rat!”
He grimaced and lifted the earpieces an inch from each ear.
“It’s fine, don’t worry,” he reassured her, sauntering back towards the bridge. “We lost a fraction of the ship’s air when we docked. The airlocks didn’t quite sync. You know how it is.”
“No, I don’t! That’s why I have you. Assuming we don’t die in the vacuum of space, come back here. Talk to the station. They’re giving me grief over our engines.”
Rat hauled himself up onto the next floor and took his glasses off, polishing them with his filthy t-shirt. “They’re upset because we’re reporting a radiation leak.”
“A what?”
“A rad leak. But relax, captain, there’s no leak. I faked it. The inspectors won’t board now. They don’t earn enough hazard pay for that!” He grinned and swung his wrench as he strolled through the Vagabond’s dingy passageways.
“I fucking hate it when he tells me to relax,” Brenda muttered, heaving her generous frame from the captain’s chair. Black leather pants and jacket squeaked as she paced in her heavy boots.
***
Unlike the Vagabond, Brenda was not born stunted. She was born angry. A thrashing, black bundle of anger, screaming in unison with her mother. And she was never a runt. Even as a toddler, she cut a commanding figure and soon had others in her service. Her mother succumbed to respiratory infection from the shitty ventilation of their Earth-orbit station. This did not improve Brenda’s outlook one bit. She worked her way upward. From labourer to loader, and deckhand. All the while cursing everyone in her wake. Her absconded father. The negligent maintenance workers that left her orphaned. And every piece of space trash that tried to exploit the lonely child lost among the poorest sections of the poorest space station.
Ship and human. Both mistreated and underestimated. Destiny would bring Brenda and Vagabond together in a mechanical-biological bond. To keep them apart would have been an insult to fate.
Fate had delivered when the Vagabond’s previous captain advertised for a cargo jockey. Brenda bullied her way into the position, other applicants mysteriously taking alternative opportunities.
Upon completion of their first contract together, the boss and his first mate tried to cheat Brenda out of her share of the spoils. She knocked one unconscious with a full bottle of whisky and broke the other’s neck in the crook of her elbow. Both were alive when she loaded them into the Vagabond’s airlock and opened its outer hatch. Neither were alive two seconds later.
It was fortunate that the ship had been in easy range of Jupiter station and the autopilot could handle the docking procedure. A safety inspector accepted her story that airlock malfunction had caused the death of her crewmates. She wasn’t someone he wanted to challenge.
Her second stroke of luck was finding Rat. At first, their relationship was more of an abductor and abductee affair. Rat, dragged by his tool belt from a mining rig, had no choice but to help this frighteningly strong woman unlock Vagabond’s control systems— and the dead captain’s bank accounts, licenses, and contracts.
Stockholm Syndrome, or simple lack of judgement, inspired Rat to stick around. Plus, serving as the lackey to random maintenance crews had been depressing. With Brenda, at least, he’d been able to show off his engineering skills. She was a tough boss, a hard case that gave more insult than praise. But he knew she valued him, and that was enough.
***
Brenda finished pacing, folded her arms, and stared at the massive viewscreen wrapped around the bridge.
The Delta V space station spun against the inky backdrop of space. A huge golden halo, its five spokes connecting a central hub. Ten miles across, it dwarfed the Vagabond, and yet was still miniscule next to the local arc of Saturn’s outer ice ring. Starlight, pale and weak this far from the sun, played against the station’s gold hull.
Tiny figures, at this distance no bigger than fireflies, buzzed between the station and the chunks of orbiting ice. Miners. Crazy bastards wielding thruster packs and cutting torches, ferrying ice back to the ever-thirsty complex and its ten thousand occupants.
She reached into one of her jacket pockets, extracted half a cigar, and relit the burned end with an old-fashioned zippo lighter. She dragged on the smouldering stogey and saluted the tiny figures in space. And through blue smoke, uttered the age-old prayer for the ice workers.
“In God we thrust!”
Rat slinked onto the bridge, afraid to make a noise and disturb his captain’s moment, until she lowered her arm from the salute.
“Wish I had the balls to thrust myself out into space with no tether or tractor beam,” he whispered.
“Humph!” she retorted. “You need more than balls. You need an excellent sense of spatial awareness and a lack of self-preservation. Crazy fools. But I pray for their safe return home. They’re customers. And customers are precious. Dead ones, not so much.”
“I didn’t know you were religious.” Rat picked up the bottle from beside his captain’s chair and helped himself to a swig.
“I hedge my bets. And get your sticky mitts off my whisky. It’s the last one.” She strode over and swiped the booze from Rat’s hand, attempting to clip him around the ear at the same time. He ducked under her swing, escaping a nasty bruise.
“Tell the station’s health and safety freaks whatever they need to hear, and give Katomi a kick up that cute little ass of hers. Remind her we’re broke.” She squinted at Rat through the near empty bottle to illustrate her point. “She needs to seal this deal, or we’re screwed. I can’t even pay the docking fees.”
Rat bent over the comms station; Katomi’s domain, but tonight she was busy making herself pretty for the wheeling and dealing. He opened a channel to the Delta V’s docking authority and put on his best bullshitting voice. The captain poured herself the last two fingers of whisky. Or a full glass, by anyone else’s measure.
***
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One deck below, Katomi ran her hands over a sheer red dress that hugged her tighter than a dodgy uncle.
Given the choice, she’d have preferred a knife to the silver spoon she was born with. But she’d kill you with the spoon just the same.
The daughter of wealthy Martian entrepreneurs, her family had struck gold at the start of the Exodus. Her great-great-grandfather invested his life savings into as many berths on an Exodus ship as he could buy. His timing was exemplary. Commentators accused him of insider trading. Because days after those bookings, the Earth’s UN members resigned on mass, having failed to broker a truce between the Eastern and Western blocks. War was inevitable. Her savvy ancestor scalped those tickets for millions, investing the lot into major Mars development companies. The rest is history. A dirty chapter of it, anyway.
Katomi grew up in the palatial surroundings of an upper-class dome habitat. A striking view of Olympus Mons filled her bedroom window, and the brooding angst of a caged animal filled her heart. When her hormones raged, she raged with them. Wealth meant nothing to her, nor did a guaranteed future in Martian politics, or a dome full of doting service staff. She yearned to get out.
As Brenda fought to escape her poverty. Katomi fought against her rich upbringing.
A ticket to Saturn cost her mere pocket money. She spent the months in first class learning knife skills from the cruise ship’s head chef. At least, after he’d helped Katomi take the edge off her hormonal desires in the kitchen storerooms. Following each passionate encounter, they spent many hours wielding blades at imaginary foes. A childish pastime for sure, but one that would prove useful later.
Brenda had enquired into a cargo contract posted on the Delta V message boards, but with no destination specified. She discovered the contractor WAS the cargo. A precocious young thing wanting to “explore the galaxy”. The Vagabond didn’t have that kind of range, she’d informed the silly girl, but took her money for a hop around the inner system.
As with Rat, Katomi had stayed long past any original arrangements. She proved herself useful at communications and negotiating good rates. Especially with men. Not to mention that her knife skills added a more subtle form of violence to the crew’s capabilities.
The ceiling light in her quarters flickered off, and she swore to herself in the dark, “Damn it, Rat! When are you gonna fix my light?”
“How do you always know I’m here?” Rat asked from the doorway.
“Your unique scent, for a start,” Katomi answered without turning from the mirror, “and you make a racket, even when you’re sneaky. You’re lucky I recognise you from the smell, otherwise you might end up with a blade somewhere unfortunate.” She giggled. “A little rat kebab!”
Rat brushed off the threat. “You stand so long at that mirror; the AI thinks you’ve left! It turns off the light because I’ve asked it to save power.”
“Jesus Rat, are we that broke?”
Rat stepped into the room, and his movement triggered the illumination. Posters of smiling anime faces stared at him from the walls. A Katana sword sat on a single shelf above her bunk. On her desk, a swatch of deep blue velvet displayed a myriad of smaller knives and daggers. The blades flashed with polished silver menace. “Hey, no knives this time!” he warned.
“Not even an itsy-bitsy little groin stabber?” Katomi turned back to her mirror and continued smoothing her dress. Short black hair framed her pearly white oriental face, scarlet lips, and olive eyes.
Rat plonked himself on the bunk. He let out a long, exaggerated wolf whistle. “Smokin’ hot Katomi! I feel dirty just looking at you.”
“You ARE dirty! Get off my bed, you filthy bastard. The cleaning bots aren’t responding. And I’ve never washed a sheet in my life so don’t intend to start now.”
He jumped off the bed, lest he get another clip around the ear. The ladies got tetchy when funds ran dry.
“Yeah,” he said, “the AI decided my quarters are the dirtiest on the ship, so it sent the mop bots there. Hey, we have to get you wired and into the Hilton.”
“A good girl always keeps her company waiting, Rat.” Katomi looked over her shoulder to check her rear reflection. “I wish I had more ass, though.”
“Your ass is fine.” Rat grinned. “Don’t stand next to the captain and it won’t look small.”
They walked back to the bridge via Rat’s quarters to pick up some gear. The cleaning bots milled around, determining what was, and wasn’t, trash.
“I won’t find anything once they’re done,” he moaned.
She took one look inside and cringed. “How do you even sleep in there? Where’s your bed?”
“Oh, I dragged it down to engineering. It’s toasty warm and I enjoy the hum of the engines. They sing me to sleep. Like an engineer’s lullaby.”
“You’re weird.”
The door to the bridge slid open again, allowing a thin haze of cigar smoke to waft into the corridor. Katomi suppressed an instinctive cough. Rat stuck his arm out to stop her mid stride. Brenda was in full swing.
“Put the cargo bay specs on the screen, for fuck’s sake!” she bellowed at the ceiling.
A demure male voice answered from hidden speakers. Unlike humans, the ship’s new AI did not seem intimidated by Brenda. “I was making you aware that I’m able to manage our cargo. There’s no need for you to concern yourself with mundane tasks, such as cubic volume calculations. I can accomplish those faster than you.”
Both Katomi and Rat tensed, waiting for the reply.
“Oh, so it’s OUR cargo now, is it?” the captain ranted. “Listen, you jumped up little…” One hand clenched into a fist; the other gripped the neck of her empty bottle. The sodden cigar stub jutted from a corner of her mouth. She turned and saw her crew. “Rat! Tell this idiot AI not to question my commands. And to stop bragging. Unless it can materialise into an ice-miner with a twelve-inch dick that can thrust like a jackhammer!”
“AI OFF!” Rat shouted.
“Stupid thing. I don’t like it rooting around inside the Vagabond. And it doesn’t even have a name,” Brenda grumbled, sitting with a crunch of leather.
Rat pulled out his tablet, swiped a few times, and the cargo bay specifications appeared on the front view screen. “Well, I downloaded the cheapest AI on the net. It didn’t come with a name or even a model number. Maybe you can think of one, seeing as you’re the captain.”
“Oh, I’ve got a few names for it alright!”
“But it must be one it can use with traffic control, or customs. We don’t want to attract undue attention by having an AI that announces itself as ‘Asshole’ or something.”
“Humph. More’s the pity. Do we even have to use it?”
“Yep. New regs. Every craft needs an AI with digital signatures. It’s the authorities’ attempt to stop smuggling. No AI, no entry at stations or colonies.”
Katomi walked over to her comms station. “This thing deals with traffic control? That was my job!” She crossed her arms in a sulk.
Rat sighed. “We’ll only use it for comms when necessary. You’re still the voice of Vagabond. And the looks!” He pulled out a small strip of flexible plastic from his gear bag and held it against Katomi’s arm. “I had limited colour choice but did my best to match your skin tone. It’s not great though. You should get a tan.”
“Last time I checked, the ship didn’t have a sun bed. You know how far we are from the sun, Rat?”
“Yes, I do.” Rat smiled as he plugged one end of the band into his tablet.
Captain Brenda mumbled from her chair as she eyed the data on the front screen. “We’re empty. A hundred cubic meters of cargo space going begging. And only one potential contract.” She turned to the other two. “If we don’t get this job, we’ll be pulling shifts in the station’s processing plants.”
Her eyes widened at Katomi in her red dress. “Wow. Or we could pimp you out! I bet you’d fetch a premium hourly rate.”
“Don’t even think it!”
Rat finished programming the band. “Okay, listen, this is important.” He held up the strip. “The station has upgraded their security systems since we were here last. There’s no way you can sneak any conventional weapon on board. Not even a blade. But this little baby.” Rat flexed it. “Will help you out.”
“What is it?”
“Something me and the AI designed.” He smiled. “If you need to retreat, squeeze the middle. See this tiny lump?” He held it even closer, squinting through his round rimmed glasses with pride. “This will trigger an ultra-high-pitched tone. Its frequency is inaudible, but the sound waves are nauseating for humans and should give you a few seconds to do a runner.”
“Except that I’ll also be nauseated?”
Rat paused. “Oh, yeah… hmm... Well, block your ears when you activate it.”
“Okay gotcha. So, your plan for when I’m being attacked is to squeeze this thing. Stick my fingers in my ears before I puke, hope it disables my attackers, and make a run for it. In these heels?” She lifted a leg to illustrate the less than sprint-worthy nature of her footwear.
“Err… yep,” Rat said, frowning, “but it won’t come to that. The Hilton has their own security. They take care of disturbances that might attract the station police. Abductions are frowned upon. This is just a last resort. Now, lift your dress.”
“Excuse me?”
Rat grinned. “Show us your legs, darling. It will have to go undercover. Around your thigh.”
“Why can’t I take it in a bag?”
“No can do. They’ll empty the bag and find our little gadget. They’re funny that way. But lucky for us, they’re not funny enough to look up women’s dresses.”
Katomi lifted the hem of her dress. “You planned this the whole time, didn’t you?”
“I mighta.”
Brenda laughed around a fresh cigar. “Always got a hustle going on, haven’t ya, my perverted little rat?”
Rat peered upwards as he attached the band with his grease-stained fingers. “Nice Matching panties!”
Katomi ignored him. “So, Captain, what do we know of our potential customer?”
“Before I took you two on, I did the occasional run for the CSC.” Brenda noticed their blank expressions and sighed. “The Church of the Second Coming. It appears they need discreet shipping services again.”
“Ah, the church,” Rat interjected. “They’ve stomped out most other religions. We don’t see them much around here, what with Saturn’s secular rules.”
He tapped commands into his tablet and read from the resulting data. “They have that colony way out in The Eridanea region of Mars. Miles from the other domes. They also occupy a couple of self-sustaining generation ships in orbit above it, and rumour has it they’re establishing something on Triton. God knows why.”
“Well, the miners are there, so why not them as well, I suppose,” Katomi said.
“That’s TITAN, the Jupiter moon,” Rat corrected her in his best schoolteacher voice. “Yes, it’s very busy there now. But no, the church is messing way out at TRITON, Neptune’s moon. It’s three times as distant. Took their first ship twenty years to get there. Mad fools.”
“Could be they went for the peace?”
Rat shook his head at the information on his tablet’s screen. “Well, I hope they can cope with temperatures of 250 degrees below zero, and erupting nitrogen volcanoes.”
“When you two have fucking finished!” Brenda bellowed, making them jump. “I often wonder who’s the captain of this bloody ship. We don’t need lessons in astronomy when I’m addressing the crew. I don’t care if the volcanoes of Titan are spewing out stale piss!”
“Triton,” Rat whispered.
Brenda inflated both huge lungs full of smoky air and vented. “It’s their money we’re after. Not their backstory. If they want us to haul fifty little choir boys to Mars, that’s fine and dandy. As long as they’re paying!”
Katomi wondered if it was their shared lack of morals that made them such a tight crew.