With Brenda connected to the ICU, receiving replacement units of her own donor blood, Katomi and Rat thieved everything worth thieving from the Righteous Fury before de-coupling the ships. Dick summoned them when their captain ripped off all the sensor pads from her head and chest and refused to undergo any more treatment. They arrived to find her in mid-argument with the AI. Again.

“He only shot me in the right tit with a little pee-shooter for fuck’s sake!” she shouted as she clambered off the bed. “I’ve had ice-miners come on my tits with more force than that.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Dick replied.

“Fuck you too!”

Rat leaned over to Katomi. “If I’m not mistaken, those two are becoming friends.”

Brenda noticed her crew. “I’m starving. Rat, we’re having dinner down with you tonight. See what you can rustle up.”

“You’re going to trust Rat to organise dinner?” Katomi asked. “This place is turning into a madhouse!”

“Come on, little one,” Brenda said, throwing a heavy arm around Katomi’s shoulders. “How bad can it be?”

***

It wasn’t too bad.

They met in the cargo hold, where Rat had set up lighting rigs around the strange casket. A power cable snaked along the floor to the wall. Portable fans blew the escaping gas towards the rear of the bay, where wall vents sucked it out.

“The gas has nitrogen in it. Not too nice if you breathe it in directly,” he explained.

Katomi and Brenda stayed on the back side of the fans as they all examined the strange pod.

Katomi screwed up her nose. “Adam smells.”

Rat, performing the ritual of cleaning his glasses with his shirt, answered, “Yes, there’s some methane in there. And a couple of other things we haven’t figured out yet. Dick, why don’t you share what we know?”

“WITHOUT giving us a history of the solar system!” Brenda said.

“Interestingly, shorter explanations place a larger demand on my cognitive abilities,” Dick said, “as I need to determine what pieces of information might be less useful and thus discarded.”

“Jaysus wept. Get on with it!”

“A check of the traffic control logs,” Dick continued, “shows an unregistered ship entering Saturn-controlled space from an outer Uranus slingshot; not the usual inner Jupiter one. Two days ago. Forbidden from docking at the Delta V with no registration, two occupants used a shuttle service to get station-side. Yesterday, a ship registered to the CSC appeared from the same origin and was permitted to dock.”

Dick let this sink in a while.

“It is not a tremendous leap of faith, if you’ll forgive the pun, to surmise both ships came from the only known church presence in the outer system. Their exploratory platform orbiting Triton.”

The three crew members sat on the floor with their backs to the wall and waved him on.

“The atmosphere currently being ejected from this capsule is almost a match for that of Triton. Nitrogen, methane, and some carbon monoxide. This is not a mixture conducive to life, at least, not life known to exist currently. The temperature is also being regulated at levels close to Triton’s. What I haven’t been able to ascertain, is how it’s maintaining the very low surface pressure of that moon. If indeed it’s attempting to replicate all the conditions found there. I find it difficult to believe, inasmuch as I believe anything, that a life form is contained within.”

He seemed to be done. Nobody dared ask another question, lest dinner be delayed further.

Rat set up a small contraption in front of them. A metal plate above a burner, connected to a gas tank.

“I figured we’d take advantage of the out-gassing setup,” he said, gesturing at the fans and exhausting vents, “and have us a barbeque!”

Space freighter ration packs have come a long way in the last few decades, but those who ate them thought they had further to go yet. Nevertheless, they provided a balanced nutritional intake. Rat, Katomi, and Brenda supplemented their three daily packs with a variety of “luxury” foods, depending on availability, bank balance, and what station or colony they’d visited last. If the Vagabond had delivered a satellite component to a communication relay orbiting Jupiter, they’d only be able to restock their supplies with the basics. But if they’d dropped off a hydroponic unit to a Mars colony, they could buy synthetic meats, real vegetables, and even delicacies such as rehydratable ice cream. And, of course, Brenda would refill her supply of single malt.

Rat was a hoarder. Somewhere down near engineering, he kept a secret stash of the very best rations. Neither Brenda nor Katomi had ever found it— not that they tried too hard. It was filthy down there. Every second light tube didn’t work, and the nearer you got to the engines, the noisier it became. Not to mention, radiation monitors got jumpy when you turned a wrong corner.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

On special occasions, Rat would break into his stash. And he figured now was a special occasion. They’d escaped a gunfight and a ship boarding, with precious cargo stowed, and a massive bank balance tucked away. And so, into the stash he dove.

“Steaks!” he announced, throwing his crewmates a shrink-wrapped package each. “Synthetic yes, but they say you can’t tell the difference.”

“Some of us can tell.” Katomi examined the pack, remembering the high-class VIP dinners on Mars. “But yes, they are very close. Won’t even ask where you got them, Rat.”

Rat puffed himself up. “Well, ladies don’t kiss and tell. Rats don’t steal and tell. Ha!”

They took turns to barbeque a steak and other delicacies on Rat’s little stove.

“Dick?” Brenda asked, chomping.

“Yes, Captain? And I presume we’ve dispensed with Richard? Dick rolls off the tongue much easier?”

Katomi choked on her mouthful. Brenda ignored the question. “This Adam fella, the bishop was ranting over, what makes him so valuable?”

“Well, given who we’ve been dealing with, I can only surmise he was referring to Adam from the Bible. The first man on Earth.”

“Oh, you mean Jesus.” Brenda corrected him with authority.

“No, Jesus was not the first man. Plenty of humans came before him.”

“Yeah,” Rat interrupted, “in fact he never came at all. Ha! Poor guy didn’t get laid in that whole story.”

“Yes, he did,” Katomi said, “he hooked up with that Mary girl.”

Rat cringed. “Ew… that was his mother.”

“No, not that Mary… another one. I remember it from history class. Mary Maggie-Lyn or something.”

Rat frowned. “You mean the one with the lambs?”

“Just how many fucking Marys are there in this story?” asked Brenda, annoyed.

Dick’s voice took on an exasperated tone. “The Mary with the lambs, and she only had ONE lamb by the way, was NOT in the Bible.”

“I beg to differ,” said Rat, turning down the gas on his barbeque, “she definitely had two lambs, because there were two of every animal. They put them on that ship. Must have had a massive cargo hold. I wouldn’t like to clean it out after than run tho…”

“Screw this,” said Dick, giving up.

“Did he swear?” Katomi asked. “He can’t do that if he talks to traffic control. They’ll put us at the back of every queue.”

“Like I said, he adapts. He’ll speak much nicer to them, don’t worry.”

“IF we can get back to the question,” Brenda said, “what do these nutters want with this really old Adam guy, and why send him to Mars? “

“That remains unknown at this stage,” Dick replied, “and remember, only some of the nutters wanted us to bring him to Mars. If we even have “him” in that pod. The second bunch on the scene very much wanted him back.”

“Hmm…. Seems to me like we might renegotiate our fees.” Brenda grinned.

Rat agreed, “Of course, we could be in possession of one half of a set.”

“What do you mean?” Katomi asked.

“Well, Adam had a partner, remember. A woman by the name of Eve.”

“The one that screwed a snake!” said Brenda.

“That is SO gross.”

“Eve did not have sex with a snake,” Dick sounded tired. “She simply took an apple from one. It made her have sex with Adam.”

“It’s no wonder apples cost so much,” Rat pondered. “If that’s what they do.”

Brenda leaned over and wiped grease covered fingers on Rat’s shirt. “Seems to me, we grab this Eve chick and complete our set, it’s got to be worth at least double what we’ve already earned. And you can buy all the sex apples you want, Rat.”

“She’s probably on Mars!” Katomi exclaimed. “We always wondered what the church was up to, way out in their dome. I bet they found Eve and their other lot found Adam out on Titan.”

“Triton,” Rat corrected.

“Yeah, wherever. Anyway, we’ll soon know, I guess.”

“How long till we reach Mars, Dick?” Brenda asked.

“Only twenty-five weeks, or six months, if you prefer. Provided we make our slingshot windows. The encounter with the CSC ship has eroded our margins again. I need your permission to burn the plasma engines at 105% for a day at least, in order to put us back on track, otherwise…”

“Otherwise,” Katomi finished, “the next slingshot will be ages away.”

“That is correct. If we miss this slingshot window, there won’t be another for eighteen months. I can explain if you wish?”

“No, that’s fine!” Rat stopped him.

“It’s easy to explain,” said Katomi, harpooning a synthetic sausage on the end of a tablet stylus. “I was navigator as well as comms officer, remember, before this Dick popped up! It’s because of the orbit of Jupiter. Compared to Mars, Jupiter’s orbit is over twenty times as fast. We kick out of Jupiter at the wrong time, and we’ll miss Mars and have to wait for it to come round again in a couple of years.”

“A reasonable description,” Dick answered.

“You know I’m the engineer, but I’ll never get my head around that astronavigation stuff,” Rat said. “Gimme a busted engine any day. Dick, can you get into the church’s servers at all? Confirm the bishop’s crazy story?”

“No. But my inability to do so is enlightening. Over the last decade, the CSC has been closing down its communication systems. There are very few traces of contact between their Mars colony, its orbiting stations, and the Triton outpost. Everything is ‘hush-hush’, as you’d say.”

“So…” Brenda burped and pulled a cigar from an inside jacket pocket. She flicked open the zippo lighter and played its flame over the cigar’s end while she spoke.

“Let me wrap my head around everything. This looney church, the last one standing since the Exodus, sets up on Triton a few years back. After a twenty-year slog to get out there. They go incommunicado and shut up shop. Fast forward and we get a transport job to take something back from Delta V to Mars. And sex-on-legs Katomi here negotiates a mammoth fee out of a horny monk. The next day, some other monks shoot up Katomi’s one-night stand and his boss, right after they off-load this weird pod thing onto us. Then the second lot attack us, and their looney leader claims we’re carrying the first dude to ever live, in our cargo hold. And the odds are good that his girlfriend is on Mars.”

“I wonder why some in the church want Adam and Eve together and others clearly don’t?” Katomi asked.

“I would venture there’s a difference of opinion around what might happen if they copulate,” said Dick.

“If they even want to,” Katomi said. “We shouldn’t assume Eve wants anything to do with him anymore.”

“What if they had an argument and separated?” Rat said, as he packed up his cooking gear. “Imagine the makeup sex after this long!”

Katomi groaned. “Do you think of anything else?

“Yes. Engines. Sex and engines. Especially engines with pistons.” Rat made a rhythmic pistoning gesture with his forearm.

“That was a damn fine dinner, Rat.” Brenda yawned. “I’m off to the bridge, though. I want to keep an eye on things in case those fuckers launch another ship at us.”

“You know I’m perfectly capable of monit…” Dick started.

“The only thing I know you’re capable of, Dick, is talking! How about you shut up long enough to figure out how to see inside that pod. I need to know if we’ve really got this Adam fella. After that, we can decide if it’s worth looking for his girlfriend.”