I guess pretty much everyone says that the only job worse in the universe than a Wrecker crewhand’s is that of a Wrecker captain.
See, a normal Wrecker’s got the five year shifts, the world slipping onwards while we collect space trash – sure. It’s not roses. And that eerie eternal youth everyone whispers about is really only subjective when you get down to it.
Back on Earth, they get old and crumple and we fly in with only a new wrinkle around the eye, maybe a gray hair or two for the decades gone. To us, they’re the ghosts, sliding through time while we stand solid and watch. But, hey, nobody who takes this job is the nostalgic sort. We burned all those bridges long ago, and most don’t care where they work, be it the galaxy’s horizon or the construction yard on Main Street, as long as they can get a stiff drink and a soft bed when the day’s done.
But, yeah, being a captain, comparatively, I guess it’s kinda hard. We govern these motley bastards, with whatever it takes. Sometimes that’s another drink and a hand on the shoulder. Sometimes it’s a shock stick. You get over that. Every foreman learns to deal with that kind of crap, and, sure, maybe our crew’s a bit rougher than anything terrestrial, but we’re cut from tougher mailweave, too.
Naw, for me, what bites is leaving again. I don’t care about who’s died or what girl’s married, birthed and gotten fat. Place doesn’t miss me, I don’t miss it. What sucks is the re-equipping and seeing all the damn crap they invented while we were gone, all the shit that would have smoothed every tough patch we hit. What I hate is being behind the curve, and, Wreckers? You always are. Nature of the beast. Kinda crappy.
Still. There are worse things.
* * *
Jimmy ducked his head as he entered the cabin, his lanky frame stooped to navigate the low doorway.
“Coming up on something, now, Sir,” he reported, voice terse. It was his first term, and he was still skittish about wrecks. Someday, that would boil away to bored nonchalance, I knew, but, for now, we had a kid on nav. I yawned, letting him stand nervously for a moment. He shifted his weight; the only sound above the dull hum of cruising speed was his heavy boots creaking against the gridded steel floor. Finally, I absently gestured towards the control panel. The kid brought up the display.
Green lines tracing through the x and y and z sketched out a skeletal image, reflected almost ghastly against the kid’s Irish pallor – a wreck, all right, and a bulbous one, lines all bulky, bristling with power exhausters. A freighter, it looked like, and I sat up a bit straighter.
Most ships this deep out were colonist barges, their main cargo skeletons of lost dreamers. Vestiges of a blooming world, ships were always spiralling off into the void every century or two, chasing after whatever new system looked promising – and that’s why we were employed, afterall, to recycle their mess once the distance and cold and black drowned their shiny white hopes.
But a freighter? I stabbed in our current trajectory and, within seconds, I had a guesstimate: a burgeoning trade center based only a few clicks away from us. Huh. Well, I guess sometimes things take root in the darkness and survive. This was their resupply shipment.
“We’ve got a hot one,” I broadcasted and the ship hummed to braking speed while the crew awoke, tossing aside their card games, screen shows, meals, waking up, suiting up, lining up at the airlocks. A full wreck like this could finish our term in one haul. People snapped to.
“Grant,” I added, sending a private comm to my lead scrapper’s radio. “You take lead. And don’t fuck anything up. We all want an easy term.”
* * *
“Cap…you should probably take a look at this…” Grant’s voice came in distorted by static.
Seriously? What now? They hadn’t even been in there for 10 minutes. I leaned forwards and thumbed on the intercom. “Go ahead.”
“It’s the cargo. Uhh…” He trailed off into silence. A burst of static punctuated his uneasy quiescence. I tried bringing up visual but all I got was a screen full of distortion. Fucking wreck still had shielding. Lovely. I sighed and pushed away from the command terminal, rapping on a control panel to get Jimmy’s attention.
“Make sure nothing explodes,” I barked, as I strode to the door.
The kid gulped. “Yes, Sir, Captain Lee!” he replied with a gangly salute. Leaving the room, I caught a glimpse of him frantically scrambling into my seat and punching buttons to bring the nav system up to full capacity. I bit back a chuckle.
From the cabin, I entered the long, metal-paned corridor which connected the control rooms to the working quarters. I hung a left, following a network of pipes and cables to the airlock. Jones, one of the techs and the closest I had to a pal, was waiting there, as was my suit, already steaming out a foggy bank of oxygen – obviously, word had spread that something was up. I nodded at Jones and he helped me shrug into the getup.
“See what you can do about that visual,” I said. He snapped the hose connecting my suit to the oxygen supply into place and grunted an affirmative. He keyed in a code that opened the temporary link between our ship and the wreck and a pair of heavy, metal double doors yawned, retreating into ceiling and floor. I entered the airlock itself, turning back to face him. Jones stood watching me, a frown creasing his brow. The doors shut, sealing the room off from the ship, and space sucked the air away.
I walked across into the dead ship.
* * *
“So, what the hell am I looking at, Grant?”
Grant coughed once, audible over his mic. He was a pudgy man, and I could see sweat dotting his temples through his fogged faceplate. Reflexively, he raised a mailweave-gloved hand to his brow, as if to dab it away. He didn’t reply; his eyes remained on the cargo.
I followed his gaze, jaw clenching. A goddamned freighter and only one thing in the hold. Great fucking luck. I glared at it, studying the sleek lines of the oblong capsule. White, maybe plastic, maybe something stronger, and shaped like a giant lozenge. Black piping circled around its middle, demarcating lid from bottom, but at six feet long, even if that thing was filled with gems it’d be hardly worth the cost we’d spent slowing and scavenging. In the gaping black of the empty hold, the capsule’s tiny, white proportions were a mocking slap.
Finally, Grant spoke up. “Maybe it’s medical supplies,” he offered. Even through the static of the wreck’s shielding, I could hear the desperate hope in his voice. “Or genome seedings. Colonists are always bringing that shit along, you know-”
“This is a freighter, Grant.” I snapped, cutting him off. “A freighter someone else has obviously already gotten to.” I growled beneath my breath and began walking back towards the airlock.
Grant frantically comm’d me before I had gotten a dozen paces away. “Hey, cap! Hey, what do you wanna do about this, then?”
I turned, rolling my eyes. Idiot. “Bring it, of course. Might as well get some profit out of this piece of crap.”
* * *
We ended up dumping it in the hold. I sent Jones to go fiddle with it, try to get it open, while I kept a crew on the freighter, stripping away any salvageable pieces of tech they could find. Then I made myself a coffee and went down to check on Jones.
I found him bent over the capsule, wiry arms akimbo.
“Well?”
“Ah,” he replied. He lifted a hand to nervously run it through his hair. “Well, I’ve figured out how to open it. Just was waiting for you, really, Lee.” He gave me a swift smile, crooked teeth flashing. “It’s actually rather impressively constructed, nothing I’ve ever seen, really. It’s got some kind of self-contained power sup-”
I held up a hand to silence him. He’d go on for ages, if I let him. “Just open it.”
Jones nodded and crouched down. He pressed his fingers on the white surface in a few places and suddenly a faint violet light began to gleam along the side of the capsule. Slowly, the lid began to slide away and a sheet of mist roiled out, puddling in low clouds around the base. He was right. It was kinda impressive.
We both leaned in close. I waved one hand through the fog, fanning it away to see what was inside our mysterious cargo.
Well, fuck.
It was a girl.
A naked girl.
A beautiful, naked girl.
Blonde hair curled around her face in wispy tendrils, floating in some liquid she slept suspended in. Pink lips, porcelain skin, rosy nipples, curving hips. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, nineteen. The kind of girl that broke kids like Jimmy’s heart and sent them to Wrecking.
Her eyes opened.
Jones and I both leaped back, nearly colliding. Jones stared at me, eyes wide, both of his hands clutching his hair. Fish-like, his mouth opened and closed wordlessly. I looked back at the capsule, frantically thinking.
Finally, Jones managed to gasp, “A human? God, Lee! You know what kind of troub- Shit!”
“No, Jones, I have noooo idea. How about you remind me of the laws again? Go on, give me a big lecture about Sophie’s Rule. Tell me about all those guys they fried for smuggling those slaves out to Sector Four.” Fuck, half of them had been drinking pals. Not great pals, but who is when drinking’s involved? I turned to give him a level, smouldering glare. I couldn’t help it, and dryly added, “It’s not like I’m the fucking captain or anything.”
“This is bad.”
“No shit.”
“What the hell was a freighter doing transporting human cargo, anyways? I mean…shit!” Jones broke off and began to rapidly pace before the capsule. He shook his hands downwards, violently, as if that would undo what they had just done, as if he could slough off his own work. I glanced back at the interior. Yep. Still a girl there. Staring blankly at the ceiling, now.
“How long until she comes out?” I asked.
Jones halted, looking at me as if regarding a stranger. “What the hell?” he demanded. “Who cares? I think we’ve got bigger troubles than worrying about hosting some random chick on a Wrecker!”
“Jones, for a very smart man, sometimes you are impossibly stupid.”
He blinked and then, I swear to God, he blushed. “Oh,” he replied, abashed. “She’s still in cryo.” He laughed nervously. “We’ve got maybe…uhh…ten minutes? Maybe less, all the tech I know on this is from at least two or three terms ago. Who knows what’s new now.” He licked his lips anxiously and added, “It’s mostly illegal anyways…So, who knows when she’ll wake?”
My eyes found the girl’s face and studied her clouded, unblinking gaze. For a long moment, I was silent, before I eventually said, “Who knows when she’s from, too.”
That shut Jones up for a bit.
* * *
We ultimately decided to just sit and wait. I put my passcode on the hold’s door so nobody would interrupt our little tete-a-tete with illegality, and we perched on a pair of crates, keeping a wary eye on the capsule. After about ten minutes I heard a gasp, ragged, like a drowning swimmer surfacing. I looked at Jones – he looked back at me and then jerked his head towards the cargo, raising his eyebrows. Well, fair enough. As I had pointed out, captain and all that.
I stood, brushing off my trousers, and then walked over and peered in. The girl stared back at me, her eyes wide with confusion. They were bright blue, pupils dilated. She thrashed for a moment and shifted her body to cover herself, but soon lapsed into languid, febrile movements.
“Err…your muscles have atrophied,” I helpfully supplied. She regarded me blankly. I tried another tack. “Where are you from?”
She coughed a few times, still cowering to shield her body. Belatedly, I thought of giving her my coat and started to unbutton it. She cringed back even more. I exaggerated my movements, deliberately slowing them, and then placed the jacket on the side of the capsule. Meekly, she clutched at it, slowly pulling it over herself; the drab gray material made her skin even more pale in contrast.
She coughed again, then managed, “…California…” Her words were almost a question.
“Earth, then.”
She blinked and softly echoed, “…Earth…”
“This is not Earth.”
Her face crumpled. Shit. Don’t cry. So much for that trade center guesstimate. The girl shivered violently and looked away, her mouth working silently for a moment, and then she hoarsely whispered, “…Where?”
“A ship.” I paused and my gaze slid away, unable to watch her. “A Wrecker.”
Her eyes widened and she scrabbled weakly at the edge of the capsule. I looked back at the girl. A faint bloom of color had returned to her face and now she fixed me with a keen, hungry stare, in the way that someone sinking clings to an outstretched hand. Slowly, I shook my head. She bent her neck, hands dropping to clutch the coat to her chest, and she began to sob. Damnit.
I glanced across the hold over to Jones; he was watching mutely, mouth hanging slack. I tilted my head, but he only shrugged in reply. Very helpful. I sighed and crouched down beside the capsule.
“Look,” I began, pitching my voice low. “Where were you bound to? Maybe we can help get you going there. Sort this out.” From behind me, Jones choked back a snort. I kept my sight trained on the huddling, crying girl. She was rocking back and forth slowly and had begun to shake her head at my words. Her movements became more vigorous as my question hung there, unanswered, until she eventually swung her face up to regard me. Red rimmed the blue of her irises and a faint smear of crimson marked where she’d chewed through her lip.
“Nowhere,” she rasped, almost too low to hear.
“Nowhere?” I dumbly repeated.
“Nowhere!” she screamed, abruptly dropping her arms down into the liquid with a surprisingly violent splash. “Nowhere!” she repeated and now her voice was young, childish, shrill. “I was going home! I want to go home!” She slowly bent forwards until her knees were pressed against her chest. Faintly, she continued to cry.
I sat back on my heels, but my thoughts were blank. Shit, what do you do with something like this? How do you tell someone that, at best, they were years away from their life – if lucky. Who knew hold long that freighter had been floating there, abandoned in the darkness? Odds were, everyone she knew had been buried before we even started this term. This didn’t fall remotely close to anything covered in the half-assed training I’d been given.
I began to realize that she was murmuring something through the tears. I leaned a bit closer to listen.
“…gardens, the gardens, flowering pink and purple and bright. And at night, the stars like diamonds scattered across velvet. A big white house, ivy embracing its walls, and everyone inside is happy, smiling, dancing…”
The fuck? I beckoned Jones over. Reluctantly, he joined me next to the capsule to hear her words. We both sat there, silent, as she swiftly, furiously whispered to herself, painting a terrestrial haven that made my chest ache for a second. For a heartbeat or two, I was lost in her vision, and brief flashes of memories long ago buried floated to the surface like corpses. I swallowed hard and inhaled sharply so things felt clear again, then hissed to Jones, “Can you dream in cyro?”
He stared at me incredulously. “You think she dreamed this?”
I glared back. “Can you dream in cryo?” I repeated in a level, even tone.
He frowned and ran a hand along the smooth, white exterior of the cargo. “I…guess…” he finally allowed. “If the support systems were wired with something to induce it…I mean…It could happen…”
I swiftly rose. “That’s good enough for me. Get the med-kit.” I beckoned to a large steel box bolted next to the hold’s door.
Jones scrambled upright to face me and waved his hands before his face. “Whoa, whoa, Lee,” he cautioned. “I said could. I don’t know how this rig is wired.”
I brushed past him and swiftly pressed my hand against a screen atop the box. Silence, broken only by the soft whispers of the girl, filled the room until a crisp beeping announced authorization. I opened the box and gripped a shock stick.
“Lee!” Jones finally said, his voice raising in shocked anger. I ignored him. The baton-like weapon’s weight in my hand was reassuringly heavy. Calming. I thumbed on the control and a slight hum answered as its power currents engaged. I turned and began to walk back towards the girl, still babbling obliviously in the capsule.
And then Jones was there, before me, interposing himself between me and her. “Lee, man, think about this,” he said and let out an uneasy laugh. “She’s just a kid.”
I raised the weapon before me, its charge crackling as it cut through the space between us. Jones eyed it nervously – he knew the thing could knock out even the bulkiest of Wrecker crewhands – and took a step back. I advanced, and suddenly, unbidden, an aching, sad anger filled my mouth.
“You think about this, Jones,” I stated, voice quiet, firm. “Are you going to take care of her? For how long? A week? A month? A year? Until term’s up? And then what? What are you going to tell her when she finds out everything she’s ever known has rotted, everyone she’s ever known is dust? Are you going to care for her, then? Raise her and protect her?” I laughed, bitterly, and to my ears it sounded cut with a hint of the manic. I think it was the shock stick’s current, distorting the air. “You can’t do that from a Wrecker, Jonesy.”
I swept the weapon outwards and pointed at her. “What she faces is why we became Wreckers, and if you really want to stop me, go ahead.” I halted, waiting.
Jones’ stare followed my arm to the girl. He stood aside.
I nodded, once, tersely, and closed the gap between myself and the capsule. I thrust the weapon at her temple and before she even registered it, the girl fell back, unconscious. Liquid sloshed about her and swirled her hair into wavering curls around her face, neck, shoulders, while above her my sodden coat floated back and forth, back and forth, and then finally settled in a loose wrap across the contours of her body.
“Seal it back up,” I muttered. I dropped the stick and left.
* * *
I watched the freighter’s geometry recede on the nav display, its bulky lines dwindling down to faint pings on the various axes, and thought of the cargo we had returned. We had left it, white and pristine in the bleak, empty hold of the broken ship, and someday, sure, someone else would find it. Another crew, maybe. Not me. I rubbed my knuckles against my eyes and wished for a hard drink. I sighed, then wearily watched the display as the final blips on nav vanished, and with them, the freighter. Sorry, princess, I thought, without really wanting to know what exactly I was sorry for.
“Jimmy,” I comm’d to the kid. “Come keep an eye on things.” I shut off my radio before he could reply and pulled myself out of my seat. I left the nav screen up; its flickering ghostly green images of clouded star systems and flitting planets traced across the walls of the cabin as I trudged to the door, and I shut my eyes, exhaling slowly.
I needed a good, long fucking sleep.
a little bit of everything all of the time 