Drifters' Alliance, Book 1

  “We're all good down here," Gus says. “Well, I am, anyway." He giggles.

  "Screw you, asshole." Tam sounds as sick as Baebong looks. I guess we have two lilies on the ship.

  "All good in the biogrid,” comes the next call-in. I expect to hear more, but that's all Lucinda has to say. I guess she's a woman of few words.

  I am about to say something to Baebong, but I'm interrupted by another transmission over the speakers.

  “S’pose now’s as good a time as any to say hello.” This announcement is followed by a burp and a, “Whoops. ‘Scuse.”

  Jeffers lifts his head and looks at me, confusion marring his features. I raise my eyebrow, silently asking him who the hell is talking to us now.

  Jeffers shrugs. “I don't recognize the voice."

  “Last transmission, who are you?" I demand.

  “The name’s Rollo. Nice to meet you, Captain."

  Holy crap, I can't believe it. My first flight, and I already have a stowaway? What the hell. I press the comm unit. “Get your ass up to the flightdeck, pronto."

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Baebong turns around and looks at me, his complexion finally back to normal. “Did you know there was somebody else here?”

  "Of course I didn't know. Do you honestly believe I would just look the other way with a stowaway onboard?”

  “No. I meant, did you invite this Rollo guy to be a crew member?”

  Baebong is making no sense.

  “Don’t you think that’s something I would've mentioned? I don't even know somebody named Rollo. Do you?"

  He shrugs mysteriously. “I might."

  I'm surprised by his answer. I thought I knew everyone he knew. "Maybe you invited him on here." It’s been known to happen before. An offhand comment in a bar can sound like an invitation to a lot of people. I’m not ashamed to say that I myself might have read too much into people’s words a few times in the past just trying to survive.

  “Like hell I did.” Baebong frowns at me.

  Jeffers speaks up. "Why am I getting a bad feeling about this Rollo guy?"

  Baebong spins around in his chair, his back to me now. "You'll see."

  “Should I be worried about this guy carrying a weapon?” I ask, getting to my feet.

  “Nah. He’s harmless. Mostly.”

  I shut the all-comm down and wait for the arrival of our uninvited guest. I have to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with this guy. I'm sure there's some sort of holding cell somewhere on the ship, but I have no idea where it is or even how to access it. I'm going to have to get either Gus or Tam involved, which means our water collection is going to be delayed. Perfect. So much for my shower.

  The door leading to the flightdeck opens, and our stowaway steps through. I scan his entire body quickly to see if I recognize him. He’s dressed like a drifter. Dirty blond hair, dark skin, scar through his right eyebrow, wiry but muscled — looks like trouble. I spent quite a bit of time at that last station, but I don't recognize this guy at all, and he has a face I would never forget.

  He strides toward my chair with his hand out and a grin lighting up his face. "Nice to meet you, Captain." He stops a few feet away, but his expression goes unsure as he realizes I am not here as his welcoming committee.

  "What are you doing on my ship?” I leave my arms at my sides, ready for any sudden moves on his part. I don’t trust him for obvious reasons.

  He shrugs. "Heard you were going to do some drifting. With all the changes coming down the pike, thought you might need a business manager onboard."

  Changes? What changes? I don’t want to sound stupid, so I don’t ask. Instead, I address the more obvious problem. “And you decided it would be a good idea to just show up uninvited and assign yourself that duty?” I shake my head slowly. "You must have a righteous set of balls to think that would fly.”

  “More like a death wish," Baebong mumbles, still not looking at me.

  Rollo remains completely undeterred from his mission. “If you're going to survive out here, you're going to need to do some deals, and Rollo’s the guy for that. Nobody gets a better shake than Rollo, that's a fact.”

  I look over at Baebong. “Does he always speak in the third person like that?"

  “Unfortunately."

  "Where's the holding cell on the ship?" I ask anyone who might know the answer.

  "I'll show you," says Jeffers, standing.

  "Holding cell?” Rollo looks from me to Jeffers and then back at me again. "You don’t need to put Rollo in the holding cell. Rollo can just sit up here with you guys."

  "Like hell Rollo will." I shift my gaze to Jeffers. “Lock him up for me, would you, please?"

  "As you wish." Jeffers stands gesturing with his arm toward the door. "After you, Sir."

  "Are you sure you don't want to reconsider?" Rollo graces me with a big smile. “Rollo’s real good with navigation too. Looks like you’re a little shorthanded up here on the flightdeck.” He tilts his head toward the station where Jeffers was recovering.

  “I’m sure.” I turn to face out the front clearpanels again. I don't have time for this garbage right now.

  “All right. Well, Rollo will be in the cell then,” he says. “Waiting. Feel free to invite him to breakfast.”

  I refuse to acknowledge him. The door behind me slides open, but Rollo keeps talking. “Rollo hasn’t eaten in a while, in case it matters to anyone.” His voice is cut off as the door slides home.

  “How do you know him?” I ask Baebong, his back to me now.

  “I don’t know him, know him, I just know of him.”

  “How?”

  “Are we going to have breakfast soon? I’m starving.”

  My voice goes firmer. “How do you know of him?”

  Baebong sighs and slowly turns his chair to face mine. “I might have done a deal with him back on the station.”

  “What deal?”

  “Some hardware is all. No big deal.”

  “Why is my ass twitching?”

  He looks confused for a second before he answers. “Because you haven’t had a shower in a week?”

  “No. Because you’re not telling me the truth. Lies make my ass twitch.”

  “Wow. That’s unfortunate.”

  “For you. Start talking or you’re going into the cell with him.”

  His face falls. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Try me.”

  “Fine. You want the whole story? I’ll tell it to you, not that it matters, because I didn’t invite his stupid ass on here.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I needed a beam interruptor for my latest project, and he knew how to get me one. He heard me talking in a bar one night and inserted himself into the conversation and then said he could help me out. And he did. End of story.”

  “End of prelude to story,” I say, staring him down.

  “Okay, so things might have gotten a little hairy when the previous owner of said part found out he was being relieved of it, but I took care of it.”

  “How?”

  “By paying for it, obviously.”

  “With?” I know good and well that Baebong’s as broke as I am.

  He spins around in his chair to look out the clearpanels as he mumbles his answer.

  “What’s that?” I ask. “Didn’t quite catch it. Did you say blow job?”

  “No!” He’s facing me again. “Are you insane?”

  I laugh. The expression on his face is so offended, and it’s hard to get Baebong to have any expression at all; he usually looks so outwardly unaffected by everything.

  “I said I paid him with an IOU.”

  My eyes roll into my head. “Great. Well done. Another IOU.”

  “It’s not your problem,” he grumbles, staring down at his lap.

  “Maybe not yesterday, but today it is. You have those parts on my ship and you’re my lieutenant. What am I supposed to do if that guy comes after you?”

  “He’s not going to
come after me. It’s not that big a deal.”

  “I’m not paying your debt.”

  “And I don’t expect you to.”

  “See that you ship his credits out as soon as possible.”

  “I planned on it.”

  We stare at each other for a few long seconds. I hate the fact that I feel like his mother. Captains are not supposed to nag, right? I’m pretty sure the answer is no, but I also know most captains would be harsher than I am, so maybe a little nagging isn’t such a bad thing.

  “So what’s the deal with this guy Rollo? Can I trust him?”

  Baebong shrugs. “He got me my part, and I looked all over the galaxy and back for that thing without any luck.”

  “You said he stole it, though. That’s not cool.”

  “I think steal is a strong word. It’s more like he borrowed it with the intention of never returning it to a guy who wasn’t using it and would never have missed it.”

  I sigh. “You do hear yourself, right?”

  “Whatever.” He turns back around and presses some buttons that I know put his system on stand-by. “I need to eat. I’m starving, and if I have to go back into my bunk with that smell in there, I’m going to need something in my stomach. And I’m talking real food, not pellets.”

  My stomach goes into a knot at the idea of eating more pellets. Sure, they cut down on waste and supposedly meet all of a human’s nutritional requirements, but they taste like dust. Pellets are the food of the poor, and I’ve had enough of them to last me an entire lifetime.

  “Have one of the gingers run a vacuum filter cycle in your bunk. Three hours and it should be good, assuming there aren’t any more chickens hiding in there.”

  “Will do.” Baebong gets up from his chair and walks to the door.

  “We good?” I ask him as he opens it up.

  “Always,” he says just before he disappears down the corridor.

  I stare out the clearpanels and sigh, letting my body go boneless in the chair. My first launch, my first nightcrawl, and now my first stowaway, and I haven’t even been captain a full twenty-four hours yet. It makes me wonder what other unexpected surprises the future has in store for me.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE MEAL IS SURPRISINGLY GOOD. Eggs? I haven’t had any of those in months. Could be more than a year. It’s surprising how quickly I’ve forgotten my past life. It seems like I’ve always lived like a starving beggar, surviving on dusty pellets, when really it’s only been three years. Before that, eggs were a given in my father’s household.

  “Good stuff,” Baebong says, stuffing more food into his mouth. He looks like someone suffering gonflay disease the way his cheeks are puffed out to the sides. “I haven’t had an egg in forever.”

  “Me neither,” I chime in. “Where’d you get them?” I look to Jeffers for the answer, a little worried about the expression I see there. “Don’t tell me you have live chickens onboard.” It’s bad enough I missed a stowaway, but an entire roosting flock? There’d be no excuse for that.

  “No,” he answers, smiling, “we traded for some herbs. This will be the last of them before we do another deal.”

  “Speaking of deals,” says Gus, “what’s up with the dude in the holding cell?” He chews on a hard chunk of bread as he waits for my answer. His brother’s jaw moves in tandem, giving me the strangest sensation that I’m suffering double vision. I have to look away to answer with any kind of focus.

  “He says he makes deals.” I shrug. “I’ve never seen him before, but Baebong has.” I pick at the vegetables on my plate, not too excited about them. I’m too nervous to have the appetite I should, even though my plate holds fresh carrots and beans. These are traded almost like precious metals at most of the stations I’ve lived in. The problem is not the taste, of course. It’s just me being in freak-out mode. My first ice-grab is less than five hours away, and I was never able to get much sim time for that operation. My stomach is once again in knots.

  “We going to keep him?” Tam asks my lieutenant.

  “Don’t ask me. She’s the boss.” Baebong’s fork waves in my general direction.

  “Yeah, but you can vouch for him.” Gus pushes. “Do you?”

  “I’m not vouching for anyone. Can he do deals? Yeah. I saw him do that. Can we trust him? I have no idea.” Baebong returns his focus to his plate, and I can tell from his body language that he’s not interested in saying anything more. That’s the thing about him: once he’s said his piece, he’s done. No amount of harassment on my part will get him to commit to anything else. I’ve tried on many occasions and failed every time.

  “I say we give him a chance,” says Gus. “We’re short-crewed. We could use all the hands we’ve got.”

  “Tell you what,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “Gus, you bring him some food, pick his brain a little, see what he’s good for.”

  Gus nods slowly. “Okay. Yeah, I can do that. Recon. Maybe I’ll test him a little. See if he knows what he’s talking about.”

  I wipe my mouth off with the back of my hand. “Good. You do that, and I’m going to catch some sleep before the ice-grab.” I stand and everyone rushes to follow suit.

  I’m frozen in place, staring at the people around me. Everyone but our stowaway and Lucinda are present, and they’re all waiting for me to say something. Never having sat at the captain’s table myself, I have no idea what’s expected of me.

  “Uh. At ease?”

  My crew takes their seats and continues with the meal like they didn’t just completely rock my universe. I turn around, trying to act cool as I head for the corridor. I did it, I did it, I did it! I acted like a captain and they bought it. Be cool, Cass, be cool.

  “You want me to show you to Langlade’s old bunk?” Jeffers asks.

  “No, that’s all right,” I say, stepping through the portal. “I saw it before on my tour.”

  I’m able to hold in my emotions until I’m around the corner, but then I just can’t take it anymore. I let out a silent scream, my mouth wide open as I punch the air around me. Yeah, baby! I’m the captain! Everybody stands at my table when I stand because they respect me!

  “A-hem.” The sound of someone clearing her throat in front of me pulls me up short. My sudden-onset celebration turns into me attempting to appear as if I were trying to scratch an itch in the middle of my back.

  “Oh, hey, Lucinda. Didn’t see you there.”

  “I noticed.” She moves to walk around me, but I step over to block her way.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Breakfast. Excuse me, please.”

  “Breakfast was served a half hour ago. You’re late.”

  “I had things to do.” She tries to move to the other side of the corridor, but I side-step, blocking her once more.

  She sighs loudly and glares at me. “I’d like to eat, please. Could you move?”

  “Nope. Breakfast is over.”

  She pulls herself up to her full height, which is just a few centimeters or so taller than me. “Excuse me?”

  I stare her down. Or up, I guess. “Breakfast is served when I say it’s served. You eat when I say you eat. If you can’t get to my table on time, you either explain yourself, or you don’t eat. That’s the way it works around here now.”

  She laughs but then stops when she sees my expression. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course I can.” I smile.

  “But Langlade let us eat whenever we wanted.”

  I take a small step back and look down at my feet, running my gaze up my own body and then back to her. “Do I look like Langlade to you?”

  “No.” Her jaw flinches. She’s smart not to let the rest of the words on her mind fly.

  “Good. Then there should be no confusion. I’m your new captain, and I require that all crew members report to meals when the food is ready and not later when they feel like it.”

  “This isn’t a dictatorship.”

  I laugh. “Of course it is.” I shak
e my head at her. “Since when have you ever flown on a ship run by committee?”

  She shrugs. “We had a lot of freedom with Langlade.”

  “Yeah. So much freedom you had an entire biogrid growing under his nose without him being aware of it. Great idea. Where do I sign up for that?”

  Her nostrils flare, but her voice remains calm. “Are you calling me a thief?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, I don’t know where you come from, Captain, but around here, we don’t appreciate being accused of things that sound like stealing.”

  I lean in and almost whisper my next thought. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be doing things behind your captain’s back anymore.” I wink. “Catch you at lunch. Six hours from now. Don’t be late.” I shove past her and continue down the corridor with my hand at my thigh. If she jumps me, I’ll be ready, but I won’t turn around to see if she’s coming. I’ve got too much pride for that.

  “You can’t starve me!”

  “I don’t plan to!”

  “I’m going to get something to eat!”

  “Not for breakfast you’re not!” I stop at the nearest keypad and punch in the code for the dining room. “Jeffers!”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Do not serve food to any latecomers. Not a single bite, you hear me?”

  There’s a long pause before his answer comes. “Okay.”

  “I have the monitors on, and I will know if you disobey.” I turn up the volume on my voice a little so everyone in the dining room knows I’m talking to them. “And just so we’re clear, anyone who disobeys me, floats. That’s the deal. This is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship, and I’m the dictator.”

  “Can I give her my bread?” Gus asks.

  “No. No one feeds latecomers. Those are the rules. Commit them to memory.”

  The last thing I need on this ship is people turning into loners and falling into Darksickness. A crew that eats together can make plans, read each other’s moods, and be reminded of why they’re doing what they do. A crew is a family, and family that shares meals together, stays together. That’s what my grandpa used to say, anyway, and I have no reason to doubt his wisdom. I only wish my father had followed it more often.