Xan counted to two hours after lights out on the Jennis 4 farm station, Kora. She usually counted to three, but she knew the particular “brain trust” on watch had a score to settle over a sleeve and a few too many cards. As Xan gently rolled out of bed a hand caught her wrist. She drew her breath in too quickly and she felt the sting of dust rattling her lungs. She held perfectly still, working slowly to keep her breath steady and quiet so her heartbeat would follow suit.
“Xan...” her comrade Bel softly chimed. “Not tonight. If you’re caught you’ll be sent back to the rock.”
Xan let Bel’s hand linger an extra moment against her wrist before gently pulling away.
“I can’t sleep,” Xan said as she headed for the door, purposefully avoiding the look of disappointment Bel so often wore. She ducked out of the barracks and around the corner to the supply closet by Machine Room 58. Behind the shelves, along the back wall, she tucked a loose lock of her long dirtyblonde hair behind her right ear and pulled a couple of floorboards to check on her weapons stash.
Bel was right of course, getting caught would undo all of Xan’s work to get off of Cano. But she’d wanted to be a member of the Guard, the elite force of the Systems, since she was a kid. She wouldn’t be anywhere near this farm station, or Bel, if it weren’t for her lungs and the mines she had been trying to escape in the first place. So her weapons stash, and the stolen nights she spent there, seemed to her the only compromise. She stocked hand guns, hunting rifles, pistols. All made from various scrap parts she’d pocketed when they were headed for the garbage chute, and pieced together over the years of her assignment. She rarely loaded the weapons; the pressure in certain unpredictable, gravitational anomalies could cause them to misfire. It was for this reason firearms were only to be used in extreme circumstances by members of the Guard, not the security detail.
Yet here Xan sat. Willing to risk, as regularly as clockwork, getting sent back to her homeworld or having one of her weapons accidentally discharge. You do what you have to do, to keep your sanity.
A matteblack cruiser silently drifted into radiodeadspace, angled so their maintenance hatch was aimed straight for the farm station. When the hatch opened, three soldiers dressed all in black each with an extra airpump strapped to their backs made guided drifts to the secondary wasterelease hatch. To anyone inside the station, it all looked like a series of ordinary technical blips on radar, somebody else’s unpaidfor garbage coming in close and getting stuck to a piece of shielding and the morning shift could have the pleasure of cleaning it up.
The soldiers used a maintenance hatch to bypass the waste dispatchcontainments and made their way into the garbage chute system. From there they had only to follow their leader; remove bolts, save one, rotate panel, slip in, 12 steps forward, watch the drop, 34 ladder rungs to the ventilation shaft towards the water main. 20 minutes. That’s all the time they had been allotted to get the job done and make it back to radiodeadspace before they would be left behind.
They were quick, quiet, and prepared. They entered Machine Room 58, found the water main and opened a filtration panel immediately. Two the trio pulled out food packs and poured the contents
an orange powder into the pipe, which mixed with the nutrientrich liquid as it rushed through. Their team leader entered a code into a control panel so that the sprinkler system began to water the plants ahead of schedule. They finished, calculating they’d have a minute and a half to spare when they got back to the cruiser, as they replaced the filtration panel on the water main and headed back into the hall.
Xan looked over her weapons stash and felt the familiar twinge of adrenaline at the thought of someone finding her treasure and wanting to question her. She realized it wasn’t just a twinge. Her mouth tasted bitter and she knew something was happening. Xan loaded her latest creation, the irony of ammunitions made from discarded seed capsules was not lost on her. She drew closer to the door and just listened.
She listened to the sound of sprinklers that shouldn’t have been on and she listened as three pairs of boots made their way past the door too quietly to belong to any farmhand or security officer she knew. She opened the door just enough for a peak, careful to keep the latch from making any noise, but they must have heard something because they stopped almost immediately. They spun on their heels so fast their was no time to think as Xan burst out into the hall to face them with force.
———————————————
“You might want to do some intermittent leaning on the right thrusters and slow down a few clicks—”
“No backseat driving, Duke.” Fish snapped as she brought the good ship Margo into the Jennis 4 system, her dark hair just grazing the collar of her coveralls as it hung loose around her face.
“I know my ship and the left thrusters are being a little hormonal today,“ Duke explained as he hovered behind Fish’s seat in the cockpit.
“She can take it,” Fish said, casually tossing her feet onto the dash and giving the cruise control a little kick to activate.
“Get your feet off the dash before I cut them off—“ Duke warned, his face dark with the threat of a mental implosion.
“Back off, man. My ship to do with what I want—“
“I built this ship—“
“From my design!”
Duke paced, muttering the Virtuous Chants to himself and running his fingers over the feathershaped pendant hanging from his neck. A smile spread over Gwendolyn Fisher’s face at the sight of her friend momentarily losing his calm composure. More often than not they bickered liked ornery siblings, but when they pooled their resources they became one smoothrunning organism.
“Blessed are they,” Fish mock chanted, “who live with Concordia."
“You know,” Duke started, “you missed a toll back there, right?”
“I did not miss a toll,” Fish countered, every muscle in her body suddenly tense, "You know how I know? No relays calling and telling me I missed a toll.” But she checked the communication waves as discreetly as possible. She was not big on breaking rules, and in their line of work it happened more often than she cared to admit.
“Of course not, we’ve been flying through deadspace—“
“Woah, woah, woah! Uncharted Talent territory? Sure, but I haven’t touched dead space in days—“
“Attention crew,” said Porter’s voice over the comsystem. “They can hear you all the way back at Whik’s, and yet I don’t know when we’ll reach Kora.”
“Got her in sight, Captain,” Fish said into her com. “Looks like the guard has set up shop at the guest entrance. Sending Duke down to guide the docking into the delivery bay, now.”
“Already on my way, sir,” Duke chimed in as he ducked out of the cockpit.
He headed straight to the controls of the main entry hatch of the cargo bay and course corrected to make sure the door lined up with Kora’s magnetic guides on the other end of their path. the dock grips locked into place and Fish joined him.
“Captain’s gonna follow us in,” she said as she rolled over a cart and three body bags.
“Putting out feelers?” Duke asked as he casually buttoned up his coveralls.
“Leave no stone unturned,” Fish answered, and then the hatch opened on a couple of lowlevel Guardsmen laughing over a bad punchline. They were both tall with very broad shoulders, one with light brown hair and the other ginger.
“So the guy says ‘of course there’s a difference, a toilet keeps its shit to itself’!" The guardsmen caught sight of Fish and Duke and the laughing got worse before they tried just barely to stifle it. “Janitorial crew 625,” Fish called out, and again there was a short burst of laughter and stifling though she maintained her composure. She leaned towards Duke and asked, “What would you say to a Guardsman with two black eyes?”
“Nothing,” Duke answered, “you’ve already told him twice.” The Guardsmen caught the punchline and rolled their eyes at each other.
“This way,” the ginger said and they followed him down to Maintenance Shaft 3. Once in the lift, there was a forced silence as the Guards eyed the janitors. The lift stopped and the Guardsmen continued to lead Duke and Fish down the hall, passing them off to a new pair of Guardsmen, these
midlevel and monosyllabic to the extent that they’d rather point to Machine Room 58 and grunt than break pattern by actually saying where they needed to go. Fish and Duke preferred it this way. So long as the Guard was busy "securing" the area they could work unimpeded, each of them doing what they do best.
———————————————
Porter entered Kora’s central security office as Dempsey reviewed footage for the umpteenth time while waiting for the higherups to come in and take over.
On the tape, the three operatives stopped as they were passing a supply closet. They spun toward the door as it swung open, but the third in line hit the ground before he could even reach for his baton. Xan had clocked him with the butt of her handmade pistol. The momentum of her arm coming away from his head seemed to spur her on and she spun on her left leg for a roundhouse kick to the second operative’s face; but he caught her foot, holding it high as the leader came in with a jab for Xan’s right eye. She threw her head back to avoid the hit while firing her strange ammunition between the leader’s eyes. The kickback from the gun helped her pull her foot free, but the middleman’s baton whirred on and Xan’s trainingturnedinstinct put another round between this other pair of eyes.
Finally free Porter glanced at the clock over the office door which showed less than a minute had passed Xan composed herself, looking over the three bodies she put on the ground. Two lifeless, one not quite in a position to be answering questions.
“Shit,” was the selfrebuke caught on tape. Porter released a soft chuckle.
Dempsey glanced at Porter, tall with dark skin and knowing eyes, and gave a polite sort of smirk. "That girl is a bundle of wasted potential."
"That right?"
"Grew up on Cano, one of the mining worlds. Thought she’d join the Guard, but “ Dempsey shook his head a little, “She finished every training course with top marks. And what do you think the final health exam showed?"
"What?"
"Dusting. Nobody wants a corpse defending their freedom."
"Hard to think of someone who can move like that as a corpse," Porter said.
"That’s what I’m saying. She doesn’t even need that gun to take them out. It just made it a little easier, and now she’s out."
"Where is she?”
“Waiting for punishment. You know the rules, no firearms offplanet without clearance.”
“She’s out for one gun?”
“The one we found on her. Given that she made it and could use it, I’m guessing someone on your team will find more. She’ll find something else, something that suits her better than waiting her turn to sit by a couple of screens playing Stalworth." Dempsey looked Porter right in the eye then and gave a nod. Porter returned the nod.
———————————————
Bel found Xan in the barracks double maybe triplechecking that she had packed everything. What else was there for her to do but check and recheck?
“Dempsey is ready for you,” Bel told her. Xan let out a sigh, still avoiding Bel’s glare. “I told you—“
“I know,” Xan cut her off,
“They’re going to kick you out—“ Bel seethed.
“I know!”
“You just couldn’t help yourself—“ Bel snapped.
“What do you want me to say, Bel? I’m bored. This job isn’t remotely challenging, you’re all a bunch of slackers “
“I’m a slacker?”
“Three operatives infiltrated this station and I stopped them! Me! Not the guys on duty, not you passed out in the bunks, me!” Xan had crossed the line, but digging her heels in was too natural, "And yeah, I used a couple of bullets to do it but I took the first one out with one hit.”
“Just proving that you never needed them.”
Xan let out a growl as she met Bel’s eyes and her comrade’s face fell.
“I just don’t want to see you go,” Bel confessed, "you’re good here."
“I know,” Xan said, half smiling at herself with pride. Bel saw that smirk and couldn’t help rolling her eyes. They laughed quietly at each other, wanting to say things that couldn’t possibly make things any better.
“Maybe,” Bel started, “they won’t send you back to the rock. Maybe they’ll just reassign you."
“Fat chance, but I like where your head’s at.” Xan swung her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door. “I’ll drop you a line from... wherever the hell they put me."
———————————————
Fish had retraced the steps of the trio from the garbage chute, to the water tank, to the hall with two bodies on the ground with a single bullet to each head. She put them in body bags and onto her cart. At one end of the hall was the maintenance shaft she and Duke had taken up and the nearest turn in the corridor was a bit far for where the confrontation had occurred, but the supply closet was right there.
The floorboards had been arranged in a style that made for convenient hidden storage to anyone who knew what they were doing. She checked the usual corners, but along the back wall was where she found the stash. Weapons, an impressive array of firearms made from things that should have found their way into a furnace for fuel. Even the ammunitions had been cobbled together from bits and pieces of smaller metal fragments. Since they wouldn’t be needing the third body bag no body she filled it with what she’d found.
Fish got everything onto the cart, past the midlevel Guardsmen, and down the hall in the direction of Xan waiting for the lift at Maintenance Shaft 3. Xan smirked when she saw the janitor’s uniform.
“Something funny?" Fish asked, she stood tall to let it be known that though a janitor she could easily hold her own against Xan’s much smaller frame. The lift opened then and Fish went in first.
"Nothing, nothing," Xan answered as she followed Fish into the lift, she eyed the body bags and the one holding her stash clearly wasn’t holding it’s shape like the other two and she grimaced at herself.
"Lazy and stupid leaving all your eggs in one basket like that," Fish said, seeing this new look on Xan’s face. "You know, I don’t know what you was were thinking stashing this stuff at all. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to give them a good home.”
"Here I was thinking my luck had run out when they found me with one gun in my hand. I’ll be starting from scratch when I get back to the rock."
“The rock?” Fish laughed a little, "Oh, boohoo, the little minergirl doesn’t get to take her prizes home from the bazaar.”
"Everyone’s a critic," Xan told herself as the lift opened and she continued to Dempsey’s office while Fish headed for the delivery bay.
———————————————
Duke had followed the pipes to the nearest hotroom to see where the water tanks let out when the sprinklers had been activated. It was a smaller room, the kind for specialty crops used in middling doses in nutripacks. What Duke saw just hurt.
The specialty crop had been good, oldfashioned poseaherb. Unprocessed poseaherb was often baked right into the bread to help it last a bit longer and help the consumer to digest whatever else happened to be on their plate. It’s one of the trickier plants to keep thriving without real sunlight, and quenching its thirst is a delicate balancing act that can’t be faked with hydroponics.
Whatever had been added to the water supply had caused some sort of growth spurt so that the poseaherb doubled in height and sprouted blue buds, and poseaherb never flowers in a station. Yet the sudden growth spurt had been followed by intense drying, as though instead of being overwatered by the unscheduled sprinkler activation the plants had been exposed to desert conditions. Duke sunk his fingers into the soil around one of the plant’s roots.
“Cleanse me, Sea Dew,” he recited to himself, “dry my tears with sprawling needles and I will keep you from the cold.” He cupped the plant in both his hands and ran for the door. In the hall he jammed shoulders with Xan and dropped the poseaherb. She stumbled, crushing part of the plant underfoot.
"Oh, ’scuse me,” a voice behind him said. Duke turned to see a young woman, Xan, giving his coveralls a good look over, "do you need a broom or something?"
"What I need is for you to hold still before you destroy this creature completely."
"It’s a plant," Xan said, taking a closer look, "and it’s dead."
"Just a pla ," Duke started, scooping up the plant into his hands once more, "are you kidding me with this? You’re the one who fought the infiltrators, right? You work in a farm station but you have no clue what you’re charged to protect. This plant was once called Holy for keeping sound men’s bodies as well as their souls and you say ’just a plant’. And you’re just whatever you eat, which happens to be predominantly plant constituents. Just a plant. Just a life. Just a way of living."
"Just a stroke waiting to happen,” Xan joked to herself, looking over the latest mess she’d made. “I’d love to stay and chat,” she said, "but judgment awaits.You’re welcome for shooting nature’s enemies, by the way.”
She approached Dempsey’s office with the same militant march she did every other task of every other day at this job. Once inside, he stared her down with a ferocity unlike anything she had even thought him capable of. She saw herself on a transport back to Cano; no second chances, no transfer, just the rock. But that was all in her head.
Behind Dempsey she noticed a taller figure, strong and a touch imposing. But something was off about him. Something about his uniform. They were coveralls, and suddenly Xan saw before her a transfer worse than Cano; a fate worse than the dust rattling in her lungs.
Her mouth tasted bitter.