Grace: A Cyber-Western Serial - 2

Jess stared hard at the screen, trying not to see her own ghosty image superimposed over that of the officer. Her dreads, which had grown long from inattention since she'd had the ship, were heavy from sweat. Her face felt flushed. The engine room was not the coolest place on board, even when they hadn't been sitting powered down on a planet. She hoped her well-developed deltoids were as visible as her flushed face. Any show of strength out here in the void could only work to her advantage.

In response to the officer's "pretty lady" comment, however, Jess pursed her lips hard and switched over the 'com. At first nothing happened. Then, her first officer's pale, chisled face appeared.

"Val!" she shouted, "we're not harboring any fugitive Mutes on this ship are we?" There was, of course, no response, so she monkeyed up the ladder from the dimly lit engine room to the dimly lit main corridor and put on a full-out run to the bridge. She crossed the catwalk over the cargo bay, which was littered with the equipment of their trade: dollies and a landrover used to move supplies back to the ship.

Her footsteps reverberated as she ran, and she became aware of another of those crazy realizations that sometimes came in moments like this: Encased by the sound of her own movement and the rumbling of her ship out here in the void, she felt about as lonely as it was possible for a human being to feel, and immensely grateful she didn't have time to think about it.

After the catwalk, she entered the short corridor that connected the bridge pod to the main body of the ship, and soon smacked the button that caused the bridge door to hiss open. Not quite half the buttons on the control panel still lit up, but they provided enough light so whoever was piloting the ship could see what they were doing.

"Val you really should consider making words with your mouth sometime," she snapped. "It could come in useful once in a while. Like now." She approached the pilot's chair. In that chair was a wiry man with dead-pale skin, a bald head and brown leather chest armor that left his arms exposed to show off the graceful black tattoos snaking over them. He was just about the scariest thing Jess had ever set her eyes on. He was also the most loyal she had ever met since circumstances had taken her away from her family's homestead on Blue Sky.

"What the hell is going on up here?" she demanded, stepping on a rook from their chess game and nearly busting her butt. She glowered at the rogue piece and snatched it off the floor, then plunked it loudly on the control panel. "I can't see a thing on my screen other than that guy's ugly mug. What about his fleet? What kind of situation are we dealing with here?" Val widened his eyes at her for emphasis and frowned. Through the glass view shield, Jess could see the small chaser ship lurking ahead. There appeared to be no backup. "He's only got one ship after us?"

Val gave her a look she hoped was intended to be sympathetic.

She turned on the 'com and forced a smile at the reappearance of the man's face. "I don't think you want to be messing with this particular crew, Officer," she said. "They are not nice people. Years in the wilderness without proper feeding and other visceral entertainment'll do strange things to a man." To Val, she muttered, "Look menacing."

The officer gave her a condescending smile. "And yet you seem to be their leader," he said with undisguised contempt. "They can't be all that rough and tumble. Speaking of a tumble, I'm sure we could come to some sort of agreement regarding whatever cargo or fugitives you might be carrying. I can be an understanding man if given..."

"Yeah?" she said, cutting him off before he started getting to her. "You think this life'll make a man mean, you ain't seen what it'll do to a woman," she said. "You do not want to expose yourself to my unsociable mood in quite that way." She clicked off the 'com and headed back to the corridor. "I'm almost done with the nuclear containment thingamajig. If this goes all right he'll get something he won't be expecting," she said on her way out the door.

Retracing her steps through the belly of the ship, she wondered if she had really needed to spend those valuable minutes running to and from the bridge to size up their pursuers, or if she'd simply needed the reassurance of Val's presence. Reaching the engine room, she decided it didn't matter and got back to fiddling with wires and muttering about the Order of Silence her first mate slipped back into at the most inopportune of times, and how much trouble it caused her on a regular basis. Finally finished with her adjustments, she smacked a button on the metal box attached to the wall and shouted into the 'com.

"Now, Val! Do it now!"

The ship swung up hard. After scrambling their own electronic imprint, which would take mere seconds for the officer's sophisticated equipment to put right again, they hit him square in the face with a black plume and put on a burst of speed. With the temporary loss of both his electronic "sight" and a view shield full of smoke this close to the ground, he would lose his way through the mountains and, Jess hoped, crash.

"Well done!" she shouted, and switched off the 'com screen. Out of breath, she leaned against the warm engine casing, enjoying the slight vibration that signaled to her the ship was happy enough not to try to kill them anytime soon. When her mind flickered back to the race through the ship, Jess was glad that she only felt alone when she thought she might be about to die. Unfortunately, that happened fairly frequently these days. But the flood of relief that filled her limbs each time she and Val came through was worth it.

She patted the casing and gave the engine a smile. "Good girl," she said. "Just don't go boom before I can get your containment field back on line, and I will pronounce this a very good day." She took a deep breath and blew it out, then climbed up to the corridor, moving through the ship at a much more relaxed pace this time.

"I can guaran-damn-tee you he wasn't expecting a face full of black smoke," she said, returning to the bridge with a pleased glance at the view pane, noting the clouds swirling ahead as they climbed up through the moon's atmosphere. "That is a beautiful sight. Now he won't be able to get a visual read on us when his sophisticated workings unscramble our trail, and that's if he doesn't smack the ground hard. Catch 'em with simplicity. That's the best way," she said with a broad grin, leaning against the cool metal wall with her arms crossed. "Your captain is a genius."

Val swiveled his chair around so he could face her, and bowed his head deeply. She stuck out her lower lip. "You know, I never can figure out if you're serious when you do that, or if you're yanking my chain."

He gave her a look of shocked innocence.

"Right," she said. "That helps." She looked around at the ship's exposed ductwork. It wasn't made to be pretty, and lacked the smooth, polished surfaces of a government or passenger ship. Its colors were dark like soil, its edges sharp, but Jess could feel the rumble of life beneath her feet, which meant they were still moving.

"She wasn't hurt bad," she said of the ship, "but she was hurt. And all for what little cargo we've got," she said without bothering to disguise the bitterness in her voice. "Hell, I guess that officer wouldn't have come after us anyway, even if I hadn't scrambled the signal. He knows what we're carrying. We're not even worth a little chase."

Val wrinkled his brow at her, as though trying to make sense of what she was saying. She didn't notice, as used as she was to having conversations all by herself anyway.

"Nothing wrong with small potatoes, though, if they keep you fed and keep a roof over your head," she said. "Which, at this particular time, they are failing to do. Come on," she said, heading toward the door. "Why don't we go take another look at this troublesome stuff we're carrying while we think on what to do? The exercise'll do you good."

Val rose to the full height of his six-foot-four frame with the grace of a dancer and followed her out into the corridor, where he took his place at her side. Though Jess had grown accustomed to having him there, his near-silent footfalls still caused her to glance in his direction from time to time, just to make sure he wasn't some phantom who lived only in the corner of her eye.

"Sometimes, Val, you really give me the heebies."

The cargo bay was a two-level space in the mid section, and was the largest room on board the ship. This, of course, was not where they were headed. Instead, Jess slid her fingers under some venting in the wall and pulled open a hidden door halfway down the short corridor that connected the bridge pod with the rest of the ship. She and Val climbed through it and down a ladder into one of the many hidden holds that seemed standard on board the old Pegasus-Class freighters.

Grace's maze-like quality was one of the things that had endeared the ship to Jess in the first place. "It gives her an air of mystery," she'd told Val while showing him around the first time. "Every woman needs an air of mystery."

Val had only cocked his head at her, but she'd been too happy that day to care. Since they'd been running cargo through the system, that maze-like quality had proven very useful in hiding things that she would rather the authorities not be allowed to paw through.

Unfortunately, the only nefarious activity going on in this particular snug little space was hiding stacks of full crates marked "protein." It was about a tenth of the full load, which was hidden throughout the rest of the ship.

"A-1, prime alcoholic consumables," she said, picking up a crowbar and tearing into the only crate that didn't have other crates on top of it. She popped open a jar and sniffed. "Well, maybe not prime-prime."

She offered it up to Val, who shook his head vigorously. "Well I guess getting you drunk and beating you at chess isn't ever going to be an option, huh?" she asked. "These fellas out here drinking black-market booze probably can't be too picky," she said, screwing the top back on and replacing the jar. "The good stuff is for those that can pay the hefty tax on it...or that know how to steal it all nice and proper."

She gave Val a self-satisfied grin, knowing he had never been thrilled with some of the ethics in their line of work concerning what could be considered other people's property. He raised his eyebrows in an expression that looked just a tad disapproving.

"Let's see if you look like that next time we get a little R and R," she said with a wink. "Besides, you've shot how many people since we started this little venture?"

He frowned. Val could frown more ways than Jess had yet learned to count. She gave him a long, appraising look before casting her eyes back over the crates.

"But, putting aside the worries of the impoverished masses, we now have a pressing question of our own to answer: Do we see if we can go get a nibble on this stuff since our buyer weaseled out at the last minute, or do we go limping back to Devlin and tell him the deal didn't go through?"

A look of real concern crept over Val's face, matching what Jess felt in her gut.

"'Course, we did what we were supposed to do," she said, once they had climbed back out into the corridor. "It was the customer failed to meet us at the drop. And, of course, Devlin was well aware this was a new buyer, and sometimes new buyers get a tad panicky when they don't need something really bad." She headed toward the ship's main body, walking slowly. Talking usually helped her figure things out, even if she was running her mouth about something completely unrelated. "They get scared, they're willing to pull the rug out from under you on a luxury item. But this is a mining crew, is what don't make sense. A little luxury out here goes a long way toward keeping rowdy men under control when there's a job to be done."

Val nodded, raising his eyebrows inquisitively.

"Still," Jess said, "we should have seen it coming, prepared for it. Put Grace down a ways off and walked right up to Johnston's door. Then we could have picked up the money and left it up to him whether to come and collect his goods."

Val looked doubful.

"What?" Jess asked. Val widened his eyes in an exaggerated look of fear. "This is like living with a mime," she muttered. "What - too dangerous?"

He nodded.

"Oh yeah, I forgot. We need to play things nice and safe, being smugglers and all. What we need is a real pilot," she said, missing the look on Val's face as he crossed his arms over his chest. "If we had someone who only had to think about flying, he could keep us in touch with the ship and come get us if we got in too bad a scrape, and we'd be a hell of a lot better off. We could use an engineer too. And probably another gunman or two. Not that we want to water down the prize money too much," she said.

"Your turn to cook or mine?"

On their way to the kitchen and dining area, they went to Val's quarters in the much-too-empty crew dorm on the top level. This area was made up of tiny rooms big enough for a bed and a few belongings. There was only a handful of those, as this was a small private ship that had once belonged to a commercial transport fleet. Six was the optimal crew for a ship like this performing regular operations, but since Jess's operations were a little left of regular, she thought four would do it. Unfortunately, at the moment, she was working with a crew of two, herself included.

Val, who had found his voice again now that it wasn't needed, had wanted to pick up a couple of his guns that needed cleaning, and was now sitting at the heavy wood table in the dining area engrossed in this work, while Jess pulled cans from the pantry.

"Beans, beans, beans or beans?" she asked. "Of course we could say to hell with it all and just have beans." She glanced over her shoulder to see if Val had acknowledged her joke, but was met only with the crown of his head as he bent over his weapons, their surfaces giving the occasional weak gleam in the gas lighting. "Atmospheric," she had called it in the beginning. That was almost a full year ago, and they were still eating beans. She wished those crates really were carrying synthetic protein bars. Even that would make a nice change.

She dumped a can's contents into a pot and lit the stovetop, smiling a little that she and Val took turns heating beans and calling it "cooking." It would be a lot more than nice to start getting some better jobs and a few more people on board - people who actually spoke out loud.

"Well, that settles it," she said, pouring all of her frustration into the act of stirring their dinner. "Jupiter City it is. We can scout for pilots and explain things to Devlin. Maybe he has another buyer in mind. We'll lower our asking price on this run if he gets too antsy."

"Will he be reasonable?" Val's voice, though surprisingly sonorous, was raspy from non-use. It made Jess jump.

"Well," she said, glancing over her shoulder with a tight smile, "seeing as how reasonable, for him, would be not trying to kill us for screwing things up, I certainly hope so."