Chapter 2: Aftermath

Stevo. 12

The night was long; it was altogether too long. Yet, at the same time, he was dreading the rising of the sun.

There was a reason that armies throughout history had chosen dawn as the best time to launch their attacks. Firstly, your opponent would be tired, either having stayed up all night maintaining the defenses - as his squad had been forced to do - or just simply from getting up early and not being fully awake yet. Secondly, it allowed them to attack with the rising sun at their backs. Firing into a horde of onrushing enemies was daunting enough, but doing it when half-blinded by the sun made things all the more complicated. His situation, however, was compounded by the fact that he was inarguably surrounded. The sun rose in the West on this planet, so manning that part of the defenses was straightforward, but he didn’t have the manpower to maintain security for the East, North, or South orientations at the same time. The simple fact of his reality was that any sort of organized attack on his position would be difficult - to the point of being suicidally impossible - to repulse.

He could hear them, even in those small night hours, scuffling around in the trenches surrounding his makeshift fortress. He hadn’t heard a word being whispered from them all night - impressive on its own, now that he thought about it - just the rustles of movement. Of course, his mind could be playing tricks on him, but with an overwhelming command of the beach in every direction, the notion that the rebels had not surrounded him and his squad was too absurd even to consider.

To make matters worse, the temperature had plummeted. That didn’t affect him; his fully enclosed armor maintained his temperature perfectly. But Angel had been forced to toss her helmet, and all of her body heat was escaping through her head; even over the twenty feet between them, he could see her shivering. The cold was already starting to leech her strength; once that was gone, the tiredness would set in. Once she had crossed that line, her usefulness as a sentry would be drastically reduced. The ability to stay alert when tired was what training was for, but that had its limits when competing against basic human biology. In a worse condition was Lt. Almark; she was only wearing a flight suit with no thermal retention properties whatsoever. He didn’t need to be a medic to see that she was in a bad way.

Her legs had stopped bleeding, but that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. Between the damage suffered by them in the crash, the broken bones, and the multitudes of other injuries sustained in the crash, coupled with the sub-zero temperatures, her body was starting to prioritize blood flow away from her extremities. The crush injury might have been enough to warrant amputation on its own, but the cold and the enormous delay in getting her to a medical facility were starting to change her condition from serious to critical. Her face was drained of all color, the phrase “white as a sheet” given more and more meaning with every passing hour, and the only movement he had seen from her in a while was the bone-rattling shivers as her body tried to fight back the cold. It seemed almost cruel not to let her sleep, to escape the pain and the frigid night air, but he knew that the moment she dropped off would be the last time she would ever be conscious again.

That meant that the abject misery of her condition was being endured while fully awake and without the slightest drop of pain relief.

Yet, she hadn’t complained once. Not even a whimper of the unimaginable pain she must have been feeling. Not a groan, not even a loud sniff. He could only silently admire her astonishing bravery and resilience, even if he did doubt she would live to see the sunrise.

“How’s she doing, Mac?” He whispered over his shoulder to the heavy gunner who was offering her a mouthful of water from his canteen while checking the tourniquets that he had tied around her thighs to limit the bleeding.

“She’s grand, Sarge,” he smiled, trying to keep spirits up. “A warrior through an’ through. Get ‘er patched up an’ we’ll make a Marine out of ‘er yet.”

Emylee winced against the chuckle and then a much larger one as she swallowed down a mouthful.

“Sorry lass, drink up. I know it’s cold, and I know it hurts, but we need to keep yer fluids up,” he said sympathetically.

“It’s okay,” Emylee said, trying to stifle a groan but still managing to look up at him with big, grateful eyes. “I’ll be fine; I’ve been through worse scrapes than this.”

Stevo smiled, ever-impressed by the woman’s bravery. It was a feat that he would struggle to match if their roles had been reversed. “A’right, love, let’s not get carried away,” Mac chortled back before patting her gently on the shoulder and walking in a stoop closer to the Sarge. “She’s nae looking good, Boss,” he whispered. “If the blood loss and the crush don’t kill her, the cold will. These assholes know where we are; any chance of getting a fire going? Not like it’s gonna give away our position.”

Under normal circumstances, the answer would be a very emphatic ‘no,’ but the simple truth was that Mac had a point. The attack would come; it made no strategic or tactical sense for it not to. Every fiber of his being knew that they were surrounded, outnumbered, out-gunned and that it was only a matter of time before they were attacked. When that attack came, they would be overrun in very short order. If, by some minor miracle, they survived that first assault, one artillery strike - even one as inaccurate as normal bombardments usually were - would end them in moments. They had the smallest amount of cover, no food, no water, no medical supplies, and half of his company had no way of fending off the bitter cold. On the other hand, any source of light would silhouette each of them against the darkness, but even that normal consideration was offset by the absurdly inaccurate nature of the pot-shots being launched toward their position, not to mention the fact that the enemy already knew exactly where they were.

“Do we have anything to burn?” he asked tentatively

“Aye, there’s some driftwood around, ‘nuff to get somethin’ small goin’,” Mac nodded.

Stevo sighed and looked around again. “Fuck it, it’s not like our position can get any worse. Keep it small and keep it close to the column. May as well go out warm, right?”

Mac grinned and nodded. “That’s the spirit, Sarge.” His ham hand clapped him on the shoulder before he shuffled his way back closer to Emylee and started to construct the miniature fire.

“Angel,” he called over as quietly as he was able, looking at her as she covered the gap between two pillars on the northwest corner. He waited until she looked toward him. “Pull back from there. The light from the fire will make you look like Union Square. Get yourself warmed up. I’ll take watch.”

She was about to argue, say that she was fine, and offer to share the burden of standing guard over all of them, but one longing look at the fire as it grew under Mac’s tender care was all it took to crumble her resolve. She nodded gratefully, secured her weapon, and shuffled back toward the fire.

Bethany 1.

There was barely a shudder as the freighter’s landing struts finally made contact with the ground. Bethany Jenson, the pilot and captain of this particular freighter, glanced over at the G-force indicator and nodded to herself. It was a game that merchants and captains had played for centuries; flying around space, navigating shipping lanes, maintaining port speed with unerring accuracy, that was all well and good, but the true test of a pilot was how gently you could set your ship down after all that wellness and goodness was finished. The truest tests of a pilot outside combat. It was a nuanced balancing act, full of micro-adjustments and subtleties that took a lifetime to master. It was impossible to get a perfect score; the laws of physics and the conservation of momentum simply wouldn’t allow it. There was always the slightest of flickers on the G-force indicator when even the gentlest movement of the ship was arrested by its contact with terra-firma. The game was simply to make that flicker as small as humanly possible.

A pilot’s best score for the month would be uploaded to the merchant guild’s pilot pool, and the winner would take the pot. Ten credits to enter with the chance to win tens of thousands. She’d won once, with a particularly lucky landing on a low-grav planet with high winds. Both of them contributed to making the G-counter tick up by an almost imperceptible degree, far exceeding her natural abilities as a pilot, but that didn’t matter. The count was the count, and after the guild had verified that the device or its measurements had not been tampered with in any way, the credits appeared in her account, and she had enjoyed a stunning vacation on Capricorn—all thanks to a little wind and a little finesse.

Still, though, she would love to win it on a normal-grav planet one day. She was good, but she was far from the best. Some of the readings that had won previous months’ pools had been astounding. For someone who had spent her entire life dreaming of flying, it was one of those little things that allowed her to measure her success. A few years ago, she had been transporting a trader from Port Texas to Proxima-Centauri and had tried to explain the game to him. Traders and freighter captains were different breeds, with traders preferring to set up shop in one spot and let business come to them, while the merchants guild made their money transporting cargo and travelling to find the best profits, but what set him apart from her - at least in her mind - was when he scrunched up his face and asked: “why?”

But then the differences between the people who asked “why” instead of “why not” had always been a perfectly useful way of categorizing humanity.

She shook her head to herself as she powered down her ship and settled back into her inordinately comfortable and insanely expensive pilot’s seat. She would never understand some people, and some people would never understand her, but with almost forty years of life under her belt, that was a reality that she was fine with. Listening to the atmospheric engines cycling down, she flicked the switch to vent the cooling systems and opened the refueling port for the ground crews. “You all ready, Cap’n?” a deep voice came from behind her.

“Just about, Dick,” she replied, spinning her chair around to meet her number two as he stepped into the cockpit. Richard, or Dick as she liked to call him, was a solid crew member, her only other crew member in fact. The Long Haul, her freighter, wasn’t a small ship, but it wasn’t massive either. With most of the systems being run automatically, a second member of the crew wasn’t strictly necessary, but it made life easier. It was also company for those longer treks out into deeper space. Dick had only been on board for eight months, but in that time, he had shown himself to be reliable and trustworthy - probably the only two real requirements of a first mate aside from a lack of desire to murder her in her sleep - and more importantly, he was a good technician. He was probably not quite good enough to be called an engineer, but he was up to the task of keeping the ship in fairly decent working order. He was big, he was imposing, he looked like a man who could handle himself in a fight - despite never having seen him fight to prove that assumption - and, when pushed, he could hold a conversation, barely. She had certainly worked with worse people. “Cargo all ready to go?”

He nodded, looking out of the windows at the sprawling dock surrounding them. “Yup, everything’s ready for the port grunts to unload once you’ve made the sale.”

“Excellent, nice job,” she smiled as she stood up and stepped over to the weapons rack. Most ports in the Imperium were safe enough, and Port Collins, one of the sprawling starports on the third planet of the Caspian System, was no exception, but it always paid to be cautious. “Once the gophers have gotten everything offloaded, you’ll be off the clock. I’m not planning on shipping out til morning, so ... I dunno ... Have fun or something.”

“I’m sure there’s a bar around here willing to take my creds,” he nodded absently, his eyes still taking in the sights around the ship.

She chuckled and shook her head as she strapped her belt to her hip, checked her laser pistol, and tucked it into the safe embrace of its holster. “Alright, I’ll let you know when everything’s done, and then, once the offload is finished, you’re good to go.”

Dick nodded again but didn’t answer.

She chuckled and patted him on the shoulder as she left the cockpit. “Good chat, Dick.”

The long haul was designed in much the same way as most other freighters: a long, single-story living section that fed into the cockpit, all of which sat astride the yawning cargo bays beneath. The airlock and docking port were on the top deck, but being planet-side meant that the ground was a good forty feet below her. It was far easier and faster to climb the access ladder down into the cargo bay and exit through one of the massive bay doors that were currently being retracted into the ceiling.

She breathed in deep. Her ship had a fairly decent air recycling system, but there was nothing quite like that first breath of fresh, crisp, natural air. She allowed herself to enjoy it for a few moments, basking in the cool air refreshing her lungs, and rolling over her skin. She smiled to herself and stepped out into the sprawling mass of Caspian III’s starport. To say that it was a glorious day on this part of the planet was something of a redundancy; having spent her entire adult life amongst the stars, almost every day on a planet was a glorious one. Rain didn’t bother her; neither did snow, nor the heat, nor the cold; as long as she could stand under the sky and take that deep breath of clean, free air, it was, in a word, perfect. Today, however, was particularly stunning. The dual suns of the Caspian binary system were blazing majestically above her, the first a pale yellow and the second a bright white; the light bounced off the ice rings that circled the planet and bathed its inhabitants in a pleasant, temperate warmth.

This, however, was not one of the jewels of the Imperium. There were no vaunted and vaulted marble edifices, there were no monolithic skyscrapers of glass and titanium towering toward the heavens, and the streets were as crowded as they were dirty. It was perfect.

Set in an enormous circle, the docking bays of Port Collins were laid out in ever-expanding concentric rings that surrounded the central terminal. Inside the functional grey dome was the main security office, and beyond that was the primary traders’ bazaar. Dotted at every entrance to and from the great dome, heavily armed soldiers kept a somewhat indifferent yet somehow ever-vigilant watch over the passing crowds while other groups of their comrades-in-arms wandered throughout the masses. Dotted between them were the easily spottable customs inspectors, usually a man with a holo-reader, flanked by a handful of guards marching purposefully up to recently landed starships. It wasn’t uncommon for her ship to suffer through a routine inspection, but with nothing to hide, she was happy enough to let them get on with it. Today, however, it seemed that their interests lay elsewhere.

Unmolested by planetary bureaucracy not only meant more time to enjoy the weather, but less interruption as she made her way to security and on to find her contact. More than a dozen tons of silicon in her cargo hold would fetch a tidy profit, with a great deal being forwarded onto Caspian’s electronics manufacturing industries. If she could find a good price for some Rigellian Rum, she could load her cargo hold back up for an exceptionally healthy profit on her return trip to the core worlds. Desperate buyers could always be found for luxury goods like that, especially in the capital, where political shin-digs would work their way through a few hundred bottles of the stuff in a single evening.

Failing a haul of Rigellian Rum, there was always the option of filling the Long Haul with the manufactured goods that her hold full of Silicon would doubtlessly be invested in. There were more than a few shipyards on the route back home, and she was sure one could be found with a shortage of whatever stock she happened to be hauling. It wouldn’t be as profitable to her, and it wouldn’t be as fast, but it was a hell of a lot better than a freighter full of nothing. If all else failed, the rebuilding efforts on Sigmus IV weren’t a huge distance out of her way, and those poor bastards were in desperate need of just about everything.

Finally stepping out of the cargo hold, she made her way toward the main concourse. She had been lucky, by normal standards, to have been allocated a berth on the inner ring of the landing docks; it meant a much shorter walk to security. Some of the more distant spots were several miles away and needed a dedicated hover shuttle to ferry passengers and crews back and forth. But that shorter walk meant less time in the fresh air, and she was in no particular hurry to get back on the road, so to speak. Still, twenty minutes after her first step, she passed through the doors into the shadowed nightmare that was port security and joined one of the queues.

This was the part of the job she hated. She loved the flying, she enjoyed the bartering with traders, and she didn’t mind the sometimes-weeks-long flights in relative solitude. No, it was the fucking queuing. In an age where information could travel several hundred times faster than the fastest hyper-drive speeds, it was amazing to her that humanity had not come up with a better solution to border and customs controls. At least this queue was moving.

The only upside to the ludicrous tedium of queueing to get through security was being witness to the odd bit of drama. She had seen it all over the years. Men caught trying to walk contraband through the checkpoints, people with fake IDs, people on the Imperium’s wanted list, hell, there was even that time when one of those quat, hairy Maruvians had used a holo-emitter to try passing off as human, then walked through the security scanner and got electrocuted by the thing. She had seen arrests, she had seen people comically try to flee back through the terminal to their ship, only to be tackled by burly men in body armor; she had even been present at a shootout or two, and she had been hit on by more than a few optimistic border guards. She wasn’t sure what was worse. But she supposed that the life of a freighter captain couldn’t all be glamor and excitement. With the sort of sigh reserved only for those aware that a long wait was ahead of them, she rolled her neck and let her mind wander.

To give the border guards of Port Collins credit where it was due, her mind didn’t get a chance to wander very far before she found herself at the front of the queue, staring at the face of a young, cute, and barely post-pubescent man in a peaked security cap. “Documents, please,” the man said, having not even looked up.

“Sure, here ya go,” she smiled politely and handed over her Merchant Guild ID and the registration for the Long Haul. She could have been petty, she could have complained about the wait, she could have blamed the guard for ruining her good mood, but decades of doing this had taught her that these security guys could make her day a lot longer if she pissed them off. Besides, this kid looked like he had only just learned how to shave, so it was safe to assume he wasn’t responsible for the staffing levels or organizational efficiency of an interstellar starport.

He picked up the registration and scanned the tag into his holographic interface, then checked her picture on the ID to the captain’s details on the ship’s details, then turned to check it against her appearance. It was odd, just like countless officials over the years, the customs guard before her had seen her face on the ship’s credentials and again on her ID, but they never seemed to actually see her until they looked right at her. Bethany was a good-looking woman, maybe not quite elevated to the dizzying heights of “hot,” but she took care of herself and took pride in her appearance. More than that, men seemed to be intimidated by attractive, well-dressed, regal-looking women; a dressed down freighter captain with no makeup and her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail seemed to be much more achievable. The guard’s eyes widened a little as he took her in; his back straightened, and his lips curled into a fairly attractive smile. “Um...” he fumbled his words as he tried to compose himself. “What is the purpose of your visit to Fort Collins?” he finally said, trying to look professional and aloof while succeeding at neither.

Bethany smiled. A genuine one this time. She had been single a long time, so fucking herself to release on some stranger was not beneath her, and if this guy was a decade older, she might have considered it. But he had that look that just screamed, “I would show you the time of your life ... until you got naked, then you would have to show me what to do, ‘cause my game, experience, and general understanding of human anatomy ends there!”

“Business,” she replied politely. “Should be heading back out tomorrow.” pre-empting his next question.

He nodded and tapped her responses into his system. “Any packages, bags, or luggage being brought through security with you today?”

“Nope, just me.”

He smiled again, “Port Collins has the right to inspect any ships using our docking bay with or without the presence of the crew. As the Captain, you will be liable for any contraband found in these inspections and can face up to 25 years imprisonment if found guilty of trafficking or smuggling offenses. Can you confirm you understand for the record?” She had heard that script more times than she could count, but she was a clean Captain and had nothing to worry about.

“Understood, loud and clear.” she nodded. Being inspected in an Imperium port wasn’t just routine; it was expected. But she understood the need for the spiel. “Is Jango’s still open?” she enquired in as friendly a voice as she could, asking after a certain beverage-serving establishment she had enjoyed on her last visit to Port Collins a few months earlier.

“Yup,” the guard smiled, “It’s still going. I’m actually headed over there after my shift.” He added with a somewhat optimistic smile and a less-than-subtle glance at Bethany’s cleavage.

“Maybe I’ll see you there then...?” she smiled at him as he handed back her documents.

“Err, Tony...” he answered with a nervous grin, “Tony Albright.”

“Thanks, Tony,” she winked, tucking her ID and Freighter documents back into their pouch. “See you later.”

“Later, Ma’am.” His eyes followed her as she headed toward the main concourse and the traders’ emporium, his attention only yanked back to his job by an impatient cough from the guy who had been behind Bethany in the queue.

She chuckled to herself and strode on.

Every major port in the Imperium had a marketplace like this. They may have varied in size and grandeur ... and general odor ... but they were all more or less the same. If you were lucky enough to land a contract directly with one of the big industries or with the planetary governor themselves, you were usually allowed to land directly in the destination city or in one of the sprawling industrial complexes dotted around the planet. But if, like Bethany, you just had a general cargo you wanted to offload, that meant finding a buyer, and those buyers knew where to congregate to get first dibs on the newly imported goods. Over the years, those merchants had grown their little stores into large, well-presented offices where all manner of cargo could be bought and sold without ever having to leave the port facilities. If a captain was in a rush, they could have their old cargo unloaded, their new cargo loaded onto their ship, pay the extra to receive priority refueling privileges, and then be back in orbit within two hours of landing.

Bethany had never found herself in that much of a rush, though. She liked to savor her visits planetside, especially ones to worlds like Caspian III, with its clean air, pleasant climate, and lack of conflict. It was the closest thing to a Core-World-ambiance as could be found this far beyond the Inner Ring. More than that, it would almost certainly be her last proper rest stop before having to traverse the desolation of the Hudson Expanse to get back to the core worlds at all.

Usaf was a man who could accurately be described as larger than life. His enormous character and booming voice were only matched by his towering height and his barrel chest. Bethany imagined that he looked like the lovechild of a three-bell prize fighter and a younger version of Santa. The man looked like he could pick up a hover truck with less than a passing effort and yet exuded nothing but warmth and friendliness. Of course, the latter of those qualities was one to be wary of when found in a trader. Killing someone with kindness was a very effective way of wiping out their bank account, too.

If the man’s size and affable character were not enough, he had the memory of an elephant. It had been more than six months since they’d had even the most fleeting of contact, and yet his booming voice echoed over the office only a few moments after she passed beneath its archway. “Bethany, my most precious of captains!” he beamed at her, stepping out of his office, arms spread wide and almost dancing across the foyer toward her. “You look even more ravishing than the last time your presence graced our humble bazaar.” he wrapped the comparatively tiny cargo hauler up in a bear hug for the ages. “Did you miss me?”

She’d met the man twice, once six months ago and the first time a little more than a year before that.

She chuckled and hugged him back. “Hey, Usaf, it’s good to see you, too.”

“I know you have brought me something good; what do you have for me?” he said, that mammoth smile still on his face as he released her.

“Processed Silicon, sixteen tons.”

She couldn’t tell if the way his eyes lit up was through genuine mercantile excitement or if it was an astonishingly effective act designed to fill naive captains with ill-advised and unearned confidence. Either way, it worked. “Oh, the joys of working with a professional!” he gleefully exclaimed. “Come into my office, and we can discuss terms ... Comecomecome! ... Dimitri...” he called out to one of the younger-looking clerks. “ ... a bottle of our finest white, as soon as you can.”

Bethany arched an eyebrow. Remembering her name was impressive after all this time, but remembering her favorite drink from one celebratory glass on her first visit was pretty incredible.

“Now,” he said, ushering her into his large, glass-walled office and holding out a leather chair for her, waiting for her to sit before he moved to the other side of the enormous mahogany desk that took up most of the floor space. “What are you looking for me to take the whole lot off your hands?”

“Two point eight should see me suitably ... unencumbered.” she offered, leaning back into the chair. This was another one of the games; she knew it, he knew it, but they played it anyway, all whilst pretending they weren’t. Most traders offered a ridiculously low price, and then the captain had to haggle their way back up to something more realistic. Usaf was one of the rare breed that let the captain dictate the price and he tried to work them down. She knew that he knew that she had added a few hundred thousand credits onto the value of her cargo, but such was this timeless dance.

Usaf seemed to pause for a minute, his eyes losing focus as he looked to be considering it. “And do you want credits for this, or would you like to buy cargo for your return home?”

“Cargo would be ideal, but it would depend on what you’ve got available ... and the price.”

Usaf nodded again, spinning in his chair to face his computer interface. “And where is the Long Haul headed next? Always plenty of money to be made running relief to the poor souls of Orpheus IV.” He looked at her speculatively.

“Not this time, I’m afraid. I’m heading core-ward.”

If it was possible, his eyes lit up even more. “If you would be willing to accept two point six, I could make it worth your while.”

She’d spent years working on her poker face, and all that self-control suddenly came of age. Her entire cargo was worth two point four-five at a push. But she somehow managed to keep a lid on the blossom of excitement bursting in her chest. “I’m listening, worth my while, how?”

The smile never left his face as he leaned back in his own chair, the leather and the steel itself creaking under the enormous pressure. He steepled his fingers. “A much less upstanding courier than yourself was due to transport a shipment for me last week but didn’t show up. I am under contract and will suffer a great blow to my reputation if these goods are not transported to the capital on time. The contract is valued at three million credits, three point five if it is there within the fortnight. What I am offering is that I hand this cargo to you, and you cash it in for whichever amount you are able to get for it, and in return, I take your cargo off your hands and sell it myself. I should get the full two-point eight for it, so I will only lose two hundred thousand credits. If I don’t make the delivery, the cargo is worthless, and I lose it all.”