Flyover Planet Ch. 12. The Real Deal.

Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Thirteen, Fourteen Pt. 1, Fourteen Pt. 2, Fifteen, Sixteen.
(Non-SF Flyover Valley starts here.)

"Can any ... geck fly a ship?" XieXie had said, and then added:

"Can Gunnara?"

They were whispering now, barely audible, though Forseti thought it unlikely that there would be a working mike there. There was an Eye just above the door in the corner, but it was grimy like everything on the ship they'd seen so far. After the aggressively antiseptic interiors of the Ed ships it provided an odd sort of relief. XieXie thought she would start hating it soon if they stayed here much longer but for now it was comfortingly human. There was little enough comfort to be had otherwise.

"That sick bastard said they are short-staffed," Cheers whispered.

"A crew of twelve... Ok, minus the one that ...that Linder got," saying his name hurt, but Forseti had been raised to honor the dead.

"And that piece of scum who grabbed Fenny —"

"And that Doc doesn't look like the fighting type, no pulser. Smelled like a leaky still too. So that's nine, and since they sent that waste product down below, they have no mechanic. Leaves eight, including their captain."

"Maybe fewer," XieXie whispered hopefully.

"So all we have to do is come up with a cunning plan," Cheers hissed with heavy irony, "and overpower eight men, grab their guns, lock them up and fly this bucket — where to, Captain?"

"Fly this bucket, that's funny!"

Guns's piping voice startled them. She had not spoken in so long that they did not realize she was awake.

"You all right, Guns?" Forseti asked gently, feeling how stupidly inadequate the phrase was. Guns was not all right; he did not know if she ever would be.

"I am all right, Captain. Thank you. Are you all right?"

"All right and tight, sweetling," XieXie said softly, as if speaking to a tiny child. Guns did not answer. She was still leaning against Seti's shoulder.

"Everyone is fine, Guns," Forseti said, and felt her nod. "What woke you up?"

"You are captain," Guns said in a tone of surprise. "Cheers said you need Guns to fly this bucket. Cheers is funny."

"Gut-busting," Forseti said. He had no idea what was going on. "So you can fly it?"

"A simple vessel like that, The Flying Heart, fake registration one oh six sigma? Of course. But I cannot open the door of this hold," Guns said regretfully.

Forseti thought furiously. He was not old enough to think how pointless, how impossible what he was considering was. He was thinking, "We have a pilot."

How to get out? How to overpower grown men with weapons?

Somehow, that's how.

"Ok, Guns," he said, speaking carefully. "I want you to tell me everything you can about this ship, ok? And tell me how you know this, too."

"There is a geck transmitting here," Guns said matter-of-factly. "He is like me. He is not completed. So he is leaking."

"Can he read you? Are you transmitting too?"

"No, Captain. Do you want me to?"

"No, please don't." She nodded again.

"This ship is six years old," she began, "operating at capacity..."

They fell asleep from sheer exhaustion; the creaking and rumbling of the heavy door being pulled open woke everyone up at once. To Forseti it felt like he had just closed his eyes. Eight men total (one of the things Guns got from the geck was ration distribution); one of them was Backer, locked up belowdecks. Without him and the doctor, six; one a geck, an unfinished one, five. Five able-bodied armed men; Forseti was irrationally cheered by this. Half the crew. And they were not going to shoot to kill, that much was obvious; and they might be tired, from all the extra work, and—

The man from yesterday, the ex-cop, was there with his pulser up, and the Doctor. He checked them and patched them, shaking his head and muttering to himself, brows drawn. The smell of rotgut never completely left him but today it was less thick.

"Chow's in a few," he said when he was done. "First though," he pointed at XieXie, "you come with me, sheilie."

"Where are you taking her?" Forseti said angrily at the same time as XieXie said, "Why?"

The Doctor sighed.

"Captain Raglan requests the favor of your presence," he said, barely slurring the words. "If you deign to accompany our friend Two-Bit right here, that is."

Forseti opened his mouth but XieXie squeezed his hand warningly. As she got up from the bunk she turned her face away from the door and mouthed the word "opportunity."

She walked out, head held high, and the door clanged closed behind her.

Raglan had slept little too. There had been too much to do. Backer was reported to be murderous, but he was doing the work. "Still believes that there is more than one door opening on the ship for him," Two-Bit had said cheerily. Doc, unasked, had contributed his expert opinion when Raglan dropped in on him to check on the lab work:

"Captain, it looks to my trained eye as if Backer is about to settle down and buy a farm.”

“Man’s a fool for some pretty flesh, always has been, and all kinds of fool besides,” Raglan said dismissively. “He’s gonna cool off some, don’t concern you.”

The Doc shook his head.

“The brainpan’s part of my wares, and Backer’s is overcookin’ some. He grabbed a real expensive squeeze yesterday and dam’ near killed that sheilie who went for him; done killed that boy, remember. I'm giving him some scrap for the overcookin' in his rations, so he ain't likely to send us all to the dark and merry by messin' up the injin room, but that's something that will hold him steadyish for a week, two on the outs. No promises. Would if I could, but you know me. I ain't a two-talker.“

Raglan nodded. Doc warn’t a bad guy, even if he talked a passel.

“Can’t get no relief till we shift this lot and hire more crew. Thanks, Doc. Got anything new on the cargo?”

"A bit," Doc gestured at his screens. The Fair Heart did not run to full holo but most of the tech, though not new, was in good shape. Raglan had once caught a ship that was bigger and faster but they had a faulty turbo; he learned the lesson.

"They really ain't got no tracking," Doc said. "No chips, no signal, nothin'. Even the geckish gal ain't sending."

The geck had said the same but Raglan liked to be sure.

"Still figuring out the other stuff. Real uncannies, these are," Doc said with satisfaction.

"You can keep them running though, Doc, cantcha?" Raglan asked, not for the first time. The kids would be bled by their buyers, bone marrow and muscle and the very breath from their lungs bottled and sold; and so their hearts must beat and their eyes be open and bright and their spines straight. If the thought bothered either of the men they did not show it.

"Shipshape and working order," Doc said. "Matter of fact, the stuff self-perpetuates, whatever it is. I give 'em patches like it says in the records we lifted, but I'd like to stop with one of them, just any, to see what happens. Would see the effects in twenty-four hours, a bit more maybe. Could raise our price a bit, make them weirder still."

"Could lower their price too," Raglan squinted at the readouts though they made little sense to him. "Lemme have a think on it, Doc, all right?"

Doc peered at the Captain.

"You don't look too pert yourself, Cap'n. Want I should give you somethin' to perk you up a bit?"

"Not yet," Raglan said shortly. "And dontcha get too perked up either," he added, with a significant jerk of his head at the Doc's drink cabinet. "Not till we shift them."

"Aye-aye, Cap'n," Doc grinned. He picked up his bag of tricks. "Goin' to check on them before breakfast, with Two-Bit for company."

They walked out of his patch-up room. Raglan was silent till they reached the gangway, then he said suddenly:

"Bring that girl to me." He wasn't sure what made him say it, didn't know he was going to till he did. Doc gave him a quizzical look:

"The hippy-lippy bit of trouble?"

"No. The thin mouthy one with the hair."

Doc's left eyebrow went up.

"I ain't doing a Backer," Raglan said impatiently. "And I don't care for kids anyways, you know that."

"You're the captain, Captain," Doc said, but the eyebrow stayed up.

Raglan's cabin was a bit bigger than the others, but still only slightly longer than his bunk and maybe three times as wide. There was a screen and a tiny folding shelf fixed to the wall that served as a table on occasion. Two-Bit brought in the girl and left at the Captain's nod.

"Go ahead, sit yourself down," Raglan gestured at his bunk. He himself was leaning against the door, arms crossed. The girl glanced at the bunk, walked over to the opposite side of the cabin and leaned against the wall, mirroring his pose, thin arms crossed.

"What do they call you?" Raglan asked. She looked him in the face with those eyes that had caught his attention.

"What, no pulser today?" she said. He grinned. She was unsettling, annoying, but there was something there for sure.

"All right, Green Bean it is," he said. They were silent for a few moments. He expected her to speak, to ask why she was here, but she did not. She did not look scared; if anything, she looked faintly bored. That was unusual. Human cargo was sometimes angry, sometimes defiant, almost always scared, but bored, never.

She gave a little yawn, covering her mouth in a ladylike manner, as if echoing his thoughts, then wrinkled her nose.

"What?" he asked.

"This could do with a cleaning. Your whole ship could," she said. "Not a very Fair Heart, with all that dirt all over."

He gave a surprised laugh.

"Who told you the name of the ship?" he asked. She opened her eyes fully, for a moment.

"I can read," she said. "I guess you can't, Captain?"

The painting had been done so long ago and was so grimy now that Raglan could barely read the words himself, had stopped noticing it, but there it was, of course, on the wall where he could see it lying on his bunk, facing the door. His first ship, with the legend The Fair Heart and the heart in thorns above it.

"So those eyes are good for something more than taking a man's fancy," he grinned. She was looking at him stone-faced. Either she was that good, or she did not get what he meant. No surprise there; Raglan himself had only just gotten what he meant. So that was how it happened. He whistled.

Compared to some of his crew, present and past, Raglan was fairly restrained in his off-time. He often found himself enjoying what Doc termed "feminine society" but he never trusted the species. He did not even have a favorite whore in Sparkletown. And who would take a whore or a petty for a moll? By fifteen or sixteen they were already serpent-hearted and never a way to know what she had dropped into your shot glass. Spitting wasn’t the half of it.

"If you weren't just a young slip of a sheilie, and expensive cargo to boot," he said musingly, "I’d give you the real deal, you know?"

"What's that?" she asked politely.

"The real deal, Green Bean. You're a land jenny, you don't talk the talk, I guess. I don't mean have you for a pretty, for just a short roll in the sheets before I give you away. I mean for mine. The captain's woman," he laughed as he said it, shaking his head. "Listen to me. Swore I'd never do this, back in the day... Never had no trusting for your kind. Auntie who raised me, she followed the woman trade, so she had no use for a great big boychild like me. Sold me to the mercs when I was but a younker. Beat me worse than her, they did..." He was smiling now, taking a trip down memory lane. "The man that bought me, he was a bad customer. Knifed him after a coupla years, when I got big enough. They, the mercs, there was always woman troubles. Nothing a prim little queenie like yourself would know about, o'course. Now my first captain, when I went into the free trade, he had one, a woman I mean. Poison Petra. She was a piece of work, she was..."

Poison Petra had been taken off a passenger ship with the rest of the cargo. The captain had taken a fancy to her, held off the others and took her for his. Poison Petra spoke little, but she was held in awe by the men of the ship. Her man would even get doctored after a night in Sparkletown before going back to her. They said she even broke the captain out of a lockup once; poisoned the guards and lifted the latch. Once some new crewman had crossed her, said some word he should have kept inside his gullet; the captain told her she could have a new bauble for herself or do what she wished with that joker. Petra, stone-faced, had the man dragged out to the airlock. She pressed the button for the outer door herself and watched the Black take him. Raglan had asked his captain once why he kept her, contrary to all wisdom and custom. The captain gave him one to the jaw, and when Raglan picked himself up, laughed at him. Now, Raglan rubbed his jaw reminiscently and laughed at himself.

"No use whistling though," he said. The girl was still silent, unreadable. "Can't be done with you."

"Can't afford me, is more like it, Captain," she said. There was a spark there in her eyes. Raglan stood up straight, towering over her, but her posture never changed.

"Listen, Queen Bean. I am Raglan of The Fair Heart. What I want, I take." He slapped the wall next to the painting. "I saw The Fair Heart, I took her. She is my ship, just the one, but that's how it starts. I will have me a fleet someday, Raglan's Raiders we will be! If I want a woman for keeps, I will take her, be she the most expensive thing in the strongest cage at the center of the Rim, you hear? So I would take you too. But I want a woman, not a kiddie, and you ain't gonna be a woman, ever."

"Oh? What makes you say that?" her eyes went open again, with some feeling, perhaps surprise.

"Come off it," Raglan said. "Dontcha know?"

She merely raised an eyebrow and looked at him quizzically.

Well, there was no harm in telling her.

"You been hit with some age slowance thing, Doc tells me. Not getting any older. So that will be fine in a few markets, lotsa people out there want that kind of whammy; but as far as Doc knows, there ain't no reversing this. He can't do it, anyway. And any lab that tries, too risky. Either you will die, or we get rumbled, or both," Raglan was speaking with real regret. Now that he knew what ailed him — the promise of the woman she was going to grow into, that is, would have grown into — he was sorry it could not be.

Her face was giving something away, at last, brows drawn together, eyes almost closed, barely a gleaming slit visible.

"Let me make sure we understand each other, Captain," she said finally, and looked him in the face. "If I were going to grow a little older, you would offer me your real deal now. What would happen if you did this, right now, and I accepted?"

"Well," he thought for a few moments, "I'd move you next to my cabin, got an empty berth there since a man of mine got scragged. Then we'd shift the rest of the cargo, those sorry clogheads you're with, in a week or so, once we get to... to where we are going. I won't honeymoon on a big job, see, not if you were already right for it," his hands described an hourglass shape in the air. "Man gets too distracted, bad mistakes happen. After the job is done, we'd see."

She was still thinking. After yesterday he half-expected her to say something about the rest of the cargo, that they were friends or something, maybe bargain with him. Instead, she said:

"There might be a way, Captain." There was no irony in the word this time. Raglan said roughly:

"I ain't having you shot full of lady hormones. Might kill you too, and anyway, that ain't what I want."

"It is not what I want either," her tone made it clear that her wishes were more important than his. She faced him, looked him up and down.

"You have got our files," it was not a question.

"What would you know about it?" Raglan asked, amused. She answered coolly:

"More than you might think." She straightened up.

"You have given me some food for thought, Captain," she said, for all the world as if they were of an age, as if she was a client flanked by armed guard, not a slip of a girl completely in his power. "I need a short period of reflection. After that I might have something for you that will let us... move forward." That was an Ed phrase. Raglan frowned.

"Reflection? What do you know?" He leaned forward. She gave a tiny shake of her head.

"Two hours at most, Captain," she half-smiled, for the first time. "I do promise not to leave the ship right now."

She made him laugh again. For a moment he wavered but his comm buzzed, the geck calling him to the bridge.

"What the hell," he opened the door for her. "I guess you won't leave, at that." There was a smile on his lips as he walked her to the cargo cabin and locked the door.

XieXie had managed to keep it together till the door was locked behind her. There were anxious faces — Forseti's bright eyes, hands on her shoulders — "You're all right!" and "We saved you some food!" and something else, but she stumbled blindly to the back. Someone had understood, opened the door, closed it behind her; she was in the tiny cubicle, on her knees, retching and shaking, with tears flowing down her face.

When she was finally done, after what felt like hours, her stomach hurt and her eyes felt like they had been sandpapered. She washed out the taste with the stale-tasting water from the tap as best she could, washed her face, then stood still for a moment, the heels of her hands over her eyes, and breathed.

She had not known what to expect from Raglan's summons. She had gone only determined to show no fear, and that meant showing nothing, to the best of her ability; to see as much as possible. The man was vile; not viler than the Eds perhaps, but the Eds, to her, had been faceless. Raglan had not been modified; he looked like a normal person, a normal man, with a beard, scars, and the coldest eyes she had ever seen. That was what made him more despicable; his casual talk of death, of selling kids... Wayside's population had been mostly Christian; there was no slavery and no indenture even. The Pradeshi had their own religion but XieXie had never heard of them selling people for any reason. She went in disgusted and afraid. When she made that slip of the tongue, showed she knew the name of the ship, she got angry too, angry with herself. She had nearly given away their secret, their small edge — Guns and her scanning of the geck. It was pure luck that there had been that picture, that XieXie noticed it. This put her on her guard still more. She was more afraid for all of them than for herself.

"XieXie?" That was Seti, on edge.

"I'm..." She was not all right, that was dumb. "I'm better. I will be out in a moment."

The monstrosity of Raglan's offer had fortunately struck her dumb. There was a horrible moment when she thought he might force himself on her; what he really wanted was scarcely better but it was a reprieve... and an opportunity. The pirate's moment of enjoying his memories, speaking dreamily of the horrors that had made up his life, had given her a chance to think. There had been a chink; a little freedom, for her to help the others? There had been a ring of truth in his voice when he said that while on the job he would not take XieXie to — her hollow stomach wanted to heave again but she breathed, slow breaths like second-mama taught her.

The idea that the kids were not growing older had been so incredible that it had simply floated through XieXie's mind, adding to the sense of unreality she was feeling. She made something of it; Raglan's want — she had to stop herself shuddering, she told herself sternly — his ambition, his greed, as she dropped vague hints, this had been what she was looking for.

"Opportunity," she said out loud, and opened the door.