Long Haul Ch. 01

"That's a lot."

Wren shrugged and opened up the first cabinet. A half-dozen cereal boxes of different colors sat before her, and she smiled. She liked to have choices. "I'm gonna have the red," she said, after a moment's deliberation. "Do you want the red?"

"I-I guess?" the redhead stammered. She slipped her arms out of the sleeves of her suit, and let the upper part of it hang around her waist.

"There's two kinds of pirates out here," Wren said, as she grabbed bowls and spoons. "Thieves and scavs." She poured each of them a bowl, and sprinkled in a heap of dehydrated milk.

"Holy shit, you have milk out here?!"

"I don't know how you eat cereal," she said, handing the redhead her bowl, "but you're doing it wrong without milk."

"It's so expensive!" She held the bowl in front of her like it was made of gold, and Wren laughed.

"Better not let it go to waste then." Wren hopped up on the countertop, legs dangling, and smiled. "Do you want to rehydrate that or just have it dry? It's pretty good either way."

The redhead shook her head slowly.

"Suit yourself." Wren turned and held her bowl under the running faucet for a moment. "So what's your name?"

"Xylia."

"Bullshit," Wren said, around a mouthful of cereal.

"How is my name bullshit?"

"That's exactly the kind of exotic, unnecessarily-complex fakeness that someone would make up for themselves if they were on the run."

"I am on the run. Remember how I got shot?" She emphasized her point by pulling up the bottom of her tank top and exposing the bandage.

"Yeah," Wren said, taking another bite. "That's how I know you're lying. How's that healing, by the way."

"It's fine," she answered, tersely.

"I'm not asking what your name is so I can paint it on the side of my ship for the whole damn galaxy to see."

The redhead hesitantly took a bite of cereal and chewed slowly. "Bonnie."

Wren looked her up and down, and nodded. "You look like a Bonnie."

"What does that mean?"

Wren just shrugged and took another bite. "Nothing? Everything?" Both of them turned at an awful yowl in the next room, but she forestalled Bonnie with an upheld hand. "No."

"But wasn't that your cat?"

"Have you ever seen what a cat does to a room in null grav? It's the stuff of nightmares."

Bonnie furrowed her brow and tilted her head. "Does that happen every time?"

The blue-haired girl shook her head and took another bite. "Ushuwally he has enou' time to ge' into his 'ittle box," she said, and then after swallowing added, "He knows what the alarms sound like, and he's got no one to blame but himself if he didn't make it."

Mr. Cat warbled angrily in response.

"I'll clean it up later." Wren took another bite, and watched Bonnie surreptitiously. The redhead's exposed, tattooed arms had some ferocious definition, and Wren barely suppressed a shiver. It didn't matter if they belonged to men or women; Wren had a thing for arms. The way they shaped a chest when folded over themselves. Shoulders were a part of it too.

"What are you going to do with that ship?"

"What ship?" Wren asked, shoveling another spoonful into her mouth to cover the lapse.

"The one that was chasing us."

"Nothing? That asteroid we're heading towards is worth way more than anything we'll find on some scav rocket."

"You don't know that," Bonnie said with a smirk. "You're just guessing."

"It's an educated guess."

"Educated bullshit."

Wren shrugged and nodded. "Yeah. Sure."

"Yeah sure?"

Wren laughed. "It's really bothering you that I'm just gonna leave that there, huh?"

"Yes! We shouldn't just let all that scrap go to waste!"

"I'm not changing course. Do you want to suit back up and take the skiff out there?"

"I'm not a pilot," Bonnie said, though her cheeks flushed with color.

"The skiff flies itself. You just have to strap in."

Bonnie stood up a little taller and nodded. Twice. "Alright," she said, finally, and Wren smiled.

"This is gonna work out. I'm excited."

***

"How're you doing over there," Wren said, as she watched her mining drones scurry off.

"Really good," Bonnie replied, without sounding good at all. "Are you sure this thing can fly itself?"

"Technically, the Daedalus is the one doing the flying, but yeah. I'm sure."

"How does that work? Exactly?"

Wren smiled. "Are you asking because you really want to know, or do you just want to be distracted?"

"Distracted." She sounded like she was talking through her teeth.

Wren's drones circled her target, and the scan of the asteroid on her primary display started rapidly gaining in resolution. She identified a few useless areas, rocky outcroppings and air pockets that were devoid of useful metals, and the drones quickly went to work excising them.

"Well, the Daedalus has a pretty sophisticated scanning system that I designed. Right now we're kind of stress testing it by using it for your navigation, my navigation, and my compositional scanning simultaneously."

"That's nice tell me more."

Wren shrugged and smiled. "It's sort of like ladar on steroids. It watches for subtle shifts in the way different light frequencies are affected by small-body gravitational forces. And then, on top of that, it's tracking and identifying the different bodies it detects, and predicts their paths."

"That's nice tell me more."

"How are you so bad in space?"

"That's nice tell me more."

"I swear some of those tattoos you have are from the Marines."

"I don't like null grav, alright? It makes me sick."

"Really?"

"You know what doesn't help? Talking about it."

Wren laughed. Her drones worked on carving another slice from the target asteroid, and she was excited. Every layer of scan told her a little more about the elemental composition. "Yeah. This is gonna work out really nicely."

"Are you talking about me or the asteroid?"

"Yes," Wren said, leaning back. Her hand moved without thought, reaching for a bowl of cereal that wasn't there, and when she realized she was grabbing at nothing she gave serious thought to getting herself another bowl.

"Whoa. You should see this wreck."

Wren half-turned, without really taking her eyes off the scans of the asteroid, to half-look at Bonnie's camfeed. "It's just debris."

"Yeah, but—"

"If you've seen one wreck, you've seen 'em all."

"This is ancient."

Wren reluctantly looked more closely at the feed.

"See that there?" Bonnie said, pointing. "See where that cannon came loose on impact? That was mounted on there with fucking rivets."

"So?"

"So why did we run from this thing? This shitheap must be a century old or more!"

"Uh... duh?" Wren shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Because they were shooting at us?"

"Yeah, but why didn't we shoot back?"

"The Daedalus doesn't have any guns."

"Yes you do," Bonnie said. "I saw them!"

"Not ones that work anyway."

"What is the point of buying a gunship if you're not gonna use the guns?!"

"Super cheap at surplus auction," Wren said. "Plus there were other perks."

"I can't believe we ran away from this thing."

"Even if I did have guns on here, a shootout's not my style."

Wren reclined in her pilot's chair, enjoying the way her drones danced about around their target. Their precision and unity gave their movement the appearance of choreographed dance, and little by little they carved the asteroid down to size. Of course, the Daedalus was capable of hauling a load many times larger than that, but Wren had negotiated contract bonuses for reaching different yield percentage thresholds. The less actual rock she brought, the better her pay.

"You know what? I take back what I said earlier. What I can't believe is why would this flying wreck take on an XN-92? They had no way of knowing your guns don't work."

"You said it yourself," Wren said. "Desperate times." She looked back over to find Bonnie pulling herself down the twisted remains of a corridor. "Do you see anything in there to make it worth the trip?"

"They have some firearms. Rifles and pistols. Do you have any of those?"

"Don't need 'em. I have contingencies that prevent boardings."

"So that's a no."

"I mean, I assume you came on board with a gun and that it's stashed in the hold somewhere, but other than that..." Wren received silence in response and nodded. "That's what I thought."

"The whole cabin is completely crushed, and all of these terminals are dead. So much for trying to salvage any information."

"I'll bet it's a pistol."

"So far, I've found... four bodies. There's no way to know for sure if that's all of them, but it looks like the galley is set up for a crew of four."

"I see you using like a .50 caliber handgun."

"They were all in their suits. I mean, we got to ours too so I guess there was more than enough time to suit up once we got here, but I get the feeling they were ready to engage us."

"I bet you look sexy as hell with a cannon like that in your hands."

"I can hear you."

"I should hope so!" Wren laughed. "I'd have already tried to start something if you hadn't gone out there."

"Sorry sweetie. I don't do clams."

Wren bit her lip and smiled. "I see." Her drone swarm was reporting a 78% completion rate on its scanning and a 14% completion rate on the excess removal process.

"You wouldn't be the first to ask."

"No?"

"It's an occupational hazard."

"Do you get more men or women that come onto you?"

"Women. A lot of men are intimidated."

"I bet you leave a trail of broken hearts behind you."

"There was certainly a time."

Wren sat forward, tilting her head slightly. There'd been something in the way Bonnie had said that, rather than what she'd said, that felt like a thread worth pulling. 19% excess removed.

"So when you had me in the hold earlier..."

"Yeah?"

"...and you asked if I knew the person who shot me."

"Oh. Yeah?"

"Why did that matter?"

"I figured, if you were close enough to see the person when they shot you, the bullet would travel more or less straight across. Straight through. You would have been eye-to-eye. A shot from anywhere else would probably have hit you at a different angle, and I'd have had to go rooting around to find the fragments."

"Lucky me."

"I wasn't trying to be cold," Wren said, as she shifted in her chair. 22%. 23%. 24%. "Just... efficient."

"Efficient is good. Cold is good. I need that."

Wren raised her eyebrows and watched. 28%.

"Alright. I give up. I don't even know what I'm looking for out here."

There was a palpable sense of defeat in her voice, and it tugged on Wren's heartstrings. "Hang on."

"What?"

She reluctantly turned her attention toward the feed and took a long breath. "What do you think was the original make on that ship?"

"I think it was a Wulfhardt."

"Fuck," she grumbled. "Have you seen anything that looks like a nerve center?"

"No. The cabin was completely caved in."

"Well, I never worked on a Wulfhardt but I rode on one once. How old do you think that thing is?"

"A hundred years. Easily."

"The one I rode on was pretty old too. They'd had to rig it quite a bit to keep up with regs, and the engineer showed me where they'd had to rip out a bunch of old scrubbers to make room for their nav."

"I didn't understand a word of that, but I did see a bunch of mismatched equipment mounted together on the forward wall of the hold when I crawled in. Should I go down there?"

"Yeah." Wren leaned back and licked her lips. "Most of the time, scavs are out here living hand-to-mouth, but every once in a while you come across one that's just a little bit smarter. Someone who doesn't mind looking broke while they save up their creds." 32%.

"Okay," Bonnie grunted, as she worked her way from handhold to handhold. "What am I looking for?"

"That greenlit rack. The one in the middle."

"Okay." She floated over and opened the door.

"Start ripping out blades. I'll tell you which one is important."

"Just rip them out?"

"Yeah. You'll fuck up the mounting brackets, but that won't matter."

Bonnie grabbed the uppermost blade right in the middle, and gave it a heaving tug. The hinged arm on the left side snapped immediately, but the right side clung on stubbornly. She had to give it one more good tug to pull it free.

"Flip it over," she said, and then added, "Nope. Next."

Bonnie pulled the second blade out much more easily. "What do you think you're going to find here?"

"Some account numbers, and maybe some transaction information. You never know. The owner of that rig might've been a trillionaire. Next."

"And you want to empty their coffers?"

"Like you said. It'd be a shame to let it go to waste. Next."

"I gotta say. That's pretty—"

"There," Wren said. "That one. That one has storage on it."

"What about this one?" Bonnie asked, ripping out the last blade.

"Nah. The bottom one is usually just processors mounted in parallel."

"Alright then. So long, suckers."

"See you when you get back."

Wren leaned back and stared at the holographic representation of the composition of the asteroid. She reached out a hand and swiped it lazily to the side, sending the hologram spinning on a theoretical axis. Behind her eyes, her mind raced.

***

Wren shut off the water in her shower and grabbed absently for her towel. Her mind was still wandering as she ran the fluffy pink fabric over and through her hair vigorously. Something felt wrong. It had been irritating her for the last twenty minutes, and she was having trouble putting her finger on it.

"Hey," she said, stepping out into the galley. Bonnie looked up from cleaning one of the disassembled rifles and gawked. "When you were—"

"快点," the redhead shouted. "What are you doing?"

Wren looked down at herself for a moment before looking back. "What?"

"Cover yourself or something."

She brought one hand down from drying her hair to block her nipples and breasts, and started over. "When you were over on that—"

"Seriously?"

"What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"That!" Bonnie cried, pointing.

Wren looked down, finding only her penis, and shrugged.

"Why are you showing me that?"

"It's not a big deal," Wren said, and then laughed. "Phrasing. I meant nudity, not—"

"Put it away," she groaned.

Wren shrugged again, and wrapped her towel around her torso. "Sorry. Didn't think about whether or not that would bother you."

Bonnie looked over at her and groaned again.

"What?"

"Your... thing is hanging down below the towel."

Wren angled her knees outward and bent forward. "Oh." Bonnie had been right; a few centimeters of the foreskin-covered tip of her cock was peeking out. "Sorry." Wren closed one eye as she reached down and tucked it between her thighs, and then held out her hands as if to ask 'how about now?'

"Better," Bonnie grumbled.

Wren noticed a bit of color in the redhead's cheeks and filed that away. It wasn't embarrassment or lust, but it was certainly something.

"What did you want?"

Wren blinked. "Shit. I forget." She waddled over to the table, careful to keep her knees and thighs together.

The redhead took a deep, frustrated breath, and went back to cleaning her rifle.

"Are these serviceable?"

"I won't really know how good they are," she said, "until I get all this scoring out of here, but I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for a secret cred stash."

"No?"

Bonnie shook her head. "It's one thing to have something old and well-maintained, but that pistol there was so gunked up that it'd likely have blown up in someone's hand. The rest of these aren't much better."

"Oh!" Wren laughed and shook her head. "That's what it was. I was thinking about what you were saying about it being crazy for that bucket to go after the Daedalus."

"Yeah?" Bonnie looked up, eyebrows arched, as she ran a wire brush in and out of the dirty barrel. The motion of her arms was powerfully distracting. Muscles and tendons working in beautiful harmony. "And?"

Wren blinked. "Oh. Right. So anyway, like I was saying, scavs are usually out here after supplies. They like to hit stuff that jumps into a system like this right away because a ship like ours will still have most of its foodstuffs and whatnot. That's what they want."

"Yeah?"

"But these guys weren't shooting to disable. I had the Daedalus map out their shots, and it looked like most of the time they were going for the bridge and not the drive."

Bonnie ducked her head and blew a short breath down the barrel. Carbon dust spewed from the other end. "Could be they were trying to go for an explosive decompression right where you were sitting? Take out the head? That'd leave the rest of the ship for them to pick over."

"Yeah, but the cabin is a much smaller target. We're way more likely to get away, which we did, and then chasing us into the asteroid field? They weren't gonna survive that. That was a suicide run."

"Don't remind me," Bonnie said, looking sickly.

"Like, let's say they did get a lucky shot and blow up the cabin. Did that ship look like it was equipped to haul the Daedalus back out of the ring?"

"No," the redhead said tersely.

"Realistically, they needed to stop us before we got there, and when they didn't... I don't know. They should have given up. Scavs usually do." Wren looked around at the scattered pieces on the table, and started putting them together in her head. "Curiouser and curiouser." Most of it assembled in ways she could understand just by their shape. "What are you going to do with all of these?"

"At this point, I'll be lucky if I can salvage three of them. Use the others for spare parts."

"And then what?"

Bonnie paused and looked up with a guarded expression.

"Luna Two isn't exactly a tourist destination."

The redhead narrowed her eyes. "You have that absent-minded professor act down pretty well, don't you?"

"Like any station that size they have some amenities on site, but it's mostly a processing station."

"Yeah," Bonnie said. "Mostly."

"For Jyi Bao Industries. They're pretty much the only corporate tenant, right?" Wren smirked and leaned back. She started to raise her arms up behind her head, but the towel was only just barely covering her breasts as it was so she folded them across her chest. "You don't have to tell me what you were doing or what went wrong. I don't care if you spend some time here recovering, building up your little arsenal then going off on your merry, destructive way, as long you don't bring this back on me."

"Yeah," she said bitterly. "It would be a real shame if I got in the way of your meal ticket."

"Don't do that."

"Do you have any idea who you really work for?"

"I saved your life," Wren said.

"What kind of bottom-feeding, self-serving, cancerous scum you—"

Both of them turned at a chime from the cabin.

"We're clear of the ring," Wren said, standing up. "We've got a little bit of sublight travel to do, and then we'll be heading back."

Bonnie nodded grimly.

"I'm sure you have a perfectly valid reason for whatever it was you were doing, and whatever it is you're planning on doing next. I do. I believe it."

"...But?"

"But that is none of my business. I haul rocks. I just want to make my money and retire."