The Hunt for the Halifax Fox, page 16
Why not? “In for Penny, in for a pound,” Rox declared, pouring her another. Ashrael tilted her head in question. “My useless father had a bunch of useless sayings. You say that one when you’re going to drink the entire bottle. I never found out who Penny was, or why he’d reference a unit of weight from the Stone Ages.”
After an hour, Rox was lounging on the bed belting out old mining ship shanties, while Ashrael sat cross-legged beside her, swaying in time to the off-key songs and offering alternate lyrics that would’ve made those hardened miners blush. She was allowing the Halifax to voice her words aloud. She’d instructed it to do so in a deep, scratchy voice with an old-time miner accent.
The door chimed. “Open,” yelled Rox. Her voice surprised her with its booming volume, which was hilarious, and she giggled, then wished her laughter had sounded less like a giggle, which also struck her as funny and made her giggle again. Ashrael caught the giggles from her, and when the door slid open and Jos stood there, they were both out of control. Even in laughter, Ashrael made no sound except for her gasping breaths.
Jos stared at them, expressionless. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Through her laughter, Ashrael gave him a radiant smile. Her teeth were crowded, the canines set high and poking out from the rest, making her look wolfish. It was adorable. And kind of hot. No, just adorable. Rox had had too much to drink.
Ashrael said something to him in Sign, and the ship, having not been told to stop interpreting, conveyed her message in baritone old time miner-speak. “Oy, ya’v got ter com’n haffa drenk with us, yah bandy nog.” He stared at the two of them. They stared back. Ashrael and Rox collapsed into gales of hysteria. When they finally stopped, Ashrael was clumsily wiping away tears, and Rox was on her back with her arms outspread in surrender, the last of her laughter escaping in hiccups. She didn’t know what the Martians put in their vodka other than sweet potatoes, but it was the best kind of drunk.
“So technically,” said Jos, “right now we’re supposed to be meeting to go over arrival details.”
“You’re a funny guy,” said Rox. “Funny, and nice. I’ve always liked that about you, Josh.”
“Not my name, and you know I don’t like it. Though I suppose you could just be slurring your words. Roksani, rolling your eyes while making ‘blabbermouth’ motions with your hand is not going to win you any friends.”
Ashrael gestured toward the door with her empty glass, indicating that she should go. “Really?” said Rox. “Well, okay.” She didn’t sit up, just extended her hand in a goodbye wave as Ashrael clambered off the bed and into Jos’s waiting arms. “G’night Ash,” Rox slurred. “Can I call you Ash? Rocks ‘n’ Ash. That’s like the name of a bad sitcom.”
Jos held Ash steady. “I’ll get her home safe,” he said.
Rox squinted at him. I bet you will, she thought. A blurry twinge of jealousy escorted her to sleep.
10
foxy roxy
Initially, when Rox’s assistant had interpreted USL to Cangali via her implants, it had used its own vacuously pleasant voice. After their drunken pirate sing-along, Rox figured it was time to assign the Drifter something a little more unique. She made Pete switch from Cangali to Teng, and changed and tweaked the speech, finally landing on a female voice with a Brish accent. Val and Mar-Sadiqa had more or less gotten over their Drifter weirdness, accepting that Ash was here for the remainder of the voyage.
Ships’ crews had a tradition of shortening the names of the people they liked. In addition to being a socially acceptable sign of affection, this was to simplify shipboard tasks that involved communication among work crews. Aboard the Halifax, it was mostly to simplify card games.
Rox, who didn’t consider herself particularly likable and was a nasty, cutthroat card player, was always surprised she’d been included in the custom. She drew the line at “Foxy Roxy”—thank you, Jos, for that one—threatening physical violence upon anyone who said it. Hachi had accepted his nickname with indifference; Jos, with a sweeping bow. Mar-Sadiqa protested the name Marky, but no one believed her. Val was the shortened version of a name that wasn’t on record, and which Rox always forgot, a word for some kind of mythical demon. No one had felt compelled to rename Kalashnik, who everyone disliked, or Willow, who everyone was afraid of.
So it went with Ash. Jos took credit for her naming-induction, and Rox didn’t want to look petty, so she didn’t argue. But she secretly chafed about it.
There were days when Ash didn’t come out of her cabin except to pick at some food, or to burst from her door during the night and stumble into the wall, sweating and pale, waking her neighbors. It was like having two different versions of her on the ship. There was the Ashrael who was on the Halifax, bravely pushing through her trauma, who turned out to have a decently likable personality. And there was the Ashrael still trapped on Clearwater.
Several days out from the Cruach, Rox and Ash sat together at the port imaging station, colored triangles floating before them. “Okay, which ones are the shakers?” said Rox. She nodded as Ash pointed at the red triangle. “Remember, the science nerds won’t understand you unless you call them ephyra gravity ports.”
“You’re a science nerd,” said Jos, passing by with a little display hovering before him. “Oh, and Ash, Captain Price secretly calls them vibrators.”
Rox shrugged. “They make the ship vibrate. And the term for me is not ‘nerd.’ It’s ‘dashing lawless antihero who likes nerdy things.’” That got a bigger smile out of Ash than Jos’s vibrator comment. “Also, on duty she’s Doctor Eli, got it?” Jos gave Ash a lascivious wink. “Anyway, when we get in range of a shaker, keep a close eye on the sensors and talk to the AI. Do you remember where the shakers appear in relation to their sister ranges?”
With a few deft motions, Ash brought up a 3D map of the entire Lir System, touched the red triangle and with a flick of her wrist scattered the shaker symbols into place around the system. She presented the image to Rox like a gameshow assistant presenting a prize.
Rox dismissed the triangles. “You studied this.”
“I don’t know the coordinates, and there’d never be a reason to have them memorized.”
“A well-trained sensor technician knows the coordinates. Memorize them.” Ash heaved a sigh. Rox ignored this. “Where do the rogue ports appear?”
“Teach me things five-year-olds don’t know.”
“Where are the rogue ports, and what color are their symbols?”
“In and around the Callic Alir Range, though they occasionally show up other places. Blue.”
“Yep. If you ever see one of those triangles pop up nearby, you may or not be screwed, depending on what it decides to do.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“I’ve seen a handful. What makes them most dangerous is that sensors don’t always pick them up. And they move. One of them came close to Mosi once.”
“It chased me for the longest eight seconds of my life,” Mar-Sadiqa said from the piloting station. “Talk about vibrating. It’s a good thing I was flying a kestrel. Tiny, but fast.”
“Like Ellison,” said Hachi. Val, also at the piloting station, gave him a tender smile and flipped him off.
Quietly, Rox said, “What’s lucky is that it collapsed before it got her.”
Ash was having so much trouble with the sensor tech training manuals that Rox wondered how she’d managed to make it all the way through med school. She spent hours trying to help her struggle through the material. She imagined Ash haunting the offices of her professors, retaking every test, and spending long hours studying while her friends went out to clubs.
Did Drifters go out to clubs? She doubted that they could ever lead what could be defined as regular lives, having to hide what they were from employers, neighbors, lovers.
She wondered if Ashrael had anyone she was going back to in Sol.
Ash brought the port symbols back up. With a flick, Rox dismissed them. “Where’s the Liraq? I want numbers.”
“Can we be finished now?” Ash gave her a look of suffering. “Just teach me to use the sensors.”
“Look, you’re a dedicated student. You work hard. Where you apparently fail is with coordinates. But I know you know this, so give me numbers. Now.”
Ash straightened and put on a bright smile. “The Liraq, at one time the major port to the Azraq System, mysteriously broke 150 years ago. This ship-crushing giant can be found at galactic right ascension sixty-nine plus minus negative this is pointless.”
“Ashrael, I swear to holy balls...”
“It’s at the outer edge of the Brigid Range. Oh, and it’s ‘Doctor Eli’ on the command deck.”
“God, you’re frustrating. Learn it.”
But she relented, pulling up a display to teach Ash some sensor basics. In the background, the Halifax AI carried on several conversations at once with the crew, its voice reassuringly ordinary. Mar-Sadiqa finished with Val’s daily pilot’s training, and Val and Jos began looking over ship diagnostics. Jos joked about ordering takeout for dinner, followed by the familiar pizza-versus-tacos argument among the crew. For a moment, Rox envisioned Ahmadi in the captain’s seat.
A touch on her arm made her jump. “Sorry,” said Ash.
“You’re fine. I just lost track of time.”
“I do that all the time. I was late to every class at Callisto.” Ash propped her elbow on the dash with her chin in her hand. Evidently grown bored with her lesson, she began to absently play with the holo. Using her finger, she drew a green line through the Lir System, connecting bodies like a kid with a connect-the-dots drawing. She touched Lir, the red dwarf that was their sun, and traced the scattering of asteroids that formed the innermost belt. She drew a line from the belt to each of the four Coalition ranges in turn. A straight line to Aveta; a looping circle around the Belenus-Brigid twins; a longer arc to Taranis. Finally, she landed on the outer orbit, drawing lazy circles around Callic Alir.
Rox mentally filled in the line to the Offlands. GRA 19.221, GD 6.764 degrees. Clearwater. She wished her mind wasn’t the type that stored numbers for all eternity.
A flick of motion drew Ash’s attention. Like a period at the end of a sentence, she poked a dot onto the red triangle that had appeared in the outer system. It was MZD-13, nicknamed Misty, one of the more unpredictable shaker ports. Rox imagined a Union ship slipping quietly through to disappear into the system, joining its infiltrating fleet of privateers and spy drones. Causing just enough damage to the system’s outlying supply chain to lay the foundation for the Union’s big takeover.
Normally Rox didn’t give the conflict much thought. For some reason, she now wanted to grab that invisible bully out of the display and crush it under her boot. “Eminent domain my ass,” she said. Ash leaned away, eyeing her warily. “Inner dialogue. How long has Lir been sovereign? Those Earth bastards can find justification for anything. No offense, Jos and Val.”
“Nothing offends me,” said Jos placidly.
“Earth can kiss my skinny white arse,” said Val.
Ash sat back and slapped the Lir System into a spin. “Humans will never stop fighting.”
Rox put up a hand, stopping the holo’s spin. “Probably not. It’s genetic. Our branch of the animal kingdom tree is one of the most violent.” She sat up straight with a grunt and a popping of joints. “We’re just a bunch of hairless primates with mental problems and deadly weapons. Maybe those magical Scout genes will wake up and you hybrids will fix everything.”
Jos said, “We don’t use the word ‘hybrid,’ Captain. It’s offensive. Only the first Drifters were true genetic chimeras, and reminding people about it further alienates our Drifter friends.”
“Well, you said a word with ‘alien’ in it. How do you think that makes her feel?” She gestured irritably at Ash.
Ignoring them both, Ash extended her arms up over her head and arched her back in a stretch, suggesting not a primate or an alien, but a cat. Rox had gotten only glimpses of cats in real time, fleet warehouse ferals darting through the shadows. But in documentaries, the members of the family Felidae were supple and lithe, with a stretch that looked much like this, often ending with the same satisfied yawn. Ash’s slender fingers slid deftly through her hair as she pulled it back into a dark, messy knot.
“You know...” Rox’s voice pitched low, and a mutiny of words spilled out. “When we get across, and get this thing over with, we could... I could help you. Whatever it is you need to get back there for, if you need help, I’ve got some connections.”
Ashrael shut down. In an instant, Rox found herself sitting beside the Ash that wouldn’t meet her eyes and looked like she was about to be attacked by sharks.
Rox left her with the imaging displays and took her seat at the captain’s station. What had possessed her to say that? She was getting the Drifter through the port and the death threat off her back. When they got to Caballus, Eli was on her own.
Hachi glanced over at her, his face not quite expressionless. He’d heard her offer. Damnable Callic hearing. She glared back. Shove off, you bigoted jackass.
Val sat at the piloting station while Mar-Sadiqa stood behind them, braiding their hair. Val didn’t like to be touched, but their hair was the exception. The two were chatting and singing along to the music they called their Command Deck Mix. Their post-indenture game plan involved Robin Hood-style petty thievery, though they couldn’t agree on who would get the stolen mark. Val had said they should donate it to Pelsarand, an infamous Taranian youth gang whose latest specialty was cyberpranking stuffy Cruach yacht clubs. Mar-Sadiqa, whose stuffy kin belonged to a stuffy Cruach yacht club, didn’t dislike the idea, but nonetheless argued unrelentingly to donate their plunder to undiscovered artists and rescued dogs. Who knew where they’d end up, but they’d stick together.
Jos was humming along to the Command Deck Mix while he worked, annoyingly out of key. In their meeting on Silus, he had talked about disappearing back into the Lir System. What about Hachi? Did he have a plan? Rox didn’t, and she once again turned her thoughts from it. She’d figure it out on the other side of the port.
* * *
As they approached the Cruach Asteroid Cluster, the crew launched a pestering campaign to get Rox to agree to a supply stop before crossing to Sol. They could’ve easily made it to Jupiter without fresh fruit and a new belt for the treadmill, and they knew it. What they wanted was to spend a little more time together.
In a moment of what Jos called “uncharacteristic” pity, Rox agreed to it, though only after verifying that the station they asked for wasn’t conducting biometric scans. This was for Ash, whose old name had bled over from local Offlands social feeds to more widespread conspiracy theorist networks. It had even spread to several borderline-mainstream news outlets, albeit in ten-second blips. It was also for Rox, though she kept this to herself. The Syndicate was everywhere out here, and the Belenus DEA flew undercover in the Cruach. Harriet wouldn’t be here to fake her scan.
Her assent had an immediate effect on morale. Soon, the Halifax glided into the Cruach, through a section Offlanders called the Back Door for its easier accessibility to unregistered ships. Rox slouched in the captain’s seat with her elbows propped on the chair arms, rubbing her forehead and counting. Val and Jos had been volleying the inevitable jokes for an hour.
“Come on Mosi, slide it right in,” crooned Val.
Jos was all seriousness. “Is it just me, or does it seem like it should be harder to enter through the Back Door?”
“It should definitely be harder. Mosi, don’t you think it should be harder?”
Rox was about to order them to leave the poor kid alone when Mar-Sadiqa said, “Looks like they’re going soft.” Rox stared at her in surprise. The pilot peeked out from behind her display with a look that managed, with those dimpled cheeks, to be simultaneously shy and brazen. “I wouldn’t know anything about somebody going soft, though.” She ducked back behind the display as the command deck’s silence gave way to noisy heckling.
The flight to Seiiki Rim remained uneventful. Since they could no longer dip into their Provinces pool for the ship, Rox transferred mark from her own savings to the crew for provisions. Standing around the docking hatch while they awaited permission to debark onto the station, the hilarity continued with the senior crew’s favorite betting game, How Did Rox Get Rich. Whoever’s guess was deemed closest to the truth won the pot, though the judging involved arguing among themselves, since Rox refused to participate.
“She’s a partner in a real estate firm that owns up-and-coming moons,” said Mar-Sadiqa. “How’s that, Rox?”
“I told you people I’m not playing.” When had her pilot decided they were on a first-name basis?
“Nah, that’s not it.” Val squinted at Rox, head tilted. “She invested her savings in low-g erection drugs. The company’s motto is ‘Life is short, keep it long.’” The others murmured their appreciation, nodding and clapping Val on the back. “Rox?” said Val.
“I’m NOT playing judge to your pointless game. NO, Jos.”
Jos put his fist to his mouth as if to hold in what he’d been about to say. “Killjoy,” he muttered. He leaned toward Ash and stage-whispered, “She runs a sex club on one of those filthy rich, elitist compounds orbiting Earth.” Rox scowled. “See that?” he whispered. “She’s mean. They love that.”
“Deal with it, Rox,” said Val. “Come on Ash, give it a guess.”
With a glance at Rox, Ash waved away the invitation. Damn, but she was perceptive. Ironic that it was the Drifter’s own presence that was turning “How Rox Got Rich” into “Let’s Poke Rox in the Secrets Until She Snaps and Murders Us.”
Released to leave the ship, the crew broke off in pairs to secure supplies, putting their winner argument on hold. Like anywhere in the Crotch, things on Seiiki Rim were expensive as hell by Offlands standards. Rox and Hachi hunted for parts for their artillery and firearms, Hachi eyeing the lists of specialty ammunition with longing. Rox's mark wasn’t enough to outfit an entire ship’s systems and still have enough for the little things, like not living in a stolen packing crate for the rest of her life. So, they’d have to make do with the limited torpedoes and rounds left in their stockpile, be grateful she had enough to get the ship back to Sol and pray they didn’t get shot at too much.
