All is Fair Ch. 03

So much so that she almost felt a little guilty about sneaking out the next morning while he still slept, blissfully naked and unaware.

She chuckled to herself as she strode down the hotel corridor, pulling her leather pilot's jacket on as she did before pushing the call button and waiting for the elevator. Fucking elevators; why couldn't they be the recipient of some much-needed technical innovation? Aside from the replacement of pulleys and cables with magnets and anti-grav cyclics, they hadn't changed much in the past couple of centuries, a fact she was reminded of every single time she was forced to wait for one. She wasn't in a rush, she wasn't doing the walk of shame, and if Young Tony suddenly appeared behind her, she was sure it would be a fairly easy interaction, but this was a matter of principle. There was no need for her to wait, so she begrudged doing it.

There were always the stairs, but her principles only stretched so far.

In more time than she would have liked, the elevator had arrived, bearing her down the forty-something floors of the Collins' central hotel. It had deposited her into the lobby, and it had then gone about the rest of its day, leaving her to settle the bill and head out onto the street.

Whereas the Traders' Bazaar of Port Collins could have been an almost exact copy of any other marketplace in the Imperium, the entertainment district - like every other starport - was where the local population chose to express their uniqueness. A few city blocks filled with bars, clubs, restaurants, hotels, live music venues, parks, health spas, leisure facilities, gyms, firing ranges, and hookers. Where Port Collins differed from most of the other starports beyond the Hudson Expanse, however, was the pride the local people had in their city. It wasn't clean, at least not by the pristine, well-manicured, self-superior standards of most of the core worlds, but it wasn't a grimy, sleazy, dusty backwater either. The streets were wide and bright, trees lined the long thoroughfares, and even at this ungodly hour of the morning, teenagers were happily handing out flyers to the various bars that stayed open for the full twenty-seven hours of the day. The trash cans weren't overflowing but probably hadn't been emptied in the last day or two; graffiti - present in every settlement in the Imperium - was tackled well enough for it not to be everywhere but not well enough for it to have been removed completely. There were no gangs hassling the visitors, there was no readily obvious narcotic abuse on street corners, and she managed to walk the entire distance between the hotel and the mag-rail station without being asked for, nor offered, some description of sex act.

They were hardly the highest of standards by which to judge a place, but they worked for her. She had been required to do business in some truly awful places where the dregs of society seemed to congregate en masse. Far from being a group of people she could pity, they always appeared perfectly intent on killing themselves or each other with almost impressive regularity... at least more regularly than whichever service was responsible for collecting the bodies. Walking alone, at any time of the day, was practically guaranteed she be at least pickpocketed, if not openly mugged, and she would be able to count the number of times she was offered some sort of drugs or propositioned a back alley fumble in double figures before she had walked even half of this distance.

Port Collins was her kind of place. It didn't have the airs and graces, the pomposity, or that infuriating sense of smug superiority of the core worlds, and it didn't have the rampant crime and the stench of desperation of some of the more rim-ward planets. She couldn't speak to the rest of the world; she had never stepped outside the city that surrounded the Starport, but if the rest of Caspian III was as pleasant and down to earth as Port Collins, then it may be on the short list of places she could see herself retiring to.

The magnetically levitated train didn't take long to arrive, and she stepped onto it, checking the time on her wrist-mounted computer. Ocular implants would have been a more convenient way to maintain the uplink to the Long Haul, displaying the information at will in her field of vision. That is what Dick had. But the idea of someone fucking around with her eyeball sent a chill down her spine. She was just about running on schedule; it was her schedule, and there was no reason at all that it needed to be kept to the minute, but it was her own little way of maintaining some self-discipline when it was all too easy to get lazy when you were hundreds of lightyears from home. Besides, the same uplink told her that Dick was already at the ship, no doubt checking the cargo and the ship systems ready for their departure slot in an hour. She was sure he wouldn't have minded waiting if she was late for the time she had given him, but to her, that just felt rude.

The ride on the train was quiet, smooth, and quick, and it was barely even ten minutes until he stepped off into the Traders Bazaar. She briefly considered checking in with Usaf before she left, but he would have contacted her if any of the plans had changed or if there was a problem with the loading of the cargo. When it came to shipping goods across the length and breadth of the Imperium, no news was good news. Checking in with him, even just to say goodbye, would be an almost certain way to make herself late.

Without any more detours or delay, she worked her way through the massive emporium and back out to security. For reasons that were more than a little obvious, security was much lighter leaving a starport than it was when entering. All she had to do was notify the border authorities that she, her crew, and her ship would be leaving and that any contraband found on her ship after that point was not the responsibility of the Caspian III Port Authorities. It was all pretty straightforward, but dealing with the border guard did pull something of a smile onto her lips at the thought of the younger one, who was probably still naked in her hotel room. She didn't mind in the slightest if he chose to regale his colleagues with tales of the night she had given him, and she wondered - when told of his night - if this older guard would remember her.

The fleeting thought was interrupted by the go-ahead from the man, though, and she soon found herself striding across the docking zone in the pleasantly warm morning air and toward the Long Haul, the closest thing to home she had known in decades.

The cargo bay doors were wide open, but it looked like the loading crews had already finished securing her new cargo in the bay, leaving the exterior of the ship completely deserted. Stepping inside, she was surprised to see the door to the Smuggler's hold wide open, and - with a frown on her face - she headed straight over to it.

The smuggler's hold was exactly what it sounded like. It was a secret, hidden compartment within the cargo bay that could be used to smuggle contraband past sector security. Most freighters had one. Oddly, it wasn't illegal to have one installed, and most ship manufacturers openly and loudly declared their inclusion in the price of a ship. It was only ever illegal to use them for their intended function. They were usually shielded against scans, and unless a boarding customs agent knew where to look, They were very easy to miss. Of course, Bethany wasn't a smuggler, nor did she have any intention of changing that, but that meant that a fairly sized piece of real estate within her ship was currently a waste of space. So, being the resourceful, ingenious, and thorough captain that she was, she had found another use for it. It now served as the proud home of the ship's cleaning supplies.

She was just about to poke her head through the door when Dick stepped out carrying a mop. "Aaargh, Jesus, Cap'n! You almost gave me a heart attack!" He yelped as he almost jumped out of his skin.

Bethany probably shouldn't have laughed... but she did anyway.

"Spill something, Dick?" she chuckled at him.

"Huh?" he blinked down at the mop. "Oh, yeah, a coffee cup upstairs had a run-in with my ass as I was lugging my gear to my bunk. You're a bit early, aren't you?"

"Nope," she shook her head, "Our slot is in about twenty minutes."

Dick's eyes aimed off into the middle distance for a moment as he doubtlessly checked the time on his ocular interface. That chill predictably ran down her spine again. She couldn't help it. Someone had literally taken Dick's eyeball out to install a micro holo-emitter onto the back of it, then jammed the whole lot back in. He'd got it on the cheap, too, which somehow made the concept infinitely worse. "Well, shit. Time flies and all that. Guess the clean up will have to wait til later." He shrugged before turning around and disappearing back into the hold to stow the mop again.

She waited for him outside. "So, Whadya get for us?" He asked as he stepped back out again, closing and sealing the door behind him before casting an eye over the featureless and anonymous stack of crates strapped down around the bay.

"Special delivery for the Capital," she answered as they both turned toward the ladder to the hab deck. "Got a few crates of Rigellian Rum to sweeten the deal, too."

"Nice," he nodded approvingly, "What's the price of the special cargo."

"Three," she smiled, waiting for him to whistle in appreciation, "Three-point-five if we can deliver within a fortnight."

"Three-point-five, plus the Rum?" his eyes almost fell out of his head as he gasped.

"Yup... If we make a speed run straight to the Capital."

"Two weeks..." Dick pondered, scratching the back of his head as they approached the ladder, and he let her climb first. "It'll be tight but should be manageable. Fuel may be an issue, though."

"Way ahead of you, got us completely filled up overnight."

Dick snorted a laugh as he started to climb the ladder after her. "I should've known. Jesus, Cap'n. You never cease to amaze."

She chuckled and offered a flamboyant, comical bow as they both stepped out onto the hab deck. "I'll take her up, get us out of system, and into hyperspace. Then, I want to have a look at the port sensor array. Think you can be at the stick in about three hours?"

"No problem at all."

"Thanks, Dick.

A wave over his shoulder was all she got in reply as he turned toward the crew compartment, leaving her to head in the opposite direction toward the cockpit.

Standard stellar vernacular dictated that it was, in fact, a cockpit rather than being able to accurately be called a bridge. Conventional wisdom would distinguish the two based on size, the number of crew stations, or any one of a number of separate factors, but Bethany was one of the few people she had met who knew the real difference.

In modern spacefaring, a human was rarely required to do most of the flying. She was needed to manually take off, but once she was out of the planet's gravity, the ship was more than capable of flying itself wherever she told it to. She was piloting it out of the system because she enjoyed doing it, not because she needed to. But technically, there were parts of the journey that did involve her direct intervention. She was both the captain and the pilot, and that was the point that made the distinction. A cockpit was where the ship was piloted by the vessel's commanding officer, no different from a strike pilots fighter, a bridge was where a captain instructed a crew to do that shit for them. If a starship had a bridge, then it was safe to assume that its captain rarely, if ever, laid a finger on any of the systems that flew it.

And Bethany couldn't imagine anything worse.

Some people tried being fancy by calling it a command deck, or a flight deck, or an ops center, or some other such bullshit, but Bethany preferred plain speech. It was a cockpit, and more importantly, it was her cockpit.

She dropped herself down onto the custom-made, ergonomic pilot seat and spun it around to face the instrument panel, reaching out to tap the icons on the holo-display that activated the comm system. "Port Collins flight control, this is the Long Haul, requesting permission to depart and a vector for orbital flight."

"Roger, Long Haul, Permission granted, a vector is being sent to your nav system. Safe travels, and thank you for visiting us."

"Thank you, control, and it was my pleasure," she chuckled back, again wondering if tales of her nocturnal marathon with Tony would reach as far as the flight controllers. She flicked off the comms and powered up the engine. God, she loved that feeling, that first rumble working its way through the ship's superstructure and into the base of her seat. There was a strong case to be made that female freighter captains would never have need of a vibrator as long as their ship's engines were working. The interior dampeners compensated for it the moment the landing struts left the ground, though, so it was a short-lived thrill, but a thrill nonetheless.

With the struts retracting back into the ship and the anti-grav thrusters online, she looked out of the cockpit to watch the sprawling starport of Port Collins start to sink away beneath her.

In only a few minutes, once a safe altitude had been reached, a holographic green line was painted onto her HUD by her nav-com, highlighting the approved flight path to get her into orbit. With a smile on her face, she ramped up the engines, set her fingers on the helm controls... and flew.

********

Stevo. 16

Twenty-three unarmed Marines followed Stevo out of the trenches and up onto the beach, each of them wearing the same look of shell shock and barely comprehending disbelief. Even Ryan, a man who must have been in astonishing amounts of pain after being lifted out of the trench and up onto the sand, but even the wince in his eyes was muted by the agony of being betrayed by everything he had ever held true. Somehow, the rest of the Marines had survived their ordeal unharmed; a combination of supremely durable powered armor, the most comprehensive genetic and cybernetic enhancements available to science, and the best training the Imperium was capable of providing had seen them through twenty-four hours that would have killed almost anyone else.

Matthews held up a hand as a signal to all of the other rebels in the area, and - as one - they lowered their weapons and started filing out to parts unknown. Most of them not even gracing the Marines with a suspicious glance. There were more than a few nervous glances between the group of Marines behind Stevo, though, despite them now seeing the hopelessness of their position and understanding that their only chance of survival was to give themselves up to the people they had been intent on killing less than an hour ago. Matthews himself climbed out of the trench, no small look of relief on his face, and met them halfway. "Thank you, gentlemen," he nodded gratefully, "Can I ask who is in command?"

"I guess he is," one of the Marines answered, nodding to Stevo. "Our Lieutenant was killed just before sundown. There is nobody here higher than a corporal."

Matthews nodded with a heavy sigh. "I'm sorry to hear that. Let's get you inside and get you some food. You will be kept in a secured room until you can be debriefed, but I have no doubt that is only temporary." It seemed that this was the point where he spotted Ryan's leg. "Jesus, MEDIC!"

"It's fine, I'd prefer to walk," Ryan forced a hollow smile onto his face.

"I'm sure you would, Marine," Matthews nodded, "But I bet your friends would prefer not to carry you... and your bleeding on my beach."

That seemed to pull a chuckle from a few of the newly captured men, and Ryan acquiesced after a look from the Sarge. "Alright, I guess I'll have to work on my hopping later"

"I don't know about that," the rebel corporal smiled, pulling up one of the legs of his pants and tapping the but of his rifle against the prosthetic where his leg should have been.

Ryan and Stevo both snorted out a laugh, memories of Ryan's remark to Angel the day before about beating her scores with a prosthetic filling their thoughts, before the reality of Angel's condition brought them crashing back down to earth again.

"I'd like to request that we all be kept together with the other prisoners from last night," Stevo finally said, fixing his eyes on Matthews.

The Corporal seemed to do a bit of mental arithmetic. "It will be a tight squeeze, especially if your wounded friends make a recovery, but I don't see why not. The same condition would apply, though. You will be responsible for them."

Stevo flashed a look over his shoulder at the group of men behind him - or, more accurately, the seventeen men and six women - before turning back to Matthews. "They are now under my command. I'll vouch for them."

Matthews nodded, "Then it's done. C'mon, your men must be freezing and in need of a good meal."

"So, does it always get that cold here overnight?" Ryan asked with a shiver at memories of the night.

"Actually, last night was pretty mild," Matthews answered as he turned to watch a group of medics running over. "It can get as low as negative twenty Celsius most nights."

"So, no midnight strolls then, got it." The wounded man joked.

"Or hops," one of his new friends quipped.

"Don't make me kick your ass, Donavan," Ryan laughed. "I still have one good leg."

Smiling quietly as he watched the interaction, Stevo couldn't help but be amazed at the stoicism and internal strength of these men. Each of them was feeling the same weight of events, the same profound sense of loss as he was; each of them was suffering in ways that were almost impossible to even quantify, let alone qualify into words, and yet each of them was doing their best to stay strong for the men and women around him. He had no doubt that when the sun went down tonight, not a single one of them would be sleeping, and - just like him - the weight of it all would break them sooner rather than later. There was a big difference between falling asleep and passing out, there was a big difference between nightmares and flashbacks, and there was a big difference between acting okay and actually being okay. They were differences that all of them were going to be intimately familiar with in time.

The group all waited for the Medics to arrive, setting their stretcher onto the ground before helping Ryan onto it, and then they lifted him between them, nodded to Matthews, and started making their way back to the base with Ryan offering a backward wave to the rest of them.

"You trained a good man there," one of the men, Donavan presumably, said to him as they all watched him go before setting off themselves. "Made us prop him up on the firing line so he could fight with the rest of us. He said he wasn't going to be a burden to anyone."

Stevo smiled, "That sounds about right," he nodded. "Hopefully, the medical team can fix him up quickly."

Donavan nodded as he put a hand on Stevo's arm, guiding him to slow down so that the two of them were at the back of the group and furthest away from Matthews. "Can we trust them?" He nodded toward the rebel Corporal up ahead.

Stevo sighed and then shrugged. "I don't know. All I know is that it was either die or surrender. They could've treated us... well, they could've treated us the way we would've treated them, but they haven't. At least not yet. They asked me to help you bring you in 'cause they didn't want you to die. If you didn't come in, they were going to drop arty on your heads. They didn't need to do that. And look around, we're hardly under armed guard. They say they are giving medical attention to our wounded, and they haven't done anything to make me not believe them. So far, I have to assume they are on the level. He said..." he nodded toward Matthews, "...that they aren't our enemies, and given what's happened to us, I'm wondering if I don't agree with him. At the very least, I think he believes that."