Long Haul Ch. 03

//Author's Note: Huge thanks to my good friends KatieTay and SkullTitti for their help in translations and tone! This story could not have been possible without their patience and assistance! All characters are 18 or older.//

"Here we go," Wren whispered, as the timer counted down and the Daedalus dropped out of t-space. The disorientation passed quickly, and in its place bloomed a sort of delirium as the multitude of white pinpricks returned faster than she could blink. There were many aspects of her life that Wren enjoyed but sometimes she thought that rush of starlight, as she shifted back into n-space, might be her single favorite thing in the galaxy. It always gave her a high.

It occurred to Wren, in that moment, that she had a great many things she considered her favorite thing, and that made her smile.

"Three contacts," Bonnie murmured, from her newly-installed position next to the pilot's chair.

Wren loved the way the comms systems in their armored vac suits modified Bonnie's voice. It gave it an edge.

Bonnie looked up at the combat suite and grimaced. "Small cargo, interceptor, and a converted transport trying to hide how jacked it is with firepower. 我肏 ." After a moment, she added, "They're staying together, just like I said they would."

Wren smiled as she made a course correction, and the Daedalus lurched forward. The new chair that Jackson had installed for Bonnie handled the inertial shift with markedly less creaking than her own chair did. He'd offered to fix quite a few little things like that, but Wren was in love with her ship the way it was. With few exceptions she'd only allowed him to add new, not to upgrade.

"They're targeting us," Bonnie said, her voice rising slowly in intensity.

"Don't worry about it."

"Weapons fire!"

Wren's face twisted in amused disbelief, and her shoulders rose and fell in suppressed, silent laughter. "What are they doing trying to engage us from 15 kilometers? Is this their first time in space?"

The redhead growled, lip curled into a snarl. "Tell me again why we didn't just do this whole thing ourselves?"

"Because," Wren groaned, "the actual job required too many people. Stealing it from thieves, out here where the Daedalus is doing most of the work, is gonna be easier than it would have been to hire muscle we don't trust, or some asshole to get us in the door only to risk them shooting us in the back on the way out."

The Daedalus bounced sideways, ablative plating flaking off in chunks as two slugs hit hard, with the gravshell handling whatever else didn't miss them entirely.

"Yeah? Well, these assholes are shooting us in the back as we speak!"

"They're actually hitting to por—"

"That's not the point!" Bonnie roared.

The sides of Wren's mouth tried to escape down the sides of her neck. "I mean, it's kind of the point. Our sides are much better armored than—"

"No! Because the point is we're still getting shot at!"

"Alright, well let's keep 'em honest. Pepper them with something while I corkscrew it."

The Daedalus arced into a spiralling barrel roll, thrusters showing all their impressive new might as they gained rapidly on the trio of ships. Tracer rounds streaked all around them as both of the armed ships took more desperate action.

"How can you stand to look at that?" Bonnie moaned, glancing briefly at Wren's whirling viewscreen while she clung to her chair. "I can barely get a shot off, and I don't wanna waste ammo if I'm not gonna hit anything."

Wren's right eyelid twitched. "I'm gonna level off in a second."

"The interceptor is breaking off and closing!"

"Coming out of maneuver in three, two..."

The Daedalus abruptly straightened. For a few precious seconds the other ships continued to fire erratically into the space the Daedalus might otherwise have occupied, and in that span Bonnie lined up lethal strafing fire on the tiny interceptor. Just as the first slug landed, the interceptor tried to alter course, but too many rounds were already on the way and it couldn't turn fast enough. The sharp little craft started tumbling sideways, momentum hurtling it past them and into a neverending trajectory.

"They've turned off their targeting," Bonnie said, her brow lowering, "but the other two are sticking together."

As soon as her sensors confirmed the engine had been crippled, Wren unsnapped her helmet and took a breath. "That was nice shooting."

The redhead merely grunted.

"Like seriously though. Really nice shooting."

Bonnie popped off her helmet, and flashed Wren an angry glare. "Incoming hail."

"Why is it a bad thing that I complimented your shooting?"

An image popped out of the bottom corner of the main viewscreen, and enlarged until it took up the center eighty percent of the screen. A man stared back at them, fat beads of sweat sitting heavy on his brow.

"No," Wren said, still staring sideways. "Why can't I compliment your shooting?"

"Not now," Bonnie hissed, tilting her head meaningfully toward the viewscreen.

"Fuck him," she said.

"Hey!" the man on the screen shouted back.

"Look," Bonnie whispered harshly. "We can have this conversation later, okay?"

"I'll hold you to that." Satisfied, Wren sat back in her chair and smiled at the screen. "Now."

"Oh, you're ready for me now?" the man snapped.

"You have my undivided attention."

"I know who you are," he growled, "and I know why you're here."

"Oh my god," Wren laughed, excitedly. "Are we famous?" She leaned over the armrest of her chair to swat playfully at Bonnie's arm, but Bonnie simply glared back at her.

"Way I heard it, you—"

"Wait. Famous or infamous?" Wren asked, interrupting and holding her index finger up toward the screen. "I can never keep those straight."

Bonnie rolled her eyes and shrugged, simultaneously.

"They're not synonymous. I know that much."

The redhead narrowed her eyes. "Can we just get this over with?"

Wren turned back to the screen. "Are you in a hurry?"

"If it's all the same to you, we'd rather just go."

Wren tapped the side of her nose and smirked. "Nice try." She typed rapidly, fingers flying across her keyboard, and the Daedalus started turning, keeping an irregular orbit around the two larger vessels. The man's eyes arced from left to right as he watched something moving above the viewscreen, ostensibly them, and Wren smiled.

"Look," he said, "you're not getting it. The contact from RL is gonna be here soon to pick this up, and they're gonna bring a hell of a lot more firepower than you've got."

"So close," Wren said, her smile drifting slowly toward smugness. "They're two hours away, at least, and I've got a cloud of interdictors out there to slow them down. Do you think I found you out here, in the middle of nowhere, and didn't know the timetable?"

The man's eyebrow twitched, and Wren was barely any better at hiding her glee than he was at hiding his frustration.

"If it comes down to it," she said, "We'll just shoot you full of holes and come take it from your cold, dead hands."

Bonnie looked sideways at her, but Wren ignored the glare. She was having too much fun.

"Or maybe I'll overload your cooling system and let you all cook inside the hull."

The other captain regarded her angrily, and for a moment Wren thought he was going to refuse. In the back of her mind, she ran through some contingencies. Angles. Safe distances. Cereal stock levels.

"Fine," he said eventually. "It's not worth it. Pull around and dock with the aft hatch of my ship."

"No, thank you," Wren said, absently wondering how long it had been since breakfast. "Just push it out the airlock, if you don't mind."

His eyes tightened again.

"You've got five minutes. Drop the crate and go, or else we'll come in after it." Wren flashed her best smile before reaching over to let her hand hover over her console. "Better get your nav crunching now. I'll give you the exit vector, but there's gonna be something in your way if you don't give me what I want."

"You killed my man! This isn't over, you b—"

Wren cut him off, killing the call just as his eyebrows neared his hairline, and then turned to say, "Did you hear me?" with a laugh. She reclined in her chair, putting her feet up on the console, and interlaced her fingers behind her head. "Gimme the loot or I'll kill ya dead!" she aped.

"Shoulda just killed 'em anyway," Bonnie said, "for good measure."

"What? No." Wren shook her head. "These idiots?"

"They're working for RL Inco," she said. "They're not innocent."

"Why are you so crabby?"

"I'm not."

Bonnie crossed her arms, and Wren had to dig deep to avoid staring at the bare, tattooed muscles. It didn't help that the woman constantly wore tank tops, to say nothing of the tight, form-fitting pants she had on at that moment. "Yuh huh!"

"If you keep accusing me of being in a bad mood, I'm gonna be in a bad mood."

Wren rolled her eyes and sat back. "Can I ask your opinion on something?"

Bonnie gave her a flat look.

"When I was threatening him with shutting down his cooling system, I almost added that I'd carve a few slices of long pork and get us some bacon!"

"Eugh," the redhead said, leaning away in revulsion.

"Too much?"

"Yes! 我的妈呀!"

"Wait, I know this. Someone's mother, or...oh, uh... it's OMG!"

"Close enough. Look, that's not the kind of reputation you want. It's definitely not the kind of reputation I want."

"Thank you. I thought so. I'm still trying to figure all this out." Her eyes drifted slowly toward the kitchen. "Plus, I think I might just be really hungry."

"When I was in the service," Bonnie said, pausing only slightly to grimace, "we came across a lot of 人渣, and you could always tell which ones were the really dangerous ones because they didn't bother making outlandish claims like '诛你后代，饮你的血，食你的肉!' The dangerous ones were deadly calm. They would just do the thing and be done with it."

"You're gonna track down... my generatio-no! My chil... descendants!" Wren winced. "Oh. Really? Kids?"

"I heard that kind of thing all the time. Yeah. Loses its impact pretty quick."

"I guess I hadn't thought of that."

"Your Chinese is getting better," Bonnie said.

"Yeah, well..." Wren shrugged one shoulder and winked. "I have a good teacher."

"When is your fashion sense going to catch up?"

Wren looked down at herself and held out her arms. "What's wrong with this?"

"How many shirts do you own that are just blank white shirts with the number nine on them?"

Wren giggled. "Actually, Jackson gave me a bunch. I have like thirty of these now."

"Of the same shirt?"

"What? They're comfortable!" Wren shrugged and slouched a little lower in her chair. "Plus I like not having to think about it."

Bonnie sighed and shook her head. "I just assumed you were wearing the same one over and over. God help me, I think this is even lazier."

"What do you want from me?" Wren asked, arms raised.

"To look the part!" The redhead's hands twitched in frustration. "Goggles, or a cape or something."

"What am I, a vampire?"

"No," Bonnie said seriously. "You're a fucking hero to take on something like this."

Wren pursed her lips and blew a kiss at her, but Bonnie's expression remained somber.

"I mean it."

Wren raised her chin to gesture at Bonnie's console, and asked "How long?"

"Three minutes," the other woman said. "We need to change your look."

"Whyyyyy?" Wren whined. "Can't I just filter our feed so we look and sound menacing? That's way easier."

Bonnie narrowed her eyes and stared. "I guess," she said, glumly, "but it's the lazy way out."

"Fine," Wren said, throwing up her arms in exasperation. "Next time we dock, I'll go shopping."

She exhaled loudly through her nostrils, puffing, and shook her head.

Wren stared at her for a moment and then smiled. "Would you like to come? Maybe offer a few suggestions?"

Bonnie nodded and the frost seemed to thaw a little bit, and Wren thought she might have hit on the real issue. The redhead wanted her to dress a certain way that she found attractive, which was fine. Wren had never had a solid opinion on fashion in her entire life, seeing it as frivolous and patently functional rather than part of a statement of her uniqueness. If it made Bonnie happy, though, that was worth considering.

"Time?"

Bonnie looked down. "One minute."

Wren sniffed and nodded, and put her attention on the two ships they were still circling. Neither had done more than drift along their course, and the hairs at the base of Wren's neck started to tingle.

"Steady," Bonnie said. "They're not gonna jump out of here. They think we interdicted them. At this point, no matter what they do, they're worried that RL Inco is gonna think they stole it for themselves. They'll make the smart play that lets them live another day."

"How did you know I was thinking that?"

The redhead smirked. "I just tried to figure out what I'd be worried about if this was my first day on the job."

Wren alternated between barking laughter and riotous coughing as her lungs strained to keep up. "Bitch," she eventually said, when she had the spare breath for it.

"Alright then."

Wren sat up and watched the timer out of the corner of her eye while she trained the cameras on the smaller of the two cargo ships. Just as the timer reached five seconds remaining, the aft hatch flicked open and a few boxes went tumbling out.

"I see it," Bonnie said. "Tracking."

Once the scanners confirmed the main package, Wren notified them that they were clear to go. Within seconds, one, and then the other, blipped off into t-space, and Wren brought the Daedalus around.

"They left some other goodies too," Bonnie said with a frown. "Two smaller objects floating around with it."

Wren grimaced as she deployed a few of her drones. "I don't want to risk picking those up until we've scanned 'em good, so I'll have the drones tow it out of there before RL shows up. We can wait a few million clicks away."

"Jackson is gonna be pissed."

"He won't care if we're overdue," Wren said, gesturing lazily, "as long as we get it. A couple extra days won't matter."

"Extra days?" Bonnie hissed. "That long?"

Wren nodded. "Those little drones'll be on impulse power to cover that kind of distance quietly." She leaned over and started plotting two microjumps. "Plus we wanna be well outside RL's scanning range. Give 'em no reason to think there's anything worth looking at around here when they show up."

Bonnie got up and stalked back into the ship while Wren picked a little piece of nowhere for a rendezvous point. Five of her mining drones raced off, scooping up the package and its two unwanted neighbors. That settled, she leaned back and watched the nav do its thing. A bowl of cereal sounded pretty good.

Wren was in the kitchen, bare feet dangling as she sat on the counter, when Bonnie came back up from the cargo area. Mr. Cat laid on the table, having kicked aside a few of the redhead's spare rifle parts, and was pretending to lick himself while he eavesdropped.

"Want one?" Wren asked, gesturing with her half-eaten bowl.

Bonnie shook her head. "What's the ETA?"

"Sevenny-six," she said, around a mouthful. "Hours. And change. That'll get them to us."

"You know those other two things they dropped are probably some kind of bomb, right?"

Wren nodded. "Five minutes would have been enough time for me to rig something up, assuming I had a bunch of explosives lying around, so I've got the drones bringing them together." She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "Some kind of proximity sensor seems most likely."

"What are you gonna do about it?"

She shrugged and stretched, trying in vain to fight off a yawn. "Nothing, right now. Disarm it, eventually." She closed her eyes, mouth wide, and held her hand up. "When it gets closer to time, I'll get the drones to tell me what I'm dealing with and start working it backwards."

"As long as it doesn't nuke the drones."

Wren blinked. "Good point."

Bonnie poured herself a glass of water and hopped up on a countertop opposite Wren. For a while she stared down at the glass, as if deep in thought. Eventually, she said, "Can I ask you a question?"

Wren nodded and shrugged lightly. "I'm an open book."

For a minute, Bonnie worked her lips as if on the verge of speaking, and when she finally did, she said, "I'm struggling not to use the word 'what', because that feels disrespectful, but.... How... are you... the way you are?"

Wren's eyes lit up in comprehension a few moments later. "Right. Okay. That's fair."

"I don't mean to pry," Bonnie added in a rush. "I just... I... I want to know? Because... I..."

She licked her lips, swallowing the last of her cereal with a smile. She enjoyed watching Bonnie flounder. It was enjoyable, in a sweetly predatory kind of way.

"What I'm trying to say is that the answer doesn't matter, specifically, but... I still want to know."

"Okay," Wren said, nodding. "Fair enough." She set her bowl into the sink and rubbed her hands together. "I'd always liked to take things apart. By the time I was ten, I'd already disassembled just about everything in our apartment a few times."

"Is this about when you fell on your back?"

Wren nodded slowly. "Yeah. Right. Sorry. Forgot I told you that." She blinked and tried to remember where to skip to. "I thought I was going to die there. The impact had severed my spinal cord at the T8 vertebrae. Right here," she said, leaning to one side and reaching back to point. "I was down there for a while."

Wren smiled sadly as she continued. "My parents mortgaged everything, borrowed everything they could, to pay for the surgeries, plural, to fix me. It... uh. It ruined them, in more ways than one, but they were..." She paused to lick her lips again. "I didn't try hard enough to convince them that all I needed were my mind and my hands. That didn't matter. They wanted me whole, so..." She gestured to herself and gave an embarrassed smile. "Six surgeries to get me to where I could start rehab and learn to walk again."

"That sounds awful," Bonnie added, quietly.

Wren shrugged. "That whole ordeal really did two things for me. One is money. We lost our apartment, or maybe just couldn't afford it anymore, and had to move into this cramped little place. It was barely big enough for us to move around. My parents, they... they never did or said anything that said they weren't happy with the choice they made — you know, to pay for my surgeries — but every once in a while I'd catch them when they didn't think I could hear them, and they'd be frustrated. Not at me, just in general. It was hard to take.

"Anyway," Wren said, clearing her throat, "that was sort of the... I've done a lot of thinking lately, and although it wasn't any kind of plan I set out on, that's probably where I started really focusing on money. Getting it, having a lot, and kind of hoarding it so I'd never be in that position again. I'm... I'm more than a little embarrassed that I let it get so out of hand, with you, and..."

"I know," Bonnie said, smiling very slightly. "You've told me some of that before. It's good to hear you're still thinking about it."

"Right," Wren said, running her hand through the hair at the back of her head. "Sorry. The, uh... The other thing was that... even after everything, after... after all the microlaser techniques and gene therapy treatments, I still had a... a sensitivity void. You know? Like a... like a dullness? I don't feel things the same below as I do above, like on my arms and hands. I tested that extensively with... with heat, and sharp objects, and all kinds of things. I have some sensitivity, but I don't feel quite right. Does that make sense?"