Long Haul Ch. 03

"Copy that, Charlie-one-twelve," came the modulated response.

"Seems like it's my lucky day," the lead officer said. He stood up a bit more, straightening, and lowered his rifle. He still held it tightly in both hands, ready to raise, but Wren suddenly had a sick feeling in her stomach at his smile. "At ease, rook."

The younger officer reluctantly lowered his weapon as well, and somehow that made Wren feel even less safe.

The lead officer was like a walking piece of leather, with a face made up entirely of sharp angles and stubble. His thick eyebrows cast a heavy shadow over his sunken eyes. The younger man was fresh-faced, with a tuft of black hair sticking out from under his helmet and none of the guile or resourcefulness of his superior.

"Good thing I'm the one that found you," the older one said, with a smile that didn't match his eyes. "Some of these kids out here can get a little... trigger happy."

"Yeah," Wren said quickly, as she took a half step back. "Good thing. So, we'll just be on our way then, right?"

"Nice try." It only took him adjusting the angle of his rifle by a few millimeters to freeze her in her tracks. "Don't worry. We're not gonna run you in... as long as you can pay."

"There it is," Bonnie growled, as the redhead took a step forward to be next to Wren. "There's the greed I was expecting."

"We'll pay," Wren said, holding her arm out in front of Bonnie, who in turn looked furious. "We'll pay."

"I figure twenty thousand oughta cover it," he said, easily.

The younger officer leaned forward warily, and said, "Sir?"

"Don't worry, rook. You'll get your cut. Just keep your mouth shut and this'll work out for everyone."

The younger man did not look in any way mollified.

Wren brought up her p-comm and flipped through it nervously. Jackson had been able to liberate some—but not all—of her funds, and twenty thousand was an easy price to pay to not get shot.

She couldn't help but notice, as her fingers shook, that everyone around them was perfectly calm about the whole thing. How often must this happen, she thought, that no one is blinking an eye? She thought that must also be part of what was making Bonnie so irate, because Bonnie was. One of the locals was so nonchalant about the whole affair that she walked right through the middle of the standoff, with a tray of bright green coffee cups held in one hand, without making eye contact. The younger officer seemed a bit on edge, but his superior looked entirely at ease.

"Here," Wren said, flicking the open-ended transaction at them. The lead officer glanced at his wrist, smiled, and nodded. Then Wren took one hesitant step back, laid her hand on Bonnie's shoulder, and pulled her as she started to turn.

"Charlie-one-twelve to Central," the older officer said. "Possible sighting on the—"

Bonnie was like a blur. One moment, she was face-to-face with Wren as they turned toward each other to go. The next, she was breaking across the ten meter gap between them and the officers. Two shots rang out, both from the younger officer, but they were aimed upward and it seemed like the rounds got lost in the station ducting. It took Wren a full heartbeat to realize that Bonnie had thrown something black at them, and another full heartbeat after that to recognize the green plastic cup rolling around on the floor at their feet.

Bonnie slipped inside the senior officer's guard, grabbed for his rifle, and spun. The bigger man was too busy reeling, and squealing from having hot coffee thrown in his face, to keep his balance, and he toppled over from a well-placed hip check. Bonnie's spin continued, and she brought the butt of the rifle around to clip the younger officer across the jaw, sending him sprawling as well.

In what seemed like no time flat the redhead had disarmed and incapacitated two armed men and she stood over the senior officer with a sneer, the barrel of his gun pointed at his nose. She looked as cool as could be.

"Nonononono," Wren said, rushing to her side. "Don't."

"I can think of twenty thousand reasons that I should," Bonnie said, smoothly. "Why not?"

"Backup is coming. Let's just go."

Bonnie just stared at them impassively. After a moment, Wren reached down to take the younger officer's discarded rifle, and gave Bonnie a shove. The redhead moved, reluctantly, but gave her a wicked look as they broke into a trot.

Just as they were rounding the corner, Wren looked over her shoulder to see that the crowd had moved en masse, swiftly and purposefully, and that she could no longer see the two officers at all.

***

Wren leaned against the side of the main console in the cabin, absently stirring the soggy dregs of her bowl of cereal. Hours had passed during which Bonnie had sequestered herself in the meditation room. Wren had, to her shame, checked in on her once via the security cams, and had gotten distracted by the pullups Bonnie was doing at the time. It took her a while to deduce that they were angry pullups, followed by angry pushups, and it had required a paramount effort of her resolve to turn away from that feed.

At a small sound in the galley, Wren perked up.

"Hey," Bonnie said, without looking up from the trigger mechanism she was oiling.

Wren moved to the sink, and worked the dry soap slowly into her bowl and spoon. "How're you doing?"

"Fine."

She nodded. "You definitely seem fine. This is all very normal." In her head, she replayed the first time she'd talked with Jackson. What she'd watched him do. "You're mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you," Bonnie said, angrily.

She nodded again, and, as she meandered across the room, said, "You're mad at me because I stopped you from killing that piece of shit."

"I'm not mad at you," the redhead repeated, through gritted teeth. She kept having to stop performing her task, as her hands were practically shaking.

With great carefulness and purpose of thought, Wren leaned over the table where they often ate, and swiped a handful of disassembled pieces onto the floor.

"What the actual fuck?" Bonnie shouted, as she launched herself around the table. "你要死啊? Are you trying to get me to kill you? Is that what this is?"

"No, I... don't have a death wish," Wren said, with just the slightest hesitation, as she translated in her head. "No... and also no." Then, struck by inspiration, she gently shoved Bonnie, and that finally got the ball rolling.

Bonnie's eyes flared open. She grabbed Wren by the collar of her shirt, and drove the blue-haired girl back across the galley and hard into the bulkhead. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Bonnie shrieked. "You wouldn't let me put that piece of shit down, but now you're gonna push me to do it to you instead?"

Wren winced, smarting from the impact, and reached up to grab Bonnie's wrists, but her ability to overwhelm Bonnie or free herself was nil.

"You lied to me," she screamed. "You lied!"

Despite pushing, wrenching, and struggling as hard as she could, Wren made no progress in freeing herself.

"You told me you were going to help me! 你答应过我!"

"I didn't break my promise!" Wren grunted.

"That corrupt 王八蛋 was exactly the kind of shitbag I've been talking about!"

"He didn't deserve your hate," Wren shouted. She managed to get her fingers hooked around Bonnie's thumbs, and was slowly prying them free when Bonnie gave her a hard shake and bounced her off the bulkhead again. Just like that, all her progress was zeroed. "He wasn't the guy!"

"You're just like the rest of them!"

The Daedalus dropped out into n-space with a series of familiar groans and creaks. Wren's stomach tried to turn itself upside down, and, judging by Bonnie's face, she got the better end of it. They both tumbled to the floor, along with the entirety of the contents of the table. Bonnie got up on her knees, turned the stare at the mess, and screamed, and thus did not see it coming when Wren wrapped her up in a hug and held her tightly.

"Get off," Bonnie cried.

Wren did not. She interlocked her fingers, tucked her forehead into the side of Bonnie's neck, and held her as tightly as she had ever held anything. More tightly than she had ever held any of her lovers. More tightly than she had ever held her parents.

"Get off!"

Wren did not.

"妈的."

"I'm not like them," Wren mumbled, the sound muffled even further by their proximity. "I didn't stop you for me, or for us, or for any..." She paused to swallow, which was surprisingly hard and a little painful. "I did it for you."

"You're so full of shit," Bonnie murmured, but the invective carried little of the venom that had been present only seconds before.

Wren straightened slightly, but kept the hug so tight that her face was almost more beside Bonnie's than in front of it. They both gave fleeting sideways glances at each other. "That guy was garbage," she said, "but he isn't the problem."

"You know he was probably hitting up some of those businesses for protection money—"

"Yes," Wren said, cutting in, "and, by the looks of things when we were heading out, those people handled their own problem. They didn't need you to do more than you did... but if you had? If you'd pulled that trigger? Right now you'd be thinking about his face. His horror. His last seconds in this life. You... you might feel justified about it for a while, but... over time?"

"Shut up," Bonnie whispered.

"Did you see how quickly you took him down? Him and his partner? He's not on your level. He's not the fight for you."

This time, the corners of Bonnie's lips curled up ever so slightly.

"You hit him like the fist of an angry god. Also, not to change the subject, but it was fucking hot."

"Shut uuup," Bonnie repeated.

"I want to show you something."

Bonnie grunted irritably, but accepted the helping hand to get to her feet all the same.

"This is my passion project," Wren said, as she led the way back into the cabin. Then, realizing that the default visual on the forward display was not particularly grand, she tapped at the console rapidly and brought up an enlarged, zoomed-in shot.

There, floating in space in front of them, were four ships. One cruiser and three freighters. They ranged in size, but the smallest one was easily ten times the size of the Daedalus. Patchy, incomplete framework nearly connected them, and tiny flickers of light appeared all over the surface of each of them.

Bonnie stepped forward slowly, eyes scanning. "What am I looking at?"

"The beginning of a great thing," Wren said, with all the awe and majesty that she'd hoped for when she'd practiced saying that to whomever she showed this to first. "I found the first one by accident. The middle left one. I dropped out of t-space to perform some maintenance, and there it was. Deserted, out in the middle of nowhere along the path between... shit, I can't even remember now. A one in a trillion find. I think it had been used by some scavs, and they were worried about the reactor. The maintenance logs I found were spotty, but also... like... whoever had been tending their engine room hadn't known a damn thing. They stripped it and left it floating."

"And you just..."

"Towed it out here, away from where it was. My own little piece of nowhere. At first, I was like 'what could I do with a ship this big?' ... and then I thought "my god, what couldn't I do?'"

"That is one ugly freighter," Bonnie said, peering closely.

"The pirates stripped out all the data banks, but when I was digging around I found a bunch of conduits that seemed to go nowhere. So I started ripping out some plates, and you know what that used to be?" Immediately after asking, Wren shook her head. "Dumb question. Of course you don't. It was a garden ship."

Bonnie whirled to look back at her, and then whirled again. "How fucking old is that thing?"

"At least two hundred years," Wren said. "They don't build 'em like this anymore. Best of all, it isn't even like they did a good job stripping it. Whenever they first took it over, they just walled over whatever they didn't understand, so there's a ton of useful hardware in there. It could grow food again. The others..." She drifted off, and waved her hand back and forth. "Found them floating around different asteroid fields."

"I told you that was dangerous!"

Wren scoffed. "They were... none of them in good shape, on the whole, but they had all kinds of stuff left on them. That one on the left has some rudimentary fabrication facilities."

Bonnie pointed. "What are all those little lights?"

"Well, they weren't exactly airtight, so I've had some drones out here welding the holes shut for... Holy hell. Like five years, now."

"Welding it shut with what?"

Wren blinked, and then started looking around. After a minute, she looked straight up. "There's two more wrecked freighters up there that were too far gone to fix. The drones cut scrap from them, and then weld it into place."

"It's not even air-tight?"

"It's a side project! I never even really figured out what I want to do with them. Not really. I mean... I know what the big picture is, to have them be like my own little self-sufficient station, but there's about a bajillion details that are up in the air beyond that very vague notion." She leaned over, and nudged Bonnie in the ribs with her elbow. "Originally, it was going to be for my harem."

"Who are you kidding?" The redhead laughed to herself. "A harem."

Wren shrugged. "A girl can dream." She pointed to a dark mass floating above the row of ships. "There's most of a solar array... mostly put together out there. Once the whole thing is a bit more stable, the Daedalus tows it to some empty star, and we get free power forever. There's some ore processing, and some refining facilities that need some love, but they're... essentially fine. The Daedalus can go get the raw materials, and then this thing can become whatever we want it to be."

"We?" Bonnie said, arching an eyebrow.

"You know... I used to come out here, and I'd sit here and look at them. I'd see... a thousand different possible configurations for all this. Ten thousand. I didn't nail anything down past that, though. I didn't... I was... I was kind of just waiting for a plan to fall into my lap, really."

"You are, like, the most industrious lazy person I've ever met," Bonnie laughed, and Wren laughed right with her.

"The one thing that I held onto with all of this was... was what we were talking about before. That I wanted out of the rat race. I wanted to be done, and just leave it all behind once I could afford to go." She gestured to the viewscreen. "This was where I was going to go, but I think we can do something bigger now. Really get back at Jyi Bao and Chandless, and... you know. Them."

"Yeah?" Bonnie asked. "How?"

"In the words of the great krogan warlord Okeer, I will inflict upon them the greatest insult they can suffer: to be ignored."

Bonnie just watched in silence as the pinpricks of light danced. "This could really be self-sustaining?"

Wren shrugged slightly. "I mean, with some planning? And some care? Yeah. It could be. I think."

"Others would want in on that," Bonnie said, absently.

"Can you think of anyone who'd want to come?"

Bonnie looked over at her, but said nothing. After a minute the redhead reached for and took her hand, and it was beautiful.

"What's a krogan?" she asked.

Wren just laughed.

//Huge thanks to my beta reader and editor posse: SkullTitti, KatieTay, maria_mcgeorge, Bramblethorn, BrokenSpokes, and DeathandTaxes. Favorites and votes are appreciated. Comments are beloved.//