Long Haul Ch. 04

"Wren," he said, leaning toward her with a wry smile, "you know I like you lah, but you want to repopulate human race, still need more than just the three of us lah. Not that I dowan to try, hor!"

Bonnie cleared her throat, and Jackson threw up his hands.

"Kidding lah, kidding!"

"It's not ready for all that," Wren said. "I mean, the most I think I can do is get them airtight. We need people. Smart people. Problem solvers. Engineers. Systems analysts. Admins. Fuck, we need farmers."

"Need a lot more than that lah," he said, leaning back and tossing the display down casually.

"But we could take thousands," Wren said. "Tens of thousands. In time, maybe a hundred thousand."

Jackson exhaled slowly, and took off his sunglasses. Wren had never seen him without them. His eyes were very dark, and very sharp. Not drunk at all. "A hundred thousand."

"A hundred thousand people," Wren repeated, "away from all this."

He sat forward abruptly, planting his elbows on the edge of the table and wrapping one hand within the other. "Did you know," he said, in clear, English. Then he frowned, and added, "Where to start."

Wren's jaw went slack. Bonnie's did too.

"Did you know that Singapore was the first country to relocate off of Earth?"

"No?' Wren said, slowly. "Wait, the country?"

"Oh yeah," he said, smiling easily. "The government. Almost the entire population. There were some holdouts, of course. They stayed behind, but... yeah, something like ninety seven percent. Singapore built one of the first big mobile space stations. You know? With a propulsion system that could get it out of the home system."

"I... didn't know," Wren said, still reeling from the change in his accent. She tried looking to Bonnie, for support, but Bonnie looked just as bewildered as she felt.

"Singapore was a low land. Shoreline. There was some ground higher up, higher elevation, but it was mountainous. Not easily traversable, and certainly not easily able to support so many. Once the waters started rising, it was just a matter of time, so..." He pointed upward with both hands, and shrugged. "Up we went, and we took our home with us."

Wren said, "And... the ground, the-the dirt, did they—"

Jackson laughed and shook his head. "That's not what makes a country. It's the people."

"So," she said, frowning, "what happened to the land?"

He exhaled slowly, in thought. "Malaysia and Indonesia both claimed some parts of it, but there wasn't a lot of effort to maintain control and take over, or move in. I think it was... mostly self-governing. But," he said, wagging a finger at her, "you jumped right to the heart of the problem. The entire concept of countries fell apart in space. A few tried, established 'borders'" —he made air quotes and laughed— "Borders are meaningless. Planets can't even properly draw a line between inner and outer space, you know, let alone agree on demarcating a two dimensional map where you can just say the border follows the river. You can't mark out the void with buoys, you can't perform defense in depth against incursions. A country, a nation, was always an imagined entity, anyway, and nothing made that clearer than being transplanted from Earth into the void. Imagination... can fail.

"No," he continued, "they weren't prepared for that shift. Completely new paradigm, you know?"

"What is going on?" she asked, "Since when can you..."

"Doesn't look like you can handle a paradigm shift either." He gave her a very familiar, very self-satisfied smile, and shrugged. "Singapore couldn't—"

"Wait," Wren said, finally latching onto something. "It was still called Singapore? At the time?"

"What else would they call it?" he replied, tilting his head quizzically. "Singapore Station? Is that better? In those early years, Singapore was really open. Accepting. They thought they were going to be competing with China and the United States, and Singapore was always a crossroads for all of southeast Asia, so... you know... Malaysian, Korean, Vietnamese, all of them. They had a place with us. They were part of the family. One big, big, big family.

"Singapore, they handled their domain better than some, but they still weren't prepared to protect themselves from corporations. They weren't in a position to enforce labor laws on other stations, and they needed supplies. They needed trade. Corporations squeezed them, restricted supplies. High demand, they'd say. Work on the station was hard to come by. People went elsewhere. Little by little, it became obvious that Singapore, as a national entity, couldn't protect its people.

"That's a diaspora, like the Jews of old. Spread out everywhere. If you built a station, you had Singapore people working the dock. If you had a plant, you had Singapore people working the line. We're everywhere, but nowhere was home. That's the trouble with systems of power, Wren. They tend to make sure that the people on the bottom stay there."

"This is wild," Wren said, leaning back.

Jackson smirked, put his sunglasses back on, and leaned back. "Why are you so surprised that I clean up well? Do you think they promote workers, anywhere, when they sound like this? No, you've gotta look the part. Sound the part. Yes sir, boss man. No sir. Don't worry about your family. Let the roots die."

Jackson cleared his throat, adjusted his posture, and proudly sang, "Whenever I am feeling low..."

He only made it through the first line before he was joined by others close around.

"I look around me and I know..."

By the end of the second line, the entire room was singing. Everyone but Wren and Bonnie.

"There's a place that will stay within me, wherever I may choose to go!"

It was like a scene from a media serial. Probably one of the sillier ones, where disbelief had to be suspended and it made sense that thirty adults might already know the lyrics to spontaneous song, and keep time, and sing in key. It would have been funny —it would have been hysterical— except for the fact that some of them sounded choked up.

"So we'll build our dreams together,

Just like we've done before,

Just like the river which brings us life,

There'll always be Singapore."

It sounded like some of them might have been in tears.

"I had no idea you were so sentimental," Wren said, when the room finally went silent.

"Wren," Bonnie hissed. Wren shrugged.

Jackson said, "It's fine, it's fine."

"What was that?"

"National anthem. I think." Then, turning to Wren, he asked, "Have you ever played Go?"

"Go?"

He leaned to his right, punched at a display on the side of the table, and the remains of his mahjongg victory disappeared. It was replaced with a grid, nineteen by nineteen. He pushed down his index finger near the center right of the grid, and a black stone appeared at the intersection of two lines. "It's not from Singapore. It's Japanese. You know what is call Japan or not? Ah, nevermind lah. Yah. This call, Go. Seem very simple, very straightforward, but actually, ha, you play and see lah. Very funny one, I tell you. Only got two basic rules, then a lot of special situation. Explain very easy, but want to master it, very difficult."

Wren leaned forward, eyes roaming, and touched a nearby intersection, producing a white stone of similar size.

"I think you sure will like it one," he said, tapping elsewhere and producing another black stone.

"This game takes hours," Bonnie said, tightly, "and you aren't going to play her for money."

"Aiyah. You think I what?" Jackson said, pressing his hand to his chest as if covering a wound. "Never trust me one."

"He cheats," a man behind Wren said, loud enough for everyone to hear, and the room laughed. Everyone except Bonnie, Jackson, and Wren.

Bonnie continued to growl under her breath, but Wren was mesmerized while she processed their placements. She quickly saw that Jackson was doing some things, and she tried to mimic his placements.

"Wah, not bad ah, don't even know the rules but already can learn by example ah, not bad, not bad."

"Are you going to explain them to her?" Bonnie snarked.

"Give away my advantage for what? Haha!"

Bonnie rolled her eyes, and leaned across the table to place one on Wren's behalf. "Always leave one space open. Stones in a group combine to make, like, a living unit. Circle his units to remove them from the board. Don't let him circle you. Give them nowhere to move and they die."

Jackson made a disgruntled sound and waved her off. "Aiiiyyaah. She was doing fine without you lah."

"By luck!"

"No lah! Not luck!" he replied. "She's learning."

Wren was barely listening to them. She was staring at the board, processing, and when she made her next move a minute later, Jackson laughed.

He said, "Told you already."

Bonnie just grunted.

"Nobody want to play with me anymore. Hai."

"Because he cheats," said an older woman at a different table.

Jackson just made a sound and waved dismissively at her. "So," he said, as he placed another stone, "You're building... station."

Wren blinked and looked up, suddenly remembering why they were there in the first place. "Yeah. Yeah!"

He nodded. "Space for a hundred thousand."

"Maybe more," she added, enthusiastically.

Jackson just shook his head as he placed another stone. "My family is a billion. Maybe more."

Wren's heart sank. She'd been listening, but she hadn't really understood what he was saying, and it hurt when it sank in. Her idea was so pathetically small. It was easier to think about it in terms of numbers. "Zero point zero one percent."

"Maybe less," he said, patiently, as he placed another stone.

"How long do we do this for?" she said, as she placed a feint piece. She wasn't sure what the term would be for getting him to commit stones where she wasn't planning to fight him, but it seemed appropriate.

"Seventy five black," Jackson said, "and seventy five white."

"This is gonna take a while."

Jackson just nodded. There was something in his posture, though. Like he was watching her do something other than play a game.

"It isn't something we could win with one grand, dramatic gesture."

His smile got a little wider, and he shook his head.

"It takes a lot of little moves. Finding advantage."

Bonnie said, "Are you still talking about the game?"

Wren frowned at Jackson, lips forming an asymmetrical, horizontal 's' shape.

"Maybe," Jackson said, as he leaned forward and rested his elbows, "instead of leaving it all behind, we do something different. Stick around, but stay off the grid."

"And do what?"

"Start something." He reached over and tapped the display, backing out the zoom level to see the whole thing from a bit more of a distance. "Something real. Something that gives people hope again. We've been doing little things, like this, for a long time. It's time for change."

Wren looked over at Bonnie, whose expression was still completely unreadable, and nodded. Then she pushed the display toward him and said, "It's yours. If you need my drones to keep doing what they're doing, let me know. If you've got people who can take over that work, I'll just step back."

Jackson stared at her. Even through his glasses, she could tell he was staring at her very intently. "This is big, Wren. Very big. Do you know what we could do with a base like this to make moves from? Where we're not trying to hide in plain sight?"

"I'm starting to," she said, as she studied his stone placements.

"It's a start, but it's not enough. Even if these ships were new, they wouldn't have the facilities to do much more than exist, and I'd be right to assume they were all stripped to the bulkheads?"

"Not the Persephone," Wren said. "That one is still largely intact, I think, but the others are a little anemic."

"In order to strike back, to fight back, we need dreitium carbonate. We need the furnaces, and the smelting facilities to make that, and we need the fabrication methods. Very different if you're trying to do all that in zero g. The designs are all proprietary. Nobody sees that without a license and an NDA as long as that cruiser you destroyed."

"It was a cutter," Wren said, exasperatedly. Then, muttering, she added, "Totally different class."

Jackson smiled, goodnaturedly, and leaned on the table. "Those ablative shards, on the Daedalus, they're made of an alloy called Teskite. Cost a fortune... but if you can make them yourself? Cheap materials. Very cheap."

"You wouldn't let me pay for those," Wren said, thoughtfully.

"I told you," he replied, easily. "Your money's no good here." He picked up her flat panel display and looked at it again. "This is good. We can use this, but to really do it right we need more."

Wren looked at Bonnie, wide eyed. "Did you hear that, babe? This is our one last job moment!"

"What?"

She reached across the table and took Bonnie's hands before Bonnie could pull them away, and said, "Baby, I promise. Just one more. I do this job and we're set for life!"

"You are such a nerd," Bonnie said, but there was a very slight curl at the corner of her lip when she said it.

***

"ertyhum, ertyhoom, ertyheem, ertyhourm."

"Could you do that somewhere else?" Wren grumbled.

Bonnie's boots rattled the deck plating beneath her when she landed, dropping down from her most recent improvised pullup bar just outside Wren's workshop, and the woman herself came to stand just inside the door. Casually leaning against the frame. Casually smelling like herself, which, Wren thought, was very rude when Bonnie knew how much Wren liked her smell.

Instead of saying that though, because she was annoyed, Wren said, "You were counting out loud again."

Bonnie laughed gruffly. "How's it going?"

Wren slid back in her chair and shook her head as she gestured to the security bot sitting, partially disassembled, on her workbench. "I don't know what to do with this thing. I thought for sure I was gonna be able to take those two platforms, merge them, and make this little guy blend in with his peers."

Bonnie laughed. "You mean it was hard to merge an HVAC management system and the control interface for a cargo hauler and convert all that into a passable security drone? I thought for sure you'd have it licked in, like, ten minutes."

"You said lick," Wren said, smiling disjointedly. Then she tossed down the stylus she'd been absently chewing on and covered her face in her hands. "I was going over the logs, and when we were in the bar waiting this thing interfaced with the air recirc system and stabilized the temperatures. Then it moved the chairs around to optimize airflow as best it could without disrupting any of the nearby humans." Then she added, directed at the bot, "Don't feel bad. I know you're doing your best."

Bonnie bit her fist.

"No," Wren said, dragging her fingers down her cheeks, "it's okay. You can laugh."

Rather than chiming in, Bonnie moved over to sit on the edge of the desk, with her legs straddling Wren's extended ankles. "Do you know that I think you're amazing?"

Wren folded her arms and slouched in her chair. "Amazing would have solved this already. I've had, like, months to get this thing working."

"It wasn't designed to do this!" she exclaimed, gesturing at the inert bot. "Maybe it can't be done! It's not your fault someone designed these badly."

"It's actually a good design if I can't break it and do whatever I want with it," Wren muttered.

Bonnie fixed her with a stare that was half frown, half smile, and Wren fidgeted.

The silence stretched on for a minute, with Wren growing increasingly uncomfortable. Eventually, she said, "What?"

"What is it gonna take to get you to be kind to yourself?" When Wren didn't immediately answer, Bonnie reached forward and grabbed Wren's legs, and pulled her closer. Then she sat on Wren's lap. "Hmm?"

"I don't know," Wren said, sullenly.

"I mean, is this even what you want to be doing?" she asked, gesturing to the bot again. "Do you want to be taking someone else's designs and fucking with them, or do you want to be doing your own thing? Do you want to lead a revolution? Do you... I mean, I'm asking, but I'm being rhetorical. I know you don't."

"I do," Wren said.

Bonnie cupped her cheeks and kissed her. "You want to do that for me, though, right?"

She barely managed a nod, and Bonnie kissed her again.

"It's not what you want."

"I want you," Wren said, softly, staring really hard at Bonnie's chin.

Bonnie smiled, the edge of which reached further across her cheeks by the second. "I knew it wouldn't make me feel better, and it didn't, but Gerad is dead. It was... exactly as anti-climactic as I knew it would be. ...and, you know, if we pull this off, we can hurt the bottom line of a lot of really shitty corps." Her eyes focused into the distance as she added, "My squad would be proud."

"I'm sure they're already proud."

Bonnie just shook her head. "I hooked up with Jackson to get answers, not to... fight his war for him. Kinda feels like I've gotten as close to an answer as I'm ever gonna get at this point."

Wren opened her mouth to respond, but Bonnie held a finger over her lips and smiled.

"I'm not saying we quit now. We can help a lot of people with this job. A lot of people. It'll be dangerous, yeah, but we can... we can make a difference."

"A really big difference," Wren said, as she leaned in and hugged Bonnie tightly.

Bonnie, sitting on her lap, wrapped a hand around Wren's head and held Wren to her chest. "When that's over, though, you want to go. It's what you've always wanted, right?"

"Maybe," Wren murmured, as she quietly enjoyed a moment of closeness.

"How did you put it? You wanted to get out of the rat race?"

Bonnie's arms felt really nice around her. Warm. Most of the time —all the time, really— Wren fantasized about and sexualized Bonnie's features, and her muscles, and her body, but every once in a while she could get past her rampant libido and it always astounded her how much she loved just being with Bonnie. There was more to her than a ridiculous physique. So much more.

"Yeah," she whispered, wrapping her arms more tightly around Bonnie's middle.

"I don't need a fight to feel like I'm going somewhere," Bonnie said, "and I think I maybe needed to kill Gerad to see that."

Before that moment, Wren had not really processed that Bonnie saw her, and wanted her. She'd had a brief glimpse of that the last time, with the blindfold, but Wren had thrown herself at a distracting action to keep from thinking about it too much. Bonnie had been paying attention to her, and listening to the things she said. Bonnie wanted to be with her, in every sense of the word...

...and the only way that could happen was if they survived.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

Wren hadn't realized she was crying. Or that she was squeezing Bonnie so tightly. It had kind of hit her all at once, that Bonnie got her and liked her and, and a hundred other verbs. It was a lot. Too much. For all her brains, Wren couldn't conceive of why Bonnie would feel like that about her. She knew why she had fallen for Bonnie, that much was easy, but the other way around? It didn't make sense.

But then Bonnie squeezed her back, and it didn't matter that it didn't make any sense at all. Figuring out why someone felt something about her could be something she worked on later. For the moment, it was enough to sit with the knowledge that Bonnie did feel for her.

It took a few more minutes to get her breath back.