Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Jamar looked at her. “We seem to have a better success rate when doing that, yes. Come with me.”

He found a downshaft, turned them around several times, and led her to a series of air locks.

Nashara looked in through the windows. “Shuttles?”

“Shuttles.” Jamar looked up at her, thoughtful. “When it really gets bad, I want you to promise me you’ll save the crew.”

“Promise? I can’t make that promise.”

He grabbed her hand. “Promise. Nashara, they’re not going to stop coming, and if what you told me is true, you will be their only help if the Hongguo catch us.”

“Jamar, I’ll die if I unleash this, just like my colleagues did.”

“You’ll die anyway if the Hongguo catch you,” he hissed. “But at least you’ll die saving someone. You understand? You weren’t sent out here by your superiors to squander this, but to use it to help people. So do so.”

“And what, get shot out of the sky in a shuttle ?” Nashara turned away from the bay windows.

“If I cover you in enough cast-off garbage to hide your run past a wormhole out in the system and lead them on a chase, you can hide out until this all finishes.”

“No offense, Captain, that’s just as crazy as my idea. We have Agathonosis, and some time to hunt for fuel. Let me go in there. I’m good at this sort of thing.”

“Maybe. I think someone is following,” Jamar said. “I’m getting backscatter and echoes every time I sweep the area behind us. Besides, we have no credit here, no sympathizers, not enough to barter for fuel with.”

“When I said I was good at this sort of thing, I didn’t mean bargaining over price.” Nashara scratched her itchy scalp. Her hair had started growing back in since her vacuum-jumping stunt. The ability to quickly heal applied to that as well. “I’m not just a pretty face here. If there is some sort of insurrection happening in Agathonosis, it makes for a nice cover. Drop me off via shuttle, give me ten hours. If I can’t make it happen, leave me.”

“You going to skip out on us?”

“That’s bullshit,” Nashara said. “Don’t try and jerk me around. I owe you nothing, but I’m going to stick my neck out for you.”

“Did it really need to take you years to get to us? And almost too late now? If you really have a superweapon buried in you, it could have been useful before all this.”

Nashara grabbed him. “I got delayed in Pitt’s Cross. I couldn’t get the fuck off that shithole without killing people and almost getting caught. I wouldn’t have done much good as a Hongguo test subject, or captured by a Gahe hunting pack, would I?”

“I’m just saying.” Jamar grabbed her wrists. “You’re still a bit fuzzy around the edges, you’re still complicating our lives, not making them simpler.”

Nashara let him go. “I’m sorry to have disturbed your routine, but you were deep in it when I arrived, I only hastened the conclusion. Don’t blame me for your problems, I’m trying to help.”

“By talking us into storming a Satrap’s habitat?”

“I’m the one offering to do the storming. And if you can pull a better idea out of your ass, I’m happy to go along. You have, however, a limited amount of time to come to a decision because Agathonosis is just a day away.”

Jamar nodded. “I’m only angry because I can’t come up with a better solution.”

“You’re in?”

“Until something better comes up. What will you need?”

“I know your ship is armed only with an engine and garbage for chaff, but please tell me you have some small arms aboard.”

“I’ll have Sean and Ijjy bring everything to you.”

“It’ll be okay, Jamar.”

He ignored her and drifted off.

But she wasn’t so sure, though. Messing around with aliens never ended well.

Never had.

Sean and Ijjy came to the guest room several hours later towing a large duffel bag behind them.

Ijjy unzipped it and let the contents float out. Pistols, machetes, a few machine guns, dynamite—all hung in the air in front of her.

Nashara snagged a machete out of the air and tested the edge with a finger. “Thanks.”

“You going in alone?” Ijjy asked.

“An antimatter cell weighs, what, a few hundred pounds in habitat gravity?”

“Yeah.” Ijjy looked her over. “You got that. But we still think we coming with you.”

Nashara looked at Sean. “You’re a mongoose-man, I can use your help. Ijjy, I don’t want you to risk your life.”

Ijjy looked at the nearest pistol. “Oh, see, a whole lot history don’t exist between you and me, I can handle myself, thank you. I coming anyway, you need all the help you can get, and I want make sure we get that damn fuel, seen?”

They didn’t trust her to get the fuel alone, didn’t trust her not to disappear into the habitat. “Seen. But I run the show.”

Sean raised an eyebrow. “I know you come from a group of Ragamuffin with all the stuff of legend. Like vacuum protection, bulletproof skin—”

“Dearie,” Nashara interrupted. She handed the machete. “Don’t. Tell you, if you want to be in charge, draw blood.”

He stared at her. “Blood?”

“Just a drop. I do have bulletproof skin.”

He struck, and Nashara rippled out of the way with a shrug. He slashed again, but she grabbed the back end of the blade and flung behind her hard enough to propel her into Sean.

She casually bent both his arms back behind him. “If I’m going to risk my life for you, the moment I step off this ship I’m your captain, understand?”

Ijjy started laughing at them both. Nashara let Sean go, and he pushed out of the room.

“Do I need to prove something to you too?” Nashara asked Ijjy.

“Lady Nashara I knew you was a sackful of danger the moment I drag you in through the air lock.” He saluted her. “You just bust he ego down a bit, Captain, nothing wrong with it, he go survive.”

“Good.” Nashara looked at the duffel bag. “Help me repack all this?”

Ijjy nodded. “Yeah, we go need it all.”

Nashara’s stomach flip-flopped. Prefight jitters.

“Approaching Agathonosis,” Jamar announced. His eyes remained closed, his skeletal frame strapped and webbed into the captain’s command chair. “No navigation buoys, no Port Authority. Oddly quiet around here.”

It was odd for a habitat to be so silent at the arrival of a ship. They usually had particular preferences about how to be approached, who docked where, and who was allowed to approach. Particularly ones with Satraps living in them.

The habitat floated high in orbit around Ys, an uninhabitable terrestrial world due to a series of nuclear wars on its surface hundreds of years before humanity ever took its first step into space. A large mirror hung between the habitat and any view of the planet, though, to help light up the interior in addition to the usual sunline.

“What you thinking?” Ijjy asked.

“Jamar, any ships docked? Anything floating nearby? It would be easier if we could raid them for fuel.”

Agathonosis was starting to feel like a graveyard.

“I’m not seeing anything. This is interesting.” Jamar opened his eyes. The front of the cockpit lit up to display a section of the habitat: a great expanse of gleaming glass down the central curve. Air steamed out of cracks, becoming crystalline as it froze and spewed out into space.

“The glass is covered in sediment,” Nashara observed.

“Sludge,” Sean said. “Like the entire ecosphere in there fell apart.”

“Some kind of attack had to have caused this. The Satrapy would never allow anything like that. They’re control freaks,” Nashara said.

“Even more reason to be alert,” Jamar said. “This is very strange. We already saw Dragin-Above destroyed by the Hongguo. Could they have done this as well?”