SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“And how well do those work out here, do you think?”

“How well do they work ?”

“You think they work well here in our dark neck of the woods? I’m just asking.”

“I don’t know.” Margo’s voice was way too tight in her throat. “I don’t know where we are.”

Rumer Pilgrim nodded. “Alright. Do you think every man always does exactly the job he’s supposed to, even when there’s no one to watch him do it, even when he’s far from home, in place he can’t stand?”

“Are you talking about Peacekeeping Officers?”

“I’m just talking about men. There’s a lot of men sent to do their jobs in the very deep dark of space where nothing thrives and no sound travels. How easy you think it would be for our family—this very powerful hypothetical family we’re talking of—to have a few such men in their pocket?”

“Somebody would say something,” asserted Margo, more loudly than she meant to. “Somebody would alert Sky headquarters.”

“They might,” said the captain levelly, “if they had any idea how to go about it. And if they didn’t mind a slow kind ‘a death. Starving’s slower than just about anything, you know. Your body holds on like a muther, eating away at all your fat, and then all your muscle…”

Margo stared at him, her stomach pitching with understanding she didn’t want. “What are you hiding in the cargo bay?” she blurted. “Who’s looking for it?”

Pilgrim paused, opened his mouth. Margo didn’t want to give him the chance to lie. “My name is Margo Glass. I’m Helena Glass’s daughter. I’m the daughter of a UN Security Council member, you stupid motherfuckers! If somebody’s breaking the law, if they’re starving people, you have to tell me. Understand? You have to tell me!”

“Young lady,” said the captain, but didn’t say anything more.

“ Say it!” Margo was suddenly snarling. “Say what you’ve got in the cargo bay!”

But of course, Margo could never really cow anyone, no matter how loud she shouted. It was easy, infuriatingly easy, for Pilgrim to pick her up, throw her into her cupboard, shut the door, and walk away.

Rumer let the air out of his chest, and felt himself sag. Kell looked at his captain with a cloud in his glass eye. “You still think we can carry this girl all the way to Black Oven? Look, I can’t speak for you, but I’m not prepared to die spoon-feeding a bunch of sad, sorry motherfuckers we’ve never even met, and I’m certainly not prepared to go to some new kind a’ interstellar prison because some UN Security cunt decides we kidnapped her whelp.”

Rumer couldn’t find anything to say, so he said nothing.

“We need to let her float, now, Rumer. We need to stick her inside the shuttle, give her some oatmeal and quick-bread, and let her float. And then we need to drop what we’re carrying quick as we can, and go back to doing somethin’ we know how to do.” Kell rubbed, and rubbed and rubbed the glass. “C’mon, man…I…we just can’t do what you’re tryin’ to do. We’re not built for it. Men like us don’t fix the shit-holes of this world, Rumer. We’re just…we’re a load a’ pirates.”

Rumer nodded heavily. “You are right about that,” he said. “I can’t think of what you’d call us but a load of damn, dirty pirates.”

There was a silence, during which Rumer wondered whether it would be possible to pre-program a route for the shuttle so that it would take her straight to Black Oven. That way, if her food and oxygen held out…and if nobody too bad picked her up when she got there…

That was when Diallo came in, not grinning. “We have company, Captain,” he said. “They appear to have finally made a decision about us. They want to board.”

It was a long, slow nightmare run to the bridge. And then Rumer looked on one of the biggest U.N. squadron ships he had ever seen. Still a ways off, it swallowed up the whole screen like a big, blue open-mouthed whale. “How do they keep finding us? What are they locking onto?”

“I do not know,” said Diallo, “I have picked off every signal I could find.”

“I think…I know.”

Rumer turned. The girl sat in the doorway of the bridge. She was out of breath. Her knees were bloodied. She must have dragged herself from the stern-end utility closet to the bridge, all the way across that steel floor. “Are these them?” she asked, “are these the kind of officers you’re talking about, who are working for…for somebody?”

Rumer jerked his head. “Any particular reason why you’re in here, Miss Glass?”

“I know what’s going on.”

“I’ll bet you do. You’re very clever at that. But if you wouldn’t mind headin’ back to your little room just now…”

“I know why the squad ship’s here. I know why they found us.”

Rumer stiffened, blinked. “Say what you mean, girl.”

The girl swallowed. “I have…a chip.”

“A chip?”

“I’m chipped. In case anything bad ever happens to me when I’m…it emits this low-level signal all the time, so people can find where I am.”

Rumer glared at her, this pretty, pale girl he once thought too fragile to live, his eyeballs hot. “And this was something you chose not to share with us?”

“‘Course not. She’s got friends who’d pat her head like a good little bitch-hound if she helps land people like us in prison,” said Kell. The way he looked at her even alarmed Rumer, angry as he was.

“Jesus.” Rumer pressed his palms into his eyes. “Well, you’ve certainly fucked us, kid, if that’s what you meant to do. I’d throw you straight out the air-lock if I thought it would do us any good, you hear me?”

Her green eyes looked frantic for the first time since he’d known her. “No!…I mean, I’m sorry, it’s just, it’s not something I really think about.”

“Not something you really think about? Is there anything you really think about? ”

The girl got angry at that. “My parents made me get it when I was eight, okay? I didn’t even know what it was supposed to do. It was just something that happened to me, like everything else in my fucking life. For God’s sake, if I really wanted all of you to go down on all kinds of charges…but I don’t!” She took a long overdue breath. “I don’t.”

“That’s comforting,” said Rumer. “You can tell them what perfect gentlemen we’ve been while they’re thundering all over our cargo bay gathering up our stolen goods to return them to people we won’t be able to get police protection from.”

“It wasn’t meant to be comforting, asshole.”

Rumer let out air. “What would you have me do, girl? What is it you’d like to do?”

“I want to help,” said Margo. The eyes blazed bright, now, not brittle at all. “Let me help.”

It wasn’t a very good plan, Margo knew. It would have been a better one if they’d roughed her up a bit first, or cut off her pinky toe like she’d suggested (“It grows all wrong, anyway. And it’s not like I’m using it.”) But even Kell had been too pussy to do it. She hoped the dustpan looked like a horrible enough place that it would still be believable. It was too late to reconsider.

The com-link connected on the third try, and the other ship picked up.

“You are speaking to a representative of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. Please identify yourself.”

Rumer was ready with the apple sack over his head. “I am what you might call an independent profiteer looking to do some business. If you would, please inform Secretary Glass that we have her precious little daughter, and are interested in discussing the terms under which she may be returned in one piece.”