down and picked up Zoe’s cup. Before handing it back to the girl’s eager hands she warned; “Don’t throw it again, ‘kay?”
Zoe stared at the cup, not acknowledging the conditions of its return.
“If this hits the floor again, you’re gonna be on your own to pick it up.” Ashley reinforced as she handed the cup back.
Ashley leaned against the counter and looked around the room as she waited for Zoe to calm down before she walked back into the main medical bay. She didn’t know what to say to the people waiting outside, she knew they expected something from her, maybe not direct leadership but, something. “What would Captain do?” she asked herself aloud.
She tried to picture him, to remember how he spoke to her, how he treated the crew. He’d taught her so much; how to pilot a ship, how to be a part of a bridge team, even how to find her way through most port towns. There was more, a lot more, but he’d never directly started teaching her how to take charge of people. Her comm vibrated and she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw it was Oz. “How’s it going down there Ashley?”
“I’m surrounded by liberated slaves, Zoe’s had her first hissy fit, and I look like I haven’t showered in days. On the brighter side, we’re thirty one minutes out from our destination and deceleration has gone perfectly. Oh, and it looks like comms are working down here again, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking.”
She could hear him chuckle on his end. “Turns out the shielding around the charge chambers on a lot of the rifles manufactured on Triton burned through. Your copilot came up with a pretty simple solution.”
“He’s been a real gem. Took care of things while I caught some sleep, not that there was much to do but watch the auto pilot run my program.”
“I’m glad things are going smoothly down there. Everyone here is pretty anxious to get to a safe port. The fighting is over, the Captain surrendered, but there’s nothing left of the destroyer’s reactors.”
“Too bad, that’s a big ship. Is Agameg around? I could use his help.”
“He’s busy checking on the Botanical Gallery. I could send him up if it’s urgent.”
“I guess it’s not urgent. I’ll get on comms if I need him. Glad he’s nearby though.”
“It must be shoulder to shoulder down there, Agameg said there were a lot of volunteers.”
“You said it, there’s so many I almost couldn’t get to the bathroom. What do I tell ‘em? Now that things have calmed down, what should they do?”
“Just tell them the good news. Soon we’ll be in port and anyone who wants to stay can join the crew and help clean up. Then we’re probably taking a privateer contract.”
“What do they do?”
“Send them towards the Botanical Gallery in case Agameg needs help. There’s more space for them there anyway.”
“All right, thanks.”
“Oh, and Ashley?”
“Yeah?”
“We couldn’t have done it without you.” Oz didn’t give her a chance to reply before his signal closed.
Ashley took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Zoe put her hand over her pursed lips playfully when she was half finished. In response, she blew the last of her breath against the little hand, wheezing exaggeratedly and making a face. The toddler smiled around her cup, which seemed to have gone dry.
“Let’s go talk to some volunteers,” Ashley said to her charge.
It took a while for the group of liberated slaves to calm down after Ashley announced that the enemy Captain had officially surrendered and the fighting had stopped. Zoe was a little frightened and confused when they burst out into cheers but it didn’t take her long to realize that Ashley was smiling, so everything must have been all right. Before long she was looking around at the revellers with an uneasy smile, as though she were trying to understand why they were so happy.
When the group did calm down, Ashley told them that there was room for them in the Botanical Gallery, and within minutes half of them were gone, retracing their steps towards the centre of the ship.
“Ashley, this is David,” introduced Nerine from her left.
She turned to face the squared jawed man. He looked only a little older than herself until she looked into his eyes. They looked like they’d seen too much, and spoke of the man’s true age. There were holes across the chest of his vacsuit, all perfectly round burn marks. The bare skin underneath looked new, like Stephanie’s mended wounds after they first took the Triton. He held a Triton security rifle across his chest, only it looked like it had been through a full on war. The muzzle had melted back several millimetres, and sealant tape covered several parts of the weapon on the main body. His smile was open and disarming. “Good to meet you, Commander.”
“Thank you, David,” she offered. Ashley didn’t know what to say to him at first, but then it came to her. “We couldn’t have done it without you and your people,” she stated in earnest.
His smile faded, revealing the weariness it disguised.
Nerine’s arm went across his shoulders. All eyes were on them, but Ashley forgot everyone else at something she couldn’t help but recognize. It was something she’d seen on the Samson, right before one of the boarding team members, Amanda, left the ship at port and never returned. She’d nearly been killed when her weapon failed on a boarding action with Stephanie. When Ashley saw Amanda after that encounter in the mess hall, it was like a light inside her had gone out. The normally pleasant woman she’d come to know was gone. When she asked Stephanie about it after Amanda had left the ship for good, she wasn’t ready for the answer. “That’s what getting scared to death looks like Ash. People aren’t the same after that, especially if they weren’t ready for it in the first place.”
Ashley knelt down and whispered what she was sure she’d want to hear if she were in David’s place; “You’ll never be a slave again and you don’t need to hold a rifle to join this crew.”
A tear rolled down his cheek as a different kind of smile began to emerge. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Zoe offered him her cup, thrusting it at him eagerly. He laughed and put his hand up. “No, I think you should keep that.” The gun across his knees caught his eye then, and he carefully handed it over to someone standing nearby.
Zoe insisted, turning it and waving it in front of his face. “Well thank you, I’ll give it back when I’m done,” he said, finally taking it.
The conference room door opened. “Ashley, the wormhole is beginning to degrade, I need you.”
“Can we do anything to help?” Nerine asked.
Ashley looked to Zoe, whose big blue eyes looked back at her. “Would you like to play with Nerine and David for a while?”
Nerine stepped forward and took Zoe’s hand. “Hi Zoe, let’s let the Commander go to work for a while, okay?”
David stood up behind her, cleared his eyes and smiled at the toddler, who beamed at him.
Ashley tried to hand Zoe over to Nerine, an act that was met with desperate resistance as she gripped hair and whined. “Okay, we’ll try that in the conference room. Let’s go.”
Without hesitation she led the way into the conference room and slowly put Zoe down. David and Nerine were right behind her, and before the little one knew what as going on, the pair were kneeling down in front of her, asking what she wanted to do.
“What’re they doing in here?” Larry asked as though they weren’t within earshot.
“They’re going to take care of Zoe while we bring the ship into port,” Ashley replied as she looked at the profile of the wormhole they were travelling through. “Someone’s started an emitter on the other ship, it’s forcing the wormhole to degrade.”
“How far into the deceleration phase are we?” Dave asked as he watched Nerine pick Zoe up by the hands and gently swing her from side to side.
“Right at the end, I always plan trips so there’s room to spare.”
“Smart, most pilots only plan a drift time of five minutes at the end of wormhole.”
“You’re a pilot?”
“Nope, a mechanic. I’ve been on plenty of ships though.”
“Well, whoever wanted us to come out of this wormhole early is about to get their way. I’m not going to wait for the wormhole to go off balance. If we come out the wrong way or breach the compression wall we could get torn apart. Larry, how much longer will it take us to get to Carthan space if we emerge right now?”
“We’ll be a few minutes away at half power.”
