Drifters' Alliance, Book 2 (2 page)

“Damn, boy. Sleeping on garbage scows again?”

He gives me a silent snarl and drops down into a chair, letting his head fall to the back of it. His eyes close as he sighs. “Remind me why I thought it was a good idea to engage you in conversation that day?”

It was three years ago, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. I can’t stop smiling. “Don’t act like you regret it now. You’re the first lieutenant of a DS and you’re only twenty-one.”

His head tilts in my direction as his eyes open. “The shittiest DS in the universe. Yeah. So proud.”

If I had a fork, I’d throw it at him, but the table isn’t set yet. I lift my chin to throw my voice toward the connected galley. “Jeffers, you need any help in there? Baebong is offering.” I wink at my friend, and he flips me off.

“No, I’ve got it under control.” He sounds happy, and that makes me less worried about the response to my wake-up call. Happy cooks means happy stomachs for the rest of the crew.

Lucinda is next. She doesn’t have a hair out of place, and her lab coat is blindingly white. Baebong watches her out of almost closed eyes, pretending like he’s not really noticing her, but I know differently. It makes me wonder if he’s checking her out like he would a woman he’s interested in or if he’s trying to figure her out. It
is
kind of weird how she doesn’t look like she’s slept or even needs to, so I’m guessing it’s the latter.

“Good morning,” she says, pulling out her chair and sitting down. She folds her hands in front of her and places them on the scarred wood surface, looking first at me and then at Baebong across the table.

“Morning,” I say brightly. “You look well-rested.”

“I don’t know why I would,” she says, a slight scowl marring her features.

“Why?”

“Because. I haven’t slept yet.”

I close my eyes and let my breath out really slowly in an attempt to calm myself. My first reaction is to get pissed. Doesn’t she know that we need to sleep when we can? Is she that stupid and naive about the ways of the Dark? How long has she been out here, anyway?
Please let it be longer than she’s been on this ship.
The last thing I need is a gloob on board. The lack of knowledge makes them dangerous for everyone.

“You didn’t sleep?” Baebong asks, making no attempt to hide his disgust.

She sits up straighter. “No. Is that a problem for you or something?”

Oh boy. She really is a gloob.
I hold up my hand in an attempt to stop Baebong from offending her. There has to be a diplomatic way to say this … I just need to focus and think of what it is.

Baebong beats me to the punch, and he’s not at all worried about sparing her feelings, apparently. “Yeah, that is a problem. It’s a problem for everyone. Only an idiot skips a sleep session out in the Dark. Don’t you know anything?”

She glares at him. “I know a lot of things, actually. Like how biogrids need constant attention, and how if you neglect things that need doing, you lose plant-life; and if you lose plant-life, you lose human life. Kind of important, don’t you think?”

He scowls. “Your plants can stand to have you gone for eight hours.”

“No, actually, they can’t.”

The conversation is interrupted by Rollo entering the room. “Hey, everybody!” He reaches for the chair next to Baebong, but with one look from my friend is immediately dissuaded from taking it. He moves down two more spaces before Baebong stops trying to bore holes into his face. Rollo’s directly to my right now, and I nod as he raises his eyebrows and slowly pulls the chair back, giving him my assent to his choice.

“Have a seat.” I want him close so I can get a better bead on his reactions to the things I’m going to say today. He’s still a mystery, and that makes me nervous. There are way too many questions where he’s concerned, like: why did he choose my ship to stow away on … was it out of convenience or purposeful? Or was it Langlade’s ship he was aiming for, and he just had a bad day with me becoming the new captain? And why was he leaving the station at all? Did he get involved in a bad deal and need to escape, meaning I’ll have to check my six every ten minutes to make sure there isn’t an angry trader following him?

Rollo sits down and rubs his hands together, distracting me from my inner future interrogation of his person. “What’d Rollo miss?” He couldn’t look more innocent, which totally throws me off. I cannot figure out if his expression and body language are natural or completely feigned. If it’s all a sham, I have to give him credit; he’s good. Really good.

“Nothing,” I say, giving Baebong a look that says he needs to keep his mouth shut for now. Hopefully, the little speech I’m planning to give will satisfy him that Lucinda’s mistakes won’t be repeated.

Jeffers appears with a tray covered in glasses, each with something brownish-orange inside. “Fresh squeezed juice to celebrate our first breakfast together as a crew under Captain Cass,” he says, placing it on the table to the right of Lucinda. He busies himself with transferring them from tray to table. “I hope you’re in the mood for fritters.”

“What’s a fritter?” Baebong asks.

“What’s a fritter?” Lucinda says with a laugh.

“Yeah. That’s what I said. What’s a fritter.” Baebong isn’t seeing the humor in the situation, and I know why. He’s never been a Have, always struggling by as a Havenot. I know less about his background than he knows about mine, but I figured out long ago from his behaviors and habits that he’s probably ingested more food pellets than all of us combined. Fritters are food for the Haves.
 

I lift my hands up and grab everyone’s attention by clapping them together once, loudly. “Hey! Where are the twins?”

“Probably still sleeping,” Lucinda says, shrugging and back to being bored with our company.

“How could they possibly sleep through that trumpet?” Rollo asks.

“They’re in the engine room,” Lucina says. “It’s pretty loud in there.”

I nod at Rollo. “Go wake them for me, please. I need to get this meeting started.”

“Meeting? What meeting?” Baebong asks, as Rollo leaves the room.

“You’ll see.”

He rests his hands on the table, his face reddening. “And when were you going to tell your
first lieutenant
about this meeting, huh?”

My mistake comes to me in crystal clear magnovision; I’ve disrespected my number one guy. My friend.
Again
. I hiss out a breath, pissed at myself. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you about it first. It’s just that you were sleeping…” My excuse sounds lame even to my own ears, and I can tell he’s not buying it by his expression and his response, so I cut myself off and wait for the reprimand I deserve.

“Yeah, well, you don’t seem to mind waking people up before they’re ready to get up, so feel free next time.”

I nod. “I will. I promise.”

Lucinda is watching us, her head swiveling left and right during the conversation. Now she’s staring at me, but I can’t tell if she’s angry or confused.

“I thought this was a dictatorship,” she finally says.

“It’s a modified dictatorship. I’m the captain, but I appreciate input. Do you have any input to share with me this morning?” I’m anxious to move past my mistake with Baebong.

“As a matter of fact, I do. I need help in the biogrid. Like I said, I didn’t sleep, and contrary to popular belief …” She pauses to glare at Baebong before continuing. “…Biogrids do not manage themselves. They need careful and constant monitoring.”

Baebong’s mouth opens, and I’m sure he’s about to ask her if she’s foregone sleeping for the entire eleven months she’s been here, but I cut him off at the pass. “No problem. Consider it done.”

Baebong’s eyes go as wide as they can, which isn’t much, but on him is still impressive. “I hope you don’t think I’m…”

I shake my head and lift my hand, cutting him off. “Nope.” I look over at the entrance to the room as Rollo re-enters and grin at him. “Welcome to the DS Anarchy and its biogrid, Rollo. Your new workplace. And meet your new boss.” I gesture over at Lucinda.

She tries to hide the smile I know is bursting to get out. There’s relief there too. I make a mental note to find out just how stressed she is working in there. Maybe she needs two helpers. If so, I’ll have to pick one up at the next station, because we don’t have any spare brownshins on this boat right now.

Rollo points at his chest, pausing in the empty space between the door and the table. “Rollo?”

I nod. “Yes. Rollo.”

“You expect
Rollo
to work on a biogrid?” He seems frozen in place, standing in the middle of the room.

“Fully and completely.”

“But Rollo isn’t a member of this crew.”

“Rollo is a
temporary
member of this crew until I say he isn’t.” I hold onto the arms of my chair lightly, steeling myself for a possible argument.

His face twists up. “That’s kidnapping and forced labor. Illegal in any system.” He folds his arms over his chest and tries to look tough, only it doesn’t quite work for him. It could be the fact that his shirt is buttoned up incorrectly, with two stray buttons at the bottom making the left half of his shirt hang down too long, or the fact that he’s not completely right. I know from experience that stowaways forfeit most of their rights just by being on the wrong boat.

I shrug, taking a sip of my juice before I answer. “Fine. Have it your way. Personally, I’d choose brownshinning it to floating, but whatever.” I gesture at the juice. “Fresh juice for your farewell meal.” I grin. “Some guys have all the luck.”

Rollo is running through the calculations in his head, I can see it in his eyes, the way they’re darting around. We’re drifting at the coordinates we gave Beltz so that he can find us after he talks to the other Alliance members, which means we aren’t going anywhere special for the time being — certainly not to any space stations where Rollo might be able to jump ship and find another sucker to stow away with. And we have no personal craft bayed up, so it’s not like he can hijack a rig and take off. He’s well and truly stuck with us out here in the middle of nowhere, and now he realizes it. The resignation is written all over his face.

He takes his seat next to me and sighs. “Rollo can work on a biogrid for a short time. He’s not a brownshins by nature, but he can adapt in an emergency.”

“Good.” I raise my glass to him. “I’m glad we understand each other.”

Jeffers enters the room with a covered tray at the same time the twins arrive. Neither of them has bothered to assemble themselves into anything related to presentable, but it doesn’t matter to me this morning. After today, however, things will be different at my table.

“Glad you could make it,” I say, standing and gesturing to the empty seats at my left. “Please find a place and have a seat. I have a few things I’d like to say, and we need to get started on my plans right away. Immediately after this meal. I don’t want to waste any time.”

Gus looks at his brother with a worried expression that he then turns on the rest of the crew at the table. “Plans? Did she say plans? Why did the hair on the back of my neck just stand up?”

“Because,” Baebong says and then snorts, “you have good instincts.”

Chairs make scraping sounds on the floor as my crew forces the furniture out of their magnetic stays so they can take their seats. I wait until everyone is settled and looking at me before I continue.

“Hello, everyone … and welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.”

Chapter Three

JEFFERS BEGINS TO DISH UP the food as I move on with my speech. “We’ve only been together for a short time, but in that period, I’ve come to learn quite a bit about you and this ship.”

Gus grins. “All good things, I hope.”

“No. Not exactly.”

His expression falls. “Oh. Shit.”

“First of all, this ship needs a serious cleaning. I’ve never been on a filthier DS in my entire life.” Considering the fact that I have nothing written down and everything’s coming off the cuff, I’m pretty happy with how easily the words are rolling off my tongue.

“How many DSes have you been on, exactly?” Rollo asks.

“None of your business.”
So much for being happy with my speech.
I glare at him for a second before continuing, gazing out at the rest of the crew in an effort to gauge their reactions to my plans. “As soon as we’re done here, Gus and Tam, I want you to run a vacuum cycle on the entire place.”

“Everywhere?” Tam asks. “Because that’s a big power suck.”

Time to dispel any notions that I don’t know exactly how my ship works.
I fix Gus and then Tam with a stare. “So? We’re not going anywhere. And as you well know, quantum vacuum fluctuations inside our engines create random dionic particles, and our thrusters turn those particles into plasma to fuel our operations by expelling them out the back of the ship. You can put us on a centrifugal path and use that potential energy to power our cycles. Just set up the power-capture array, activate the space junk vaporizers, and aim the remaining power resources at the cleaning. We’ll be fine.”

“You know your stuff,” says Tam, nodding in respect along with pretty much everyone else around the table. Baebong looks proud to know me. My heart soars, but I remain impassive on the outside.

“But … what if one of those warships shows up? Or a scavenger?” Gus asks.

My heart stops soaring as everyone stops nodding and waits for my answer. He’s giving voice to the fears of many, apparently.

“We’ll have ample warning, and we can pause the cycle to deal with anything that crops up. Baebong and I will be on the flightdeck with eyes-on.”

I look around the table and don’t detect any outright disagreement, so I continue, energized by the fact that everyone seems to be accepting my rule so easily. “Next, we have blood contracts to sign.”

I get a mix of blank stares and outright panic. No one looks happy besides Baebong.

“Is that a problem?”

Lucinda is the first to speak. “Langlade never used them. He didn’t need to.”

I lift a brow at that. “Oh, really? You’re talking about the guy who had an entire Level-G biogrid growing under his nose, right?
That
Langlade?”
Didn’t need a blood contract, my ass.
I barely hold in the snort that wants to escape my sinus cavity.