Page 16

Garnet

“W ait. Go back. Let me see the last diagram again.”

Obediently, Alred switched the holodisplay, giving Garnet another look at the inner workings of the cleaning bot she was trying to get working.

The Humility had a little mini-fleet of three cleaning bots. One for the public areas, one for the specialty areas – like the engine, the generator room, etc – and one for areas requiring a greater degree of sanitization, such as the galley and the privies. Exactly zero of the bots were functioning, while all of them had been gutted for parts at some point.

Garnet spent the last five days floating around waiting for the generators to fully recharge so they could swing again while fighting what was obviously a losing battle against the filth in this ship. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do. This was her only task. But even completely dedicated to only that – well, that and answering the almost immediate check in from Ikvar – it was a monumental task.

Goldie holed herself up in the medbay, trying to learn what everything was and organizing all the supplies out of the boxes. That alone was at least a two-man job. The rest of the ship was meant for a full crew to clean.

But Garnet was all by herself. She made the commitment to take care of this ship, and she wasn’t going to back down from challenge that even if it was hard. She found the discarded remains of the cleaning bots and was making attempts to Frankenstein them back into one functioning robot. It didn’t need to be specialized in cleaning anything specific. If she could get it to clean the halls, at least, that would cut her workload in half easily.

But this was advanced alien tech. Even if it was basically a little robot vacuum, it was beyond her capabilities. But she’d once been hired to gut and clean a computer, and she’d done that without breaking anything using a combination of terror sweat and videos online. She could certainly try to cobble something together here and hope it magically became functional.

Alred was actually invaluable in this endeavor. He knew quite a bit about machines – which made sense, seeing as he practically was one. He’d once had to operate a fleet of such robots, which he told her when she came to him with her plan to do this, asking for help. Alred’s body right now was the ship, but that wasn’t always true. He could be transplanted into other machines if they had AI capabilities or even just a big enough storage slot for his core. He once ran an entire starship recycling facility. Fixing a cleaning bot would be easy for him if he just had a pair of hands to do it.

With his know-how and her determination, they were making some progress. The real problem was that Vytln had taken so much from the three robots in order to repair the ship itself, there wasn’t much left that was useful.

But she was determined. And it wasn’t like she had anything better to do. They’d started their swing this morning. Thanks to the pills she and Goldie started today as well, she no longer had any symptoms of subspace sickness, which was a huge relief. The fact that Tanin made sure to get some from that annoying Captain Ikvar before they left just made her more determined to do a good job.

She may just be a cleaning lady, but she had her pride. She’d promised to do this and damn it, she was going to make sure it was a job well done.

“ I feel I should tell you, it’s past time for third meal.”

“What? Already?” Garnet’s head popped up from the body of the robot. It was about the size and shape of a medium sized shop vac, without the long tube or cord. She had the tank off and cleaned already. Now, the top was open, and she was digging around the internals. Her hands and overalls were covered in grease and dust. This outfit was quickly becoming unsalvageable.

“ Indeed, ” Alred bobbed his featureless head. “ And I believe that you biological creatures need to eat at least every few marks. And you skipped second meal. So, you should probably get some food before you pass out. ”

Garnet snickered, grabbing a rag to wipe her hands as she stood. “Didn’t you used to be a biological creature at one point, Mr. Fancy-No-Pants?”

“ I have been a tech based life form far longer than I was ever bio-illogical. I don’t even use the memories of what it was like to be squishy and bound to a singular form anymore. However, I am still aware that you bios eat. So, go eat. I don’t want to hear it from the captain if you collapse. ”

“I’m not going to pass out that quickly,” she chuckled, stepping from the storage room she had been working in. Vytln had all the tools and spare parts in his workroom, but she was warned not to go in there. Vytln very much liked his privacy. Which she could believe, seeing as he was the only crew member she could go an entire day without seeing. But it was also really hot in there. His workroom was right beside the engines, and the shielding in there was terrible. Vytln could tolerate it, but Alred assured her that she could be cooked alive if she stayed in there too long or went too deep.

So, she had to work with whatever she found around the ship that he hadn’t already claimed. She was going to have to hide whatever she managed to scavenge, however, so Vytln didn’t get them.

Before she went to the galley, she stopped by her room to wash up a bit. Tanin promised he would buy her and Goldie new clothes once they arrived at the next space station, but until then, she was stuck in this one outfit.

As fresh and clean as she could get, she then went to grab some food. She wasn’t surprised to find the galley empty. From what she observed of the others, it seemed like everyone on the ship just kind of wandered by whenever they were hungry, got some food, then returned to their rooms or workstations. Garnet could hardly condemn them for it since she was doing the same herself, but she did wish she had some company as she sat at the little table and quickly ate her farasie style porridge – it was the best meal that the food synthesizer created. Kind of fruity. Did well at covering the heavily artificial taste that infected everything the cheap machine made.

The food really wasn’t good. The synthesizer used this nutrition powder stuff to create the food, same as any other synthesizer, it just did it badly. She had no idea how, and part of her really didn’t want to know. But according to Alred, it frequently became clogged or dirty, so she’d have to figure it out sooner or later.

The powder was the cheapest brand. The machine itself was far past its functional lifespan and was therefore prone to glitching, sometimes not fully synthesizing the powder, and its memory could only hold so many recipes. At least the dish dispenser worked fine. It had a storage space in its back for the plates and bowls it deposited the food into, and a little return spot so it could clean and sanitize them afterwards. That whole system worked just fine.

But that was only because Vytln had been forced to fix it. It had apparently once stopped setting dishes down before the food and the mess had been wasteful and an awful job to clean. Apparently, the food tasting bad was more tolerable a problem because that’s where he’d stopped.

Her belly satisfied and her dirty dishes placed in the washer for cleaning, she left the room-

-only to come up short when she found herself nearly running into Trove.

“Watch it,” he chuckled, stepped back, his long tail sweeping around. “Almost knocked you out there, little lady.”

“Who’s little?” Garnet grinned, popping a hip. “Coming to get some grub?”

“Grub?” He looked confused before shaking his head. “I don’t eat grubs. You humans are odd.”

“That’s not… You know what, never mind. Let me get out of your way.”

“Oh, no. I wasn’t coming to eat. I was looking for you. Got a present for you.”

“Huh?”

Before Garnet could fully comprehend what he said, he was already pulling something off his belt and handing it to her. She took it without thinking. Before she even had a chance to identify the sleek, silver metallic body. Its shape wasn’t totally familiar, but it wasn’t alien either. Rounded in some places where she expected harsh lines while the front was spiral in shape, but she recognized a gun when she saw one.

She stilled, her hand going flat, as she looked at it in surprise. Had he seriously just handed her a weapon just like that?! Where was the trigger? What if she set this thing off somehow?!

“Don’t worry,” Trove chuckled, as though reading her alarm. “It’s on safety mode right now. You can’t shoot it by accident.”

That was something of a relief, though now she was wondering how safety mode was disengaged. But Trove didn’t appear at all concerned as she looked the device over.

It didn’t have a hole at tip of the barrel. Instead, the spiral of green light came to a point at the end of the muzzle like it would shoot a laser. It also didn’t have an obvious trigger like she would have expected. But it fit in her hand rather comfortably as she turned it around, surprised by its weight. It was lighter than she expected.

“You’re giving me a gun?” She asked, lifting her head.

“Made it for you.” He tapped the body. “Your hands are smaller than ours. So, had to craft a weapon that you could comfortably wield.”

“You made me gun?” She asked, smiling, a bit choked up, as she brought it to her chest. “That’s so sweet!”

He chuckled. “Figured if you were going to go running into danger, might as well equip you to do it properly. Got time for me to teach you how to shoot it?”

“Yes!” She yelled, bouncing on the balls of her feet, speaking over him before he could even finish the sentence fully.

He laughed. “Come on. This way. We got an artificial range in our training room. I’m the resident sharpshooter here. I’ll have you dishing out shots like a pro in no time.”

“This is so great,” she giggled eagerly, following after him as she looked down at the gun like it was a precious jewel.

She’d always wanted to learn how to shoot. But guns were expensive. Hell, bullets were expensive when you added them up. And there was just never enough time to actually learn. She hadn’t expected to get a weapon like this, but she was definitely excited.

They turned into the room she’d been calling the gym. It had a couple machines in it that Alred told her were used for weight training and cardio. There was also a lone lane along one wall that reminded her of arcade games. The kind where you stood at one end and threw things to the other. She knew it was a gun range, but Alred told her that she couldn’t use it without Tanin’s permission. And Alred couldn’t teach her anyway because he didn’t actually know how to shoot.

It was fascinating the things Alred didn’t know. Just by virtue of not having a body and therefore not needing to, he didn’t know how to do a lot of things in any way but theoretically. Yet, at the same time, he had incredibly deep, complex knowledge about so many other things, it seemed incongruous.

Trove took her to the front of the range and plucked the gun from her hands.

“Gun safety first,” he said, carelessly waving it in the air. “First of all, never ever, ever

never shoot this inside a starship. Not even for practice. This weapon is for terrestrial use only. It’s probably not powerful enough to shoot a hole in the side of the ship, but that’s a gamble every time it’s fired. Especially with a ship as old as ours. You will almost never see fights in space done with guns, simply because it’s a dumb idea. One stray shot in the exact wrong place, and we’re all dead. So, what I’m going to do is attach this here before I turn it on...”

As she watched, he pulled what looked like a button from the range. It was about the size of a quarter and dark red. He clicked it on the side of the gun, right on the muzzle, and immediately, the light spiral at the end went dark. It was still glowing, but it was a dim, gray kind of light.

“There. Now, it’s in practice mode,” he said. “It won’t actually shoot, but you can practice your aim here at the range. Now, take it. Nope. Not like that. Hold it like this.”

Garnet already had a pretty decent idea of basic gun safety. She wanted to learn, after all, even if she never got the chance to. But the safety tips Trove started giving her seemed just a bit… off.

A general rule on Earth was to never point a gun at anything you weren’t prepared to kill. In other words, never point it at anyone, even as a joke. Even if you were sure it wasn’t loaded.

Trove said, “Make sure you only point this at other people and not at any of us. Got it?”

On Earth, you always made sure to unload a gun if you weren’t using it.

Trove said, “You can dial back the power here, and that will act more like a stunning shot. But that’s stupid. Keep it set to high power. If you’re shooting someone, might as well do it right.”

On Earth, you weren’t supposed to keep your finger on the trigger unless you were imminently using the weapon, in case you twitched and fired it accidentally.

Trove said, “Make sure you always keep your finger here so you can shoot it instantly if you have to.”

“I feel like you’re giving me bad advice,” Garnet finally said, giving him a look. “I thought you said we were doing safety first.”

“This is safety first,” he said, baffled, like he genuinely might not realize what he was saying wrong. “This is the most important part of operating a gun.”

“So, shouldn’t you be telling me to never point it at anyone or to be careful of the trigger? Something like that?”

He scoffed, crossing his arms. “And what good will that do you? This is a gun. It’s not a toy. You’re not learning it to be a good little peacekeeper, protecting the people, or a hobbyist who wants to play at having power. It’s a weapon. It’s for dealing death as quickly and efficiently as possible. And that’s what I’m teaching you. Now, stop asking stupid questions and aim like this.”

Garnet was a bit doubtful as he showed her how to stand and aim. It just seemed wrong. But she followed his instructions, trying to at least get her stance right. She did still want to learn, but she didn’t want to learn the wrong thing…

But before she could express those feelings again, the sound of quiet footsteps made them both turn as Tanin approached from behind.

Garnet couldn’t stop herself from smiling upon meeting his gaze. Her heart jumped in her chest as her belly swooped delightfully.

The last five days they’d been waiting for the generators to recharge, she’d bumped into Tanin only a few times. He’d been working with Sway up on the bridge. And while she definitely needed to clean the bridge – it was terrible up there – she’d been distracted by the robot project.

Besides that, Tanin and Sway were working. Before they swung into subspace, they were plotting a course and making a docking reservation at the space station they were aiming for. Alred told her that they were going to a common trading station called Hon-Kal. There, they’d not only be able to sell off the gems they ‘acquired’ from King Gissrn, they’d also be able to buy everything that Garnet and Goldie might need. They were also going to buy more of the subspace sickness meds because, unfortunately, that station didn’t do ship updates and repairs.

However, there was a job waiting for them on Hon-Kal. Alred didn’t tell her exactly what it was, only that they would be able to pick up a package and take it further on to a mining colony station. And from the mining colony, they’d be able to swing to a different job, and from there, they would be within easy distance of a station that did do ship repairs – Hir-Fallow.

Other ships would be able to make the swing from Hon-Kal to Hir-Fallow in one go. It would be easy for them.

But the generators on the Humility were worse than she thought. Not only did they take forever to recharge, but Vytln had to keep his eyes on the crystals directly during the swing itself. He was the ultimate authority for how long they could be in a swing, and right now they were limited to three and a half days. Any more than that, they began to risk losing the ability to swing out and becoming trapped in subspace completely.

There was no rescue from that. No one could communicate outside of subspace once they were inside. No one would be able to track them within. There was no way to pull them out even if there was. If they couldn’t drop out under their own power, they were trapped within subspace until they died. The Humility would be just another ship added to a list of lost starships that had gone down that path and never returned.

That was a rather terrifying thought. Alred assured her that Vytln was an expert at running their generator, and he left plenty of space between the certain death of their crystals and how long they could remain safely in the swing, but it wasn’t all that comforting to hear.

The short swings they were required to make meant they were going to be leap-frogging their way to Hir-Fallow station. And since they were, they were taking jobs along the way. So, Tanin, Sway, and Alred had been plotting a zig-zagging path that would take them to their final destination while maximizing profit.

Tanin’s company wasn’t an ordinary delivery company. He wasn’t someone you could drop a package off with and get a guaranteed delivery date. He had a list of clients who wanted things transported, and he would choose who he would go to next based on convenience, how much they were willing to pay, and even based on how important he determined the job to be.

For the clients, it seemed like the short end of the stick, and it kind of was. But the things he transported and the places he transported them to meant that, if you were asking for his help, you had already run out of people to ask or pay. He had the benefit of picking and choosing his clients. If they could find someone else willing to do it quicker or cheaper or safer, then he wasn’t the company they were looking for anyway.

Last Chance Delivery would be a better name for his company in her opinion. Humble Delivery Service did not roll off the tongue very well.

But that wasn’t really the point, she’d come to realize. He was putting up a front. Hiding the past he’d hinted at but never truly shown her. He called it Humble Delivery because that’s the fantasy he was trying to show other people, not an actual identification of himself or his crew.

She dearly wanted a glance at the person behind his own front of humility. Who was Tanin behind the lie of the humble delivery boy?

He looked away from her, focusing on Trove.

“Vytln is calibrating the ship’s guns. Go help him.”

Trove blinked once before a wide grin broke out over his face. “Sure, cap. I’ll see you around, little lady.”

Garnet covered a giggle as he walked away, humming to himself, tail flicking with what could only be playfulness, before she focused on Tanin. He looked at the gun then up at her face, his expression impossible to read.

“He go over safety rules yet?”

“He told me not to point it at any of us, just others, and not to shoot it inside the ship,” she snickered.

“Good enough. Take your stance.”

Tanin was taking over the teaching process, it seemed. Garnet wasn’t upset about it. She had to fight to keep a wide grin off her face as she turned, bringing the gun up the way Trove just taught her, aiming downrange to the holo target hanging in the air.

She remained there, tight and still, acutely aware of Tanin’s eyes moving up and down her body. Looking at her to judge her form exactly as Trove had. Though it felt completely different with Tanin’s gaze caressing her.

“You ever use a weapon before?” He asked, voice incredibly close to her ear, making her shiver as she shook her head no.

“The stun stick,” she finally said. “Just the stun stick.”

“Those are mostly non-lethal. That’s not what I mean. Have you ever held a weapon with the intention of killing someone?”

She shook her head again.

Garnet was expecting it, but she still jumped when Tanin’s arms came around her. Sliding in from behind, his hands caressing down her arms until they were over hers, cradling the gun as he held her back against his chest.

“Have you ever killed anything?” He whispered in her ear, making her tremble.

She could only shake her head. She’d squished a few bugs in her day, but she didn’t think that was quite what he meant.

“It’s both harder than you think and easier than you can imagine.” His fingers were entwined with hers, both of them grasping the gun as he aimed it over her shoulder. “The key is to not think about it. Don’t get trapped in thoughts that there’s a person on the other end. It’s an enemy. It’s a threat. You have to remove it, or it will remove you.”

She shivered. Not just from his closeness, but from the chill of his words. It wasn’t lip service; he meant what he was saying. Tanin didn’t see someone at the end of his weapon as a person. They were an obstacle to be taken down.

“Are you scared?” He asked softly.

Garnet didn’t answer immediately. Mulling the question over.

Was she scared?

It was hard to tell. She was uneasy, but maybe not for the reason he thought. She wasn’t exactly comfortable with de-humanizing – for lack of a better word – the person at the other end of a gun. The fact that he could so easily, that the ‘safety’ tips she had been given were based more around who she killed rather than keeping her from killing, spoke to a darkness in their past deeper than she even suspected.

But that darkness didn’t repulse her. It didn’t deter her like it rightfully should. What did that say about her that she felt safe in the arms of a male so harsh and cold?

She pulled the trigger.