Sure enough, hanging out and minding its own aggravating business directly in front of us was a mining drone thrice the size of the Kaitan, busy latching itself on to smaller asteroids. Five or six metal tentacles whipped out and grasped the rocks, and a beam of energy projected from the front of the dome. The asteroid split, and piece by piece the fragments were sucked into the drone’s circular maw. We were headed directly for it.
That managed to wake me up a bit. I hit the comm button. “Uh, excuse me, but drones don’t take very kindly to anyone getting close to their fields.”
“Thank you, newbie.” The captain drop-kicked me back into place. “Please focus on your job. Everyone, we’re completing the run.”
I stared, somewhat slack-jawed, as we closed the distance to the drone much faster than I could fully appreciate. What I had said was an understatement—the drones were from a bygone era, but their programming was still running even though no one had tended to them in hundreds of years, and their security protocols remained as active as their mindless tasks. They would decimate anyone who drew close enough to interfere with their mining. Younger captains, and many complacent older ones, had lost their ships or their lives from drawing too near to them. Say, about as near as we were drawing now.
“Telu?” Qole’s voice wasn’t concerned, but it was inquiring.
“No worries, Cap,” Telu’s voice responded, sounding for all the world as though she were promising to sweep the floors later in the day.
I opened my mouth to yell at them all for their insanity, when the drone wobbled, rotated ninety degrees, and fired itself with savage speed at a giant asteroid in the distance.
“Suck it, Dracortes,” Telu said.
Normally I would have laughed, since suck it and Dracortes weren’t things one often heard in the same sentence. Instead, I gasped. Drones never left their allotted task before they were done, and that could only mean that Telu had managed to temporarily redirect the programming. Not unheard of, but usually accomplished only by carefully chosen people who had studied for years in restricted academies. To her, it was a common chore.
My thought was eclipsed by Shadow flaring inches from my face.
I blinked and shook my head. The world had altered around me; I was looking at the ceiling instead of the wall. It took me a moment to realize I was now on my back on the floor, ringed by several people in various stages of emotion: Telu looked relieved, Basra unmoved, and the new arrival distinctly displeased.
Captain Qole Uvgamut, my brain informed me, even as I tried to reconcile that with who I was seeing. I knew her rank, her reputation, and her voice, and yet she still wasn’t what I had expected.
She was young. Much younger than I’d imagined. I’d heard she was only seventeen, but the command in her tone had made that hard to believe. A glance, from upside down and on my back, was proof enough. Her long black hair was held in a braid down her back, and she was dressed in an odd combination of warm clothing. Unlike workers in other subsystems who used synthetics, they wore local leather and furs on the Kaitan, because of the remoteness of Alaxak and the cost of shipping from offworld. Affordability aside, hers must have been tailored for her, because while they looked comfortable, they also hugged her figure in ways that made my eyes want to linger. Otherwise she looked about as warm and inviting as a knife. High cheekbones sharpened the curves of her oval, medium-toned face, and her dark eyes were quick to narrow.
“How in the systems did that happen? Did you let a canister overflow?” Qole didn’t raise her voice, but I shrank back anyway as I sat up.
I reached out for balance as I tried to stand, but Qole evidently thought I needed help and clasped my wrist. Her hand was warm, and her grip left no doubt that it would hold until I was on my feet. In fact, she hoisted me up with enough speed to stagger me forward. I could have caught myself, but instead I stumbled against her arm. Her slight frame was unmoving, braced with excellent balance, as my fingertips pressed into her and managed to stick the nearly invisible biometric sensor onto the inside of her wrist. In spite of making myself look like a drunk, I had finally accomplished one useful thing today.
“Um…maybe?” I responded, stepping back. “There was a drone, and tentacles of death, and…”
“Yep, that’s what went down,” Telu supplied helpfully. “The canister overpressurized and leaked Shadow into the hold. The safety system closed the maglock when the blowback happened, but it must have been strong enough to give him a knock.”
“Oh, Great Collapse.” Qole grabbed her hair and scrunched it up, pulling strands out of her braid. “That’s the same problem we had with the other blasted idiot. I should have known this wouldn’t work out.” She bent over and began to savagely stack some of the scattered containers. “Basra, comm Arjan and Eton, would you? We need to get into position for the next flare, see if there will be another run.”
An idiot. That was all I was after all this—eighteen hours of backbreaking, repetitive labor. She’d dismissed me, just like that. All that to earn her respect and trust, and instead I get her contempt.
I felt myself flush with anger. I couldn’t hold it in; I was too exhausted, and the pain in my skull only added more of an edge to my words. “Have you considered you wouldn’t have these problems with blasted idiots if you directed even a fraction of the energy you spend on risking everyone’s lives toward designing a better system to store Shadow more safely and efficiently?”
Qole went still. “Excuse me?”
Warning klaxons jangled in my head, all of which were firmly ignored. “You’re excused. But just so we’re clear, your incredibly fancy flying to gather up everyone’s next paycheck won’t do us any good when we’re are all dead, from either exhaustion or a Shadow explosion.” I gestured at the canister that had nearly knocked my brains out.
She fixed me with a steady gaze that shrank a portion of my anger. Well, a lot of my anger. Telu backed away a little, and Basra had magically relocated to the far side of the hold. But in for a reentry, in for a free fall, as the saying went. Besides, I wasn’t about to back down when I knew I was right. The rough-edged captain, intriguing and impressive though she might be, wasn’t about to intimidate me when I’d dealt with powers so far beyond her station it was laughable.
“I don’t see anyone dead.” Qole started to let heat into her words. “And since it’s your ignorance of your job that led to the accident, I’m dying to know how you think we could do better.”
“My profound and unending apologies for being momentarily concerned for the intact status of my hide, your hide, and everyone else’s on this ship,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster—which was significant, given the circumstances. “Next time, consider saving up for a proper containment hold instead of having people run ragged trying to manage a cargo that this ship was never designed to carry in the first place.”