Gareth was on the canned tomato aisle when he heard the shots. The shooting was over, he’d thought, and so he became concerned when he saw one of the older pirates come scrambling over towards him with something approaching unrgency. He looked up, for once not smiling, as the man caught himself on the metal shelving.
“Somethin’ happen?”
“Your friend. He’s shot.”
Gareth wasn’t really a runner, but with legs the length his were he could move when he wanted to. Plowing straight through the messenger and sending him flying into the canned olives which for some unknown reason were with the canned tomatoes instead of the jars of green olives located three aisles over, Gareth sprinted back toward the front end. When he arrived and surveyed the scene he found himself surprised by the sight of Jeliah, covered in blood and with her hands pressed on James’ throat. He knelt beside her.
“Can you pick him up?”
“Aye.”
“Do it. I’ll keep my hand on.”
Gareth hoisted James’ choking body so quickly and so high that if not for her heels Jeliah would have lost her grip.
“Slow down! If I lose him, we lose him. Now- the hatch.” Gareth saw Grant slide purposefully toward the airlock and open the hatch. They carefully stepped through. Gareth could feel James’ body starting to limpen.
“’e’s bleedin’ out, ma’am.”
“I know how gunshots work. Keep walking.”
They crossed the threshold and Gareth guessed they’d had the radio cut, because the instant they did Jeliah shouted to the Vice-Captain.
“Gorge! Medic!” He relayed the command and turned.
“Plan go as planned, then?”
“No, it went better. We had a climber. He shot his shipmate and this one got the follow-through.”
“Well at least it’s the runt, right?”
If Gareth hadn’t been holding James he might have done something regrettable at that moment. James was lazy and selfish, and yes, maybe a little small, but he was also his friend. Not to mention the vested interest Gareth had in James’ life to begin with, given their introductory circumstance. Still, he was holding his friend and walking toward the medic, hoping they’d meet in the middle and sooner rather than later because James was losing a lot of blood and his breaths were ragged and gargling. Fortunately, Jeliah had a hand free and used it to shoot Gorge in the foot, at which he dropped, howling something confused which Gareth chose not to hear because if he knew what the man was crying about he would feel sympathy and he didn’t want to feel sympathy at the moment. Jeliah looked at Gareth and nodded. They saw the ship’s doctor rush around the corner with a blood pump and a stabilizer. Gareth let out a gigantic sigh of relief and kept walking.
“You got him, big man?” the doctor asked, jamming the pump into James’ arm with one hand and the stabilizer into his throat with the other.
“Yea’. Jus’ tell me where ta go. Ain’t been by to see you yet.”
“Fair enough. Take a right up here…that’s it. Captain, it’s under control. You’re done here. Go finish up.” Jeliah shot one more glance at Gareth, which he later considered to be more concerned than he would have previously thought- she was a pirate captain, after all, and gunshots had to be fairly common- and then let go of James. Gareth kept carrying and following the doctor’s orders until they got to the medical bay, where he set James down on a gurney and collapsed into a chair. He watched while the doctor worked.
A few hours later he was poked awake by Jeliah, who handed him a cup of coffee.
“From the deli on that ship.”
“Thanks, cap’n.”
She smiled, which Gareth found nicer by a surprising margin than her severe Captain Face, and replied “Jeliah, for now. And it’s garbage, but it was there.” He smiled back and took a sip, which he nearly coughed back out.
“Bitter.”
“Yeah, the dumbasses burned the beans and then over-brewed it. The only way to get good coffee is with a press anyway, and at that point you might as well just get espresso. Makes me mad that people just go around buying this kind of shit…I mean, don’t they know it’s disgusting? They’re missing out on SO much. Have you ever had the good stuff? From Arabica? It’s really the only planet that does it right. Costs a little more, and it can get poisonous if you brew it wrong. But if you’re gonna brew it wrong you might as well die anyway. That shit’s gold. Nothing like this, y’know?” She looked at him expectantly and, finding he didn’t want to disappoint her, he nodded and turned back to James. She seemed a little down at the moment, and Gareth almost smiled just to cheer her up. Then he remembered he was looking at his friend hooked up to a machine after that friend had lost roughly half his blood because of a gunshot through the throat and realized he didn’t feel much like smiling. He wished he was still asleep. A beeping sound was coming from one of the machines, which Gareth was pretty sure was a good sign. He didn’t really know. It could have been a Death Alarm that everyone was just ignoring, because if a Death Alarm was going off what could you do? It signaled Death. Then again, why would you have an alarm that indicated a state in which you couldn’t do anything. That seemed pointless. It all kinda seemed pointless now.
“Did you know him long?”
“’Bout a week.”
“Uh…”
“Saved his life once already.”
“Unlucky guy.” He glared at her. Maybe her smile wasn’t so nice after all. She looked down again. “Sorry. It’s just, I get weird around people when they’re dying-” He glared harder, which was no small thing given his size. He knew how menacing he could be when it was needed. “-I mean, not that he’s dying, or anything, but, just-”
“Jus’ shut up, Cap’n.”
“Shit.”
He looked back to James and rubbed his head in his hands.
“What’s his name?”
“Can’ shut up, eh?”
“I guess not…”
When he’d put James on the gurney his wallet had fallen out. Gareth remembered he’d picked it up, and handed it to her.
“Jason Morris.”
“Ye-wait, what?”
“Jason Morris?”
Gareth let out an involuntary guffaw, the kind of bone-shaking room-rattler that only gigantic people can make accidentally, and took the I.D card back from her. She looked at him quizzically.
“Blind man typed that.” She continued staring, obviously uncomfortable with the idea that a blind man might be typing official I.D.s. Then again, she’d never worked for Gasocorp. “Sure did. See, had ta go the ’roundabout way o’ getting’ him on on t’ Albright. Man’s got a printin’ station and all of it. Yeh pay him, he prints it, and hacks you in. Then yer official and it don’ take months, see. His name’s James.”
“Wouldn’t they know?”
“Know what?”
“That he didn’t belong?”
Gareth started to laugh again. She’d been sheltered, that was clear. Explaining Gasocorp made him forget what he was actually doing though, murky as the subject was, so he continued.
“Gasocorp’s the one gave ‘im the personnel password. If they had ta rely on ’emselves to keep the ranks stocked they’d go under in a week. Jes’ a way ta make it work. All the higher-ups know.” He saw the irritation in her face as she looked at the fake-but-official ID card and wondered what the problem was. How else was Gasocorp supposed to run things? The bureaucrats had to have jobs too, and how could they keep them if they weren’t gumming up the works? And what about the ID man? How else would he earn a living. But here she was, running a ship of her own- a business, if Grant had the right of it- and not a bureaucrat aboard. No desks, either, and everyone standing all the time. Funny way to run a company but clearly one that worked, he supposed… though if he were running a business that way he suspected he’d be happy, whereas she just looked glum.
“What’s wrong?”
“A company has an official employment black market to keep itself stocked with low-level employees for no other reason than to give a bunch of people who like to say ‘No’ jobs, is angrier when its ships aren’t destroyed than when they are, and is so unconcerned with the human element that it doesn’t even need the correct names for its employees…and you think I’m the one who needs to catch up. I can see it in your face. That’s what’s wrong. Can’t you see how fucked that is?”
“Now that you mention it, I been curious ’bout something.”
“What?”
“Don’t this ship model come with a language sensor?”
She threw up her hands in disgust. “I disabled it. Pisses me off when I can’t say what I want to say. It’s bullshit that Big Spaceship thinks they can dictate my speech, and I know better hackers than the amphetamined teenagers they’re employing. That’s really your only question?”
“Nah. I wonder ’bout lots of stuff. That was just the only pressin’ one.”
“You don’t wonder about how to change things? About how to get in the door of a system like that- one so closed they can’t even handle their own employment needs via normal channels? About who the hell actually wants to run a galaxy that way? Gasocorp is massive- it’s the biggest corporation out there. How is that possible? You don’t think about that?”
“Not really. Sorta seems to work itself out, don’t it?
She growled, upset. He wasn’t too worried about it, but something told him she had it in her to do what she said. Maybe he’d wind up caring about it after all. She seemed pretty persuasive, and if her real crew meant at least as much to her as James and he seemed to at the moment -making her come down here when she had one ship to plunder and another to run- maybe it’d be worth it to stick around and find out how she thought things ought to be done. He turned back to James.
“Is he gonna be ok?”
“Doc says he should be. Might have a deeper voice. Needs to rest.” She stood. “So do I. So do you.”
“Yeh just gave me coffee.”
“Fair point. Go to your bunk in a bit, try to sleep. That’s an order…uh…well I learned his name. What’s yours?”
He leaned over and pulled out his ID, tossing it to her. She started laughing, and he finally decided her smile was nice after all.
“Get some sleep. That’s an order Grak.”
“Gareth. And sure.”
