Chapter Text
Avery Quinn, starship captain extraordinaire, steps through the airlock of his beloved ship.
Hah, yeah. As if he could carry off that kind of gravitas.
In reality, Avery Quinn, semi-boss of his five closest friends, is leaving the Sunbeam onto a grubby Alterra station in the back of nowhere. They’re somewhere out in the Ariadne Arm, shipping valuable metals between the independent outposts and larger trans-gov installations, making their living on the profit margins they eke out by buying cheap in a dark corner of the galaxy and bargaining like mad on the sale price.
He does not like Alterra. They’re money-grubbing bastards, and their higher officers tend to have similar stingy and profiteering tendencies, demanding a cut on any transaction. Which is kind of a little bit like what he does, but he’s still introducing value here, dammit! Fuel doesn’t come cheap and lugging minerals light-years between podunk stations is a thankless job; they might as well get paid for their labour, and well if he has anything to say about it. Alterra toadies are the worst kind of middle management, doing make-work and bossing people around. The only thing they add is red tape.
It's one of those flunkies that Shay’s arguing with now, debating over the price of the titanium ore being unloaded from the Sunbeam’s spacious cargo holds. “Twenty credits a ton?” they exclaim, throwing their hands up. “Twenty credits? It costs more than twenty credits to haul that damn weight from Meroc to here! You give us fifty a ton or I’m walking.”
“Twenty’s the going rate and twenty’s all we’ll pay,” says the flunky, unmoved.
Shay looks like they’re resisting the urge to spit on him. “Listen, mister Alterra man. Your sainted company can set its price minimums all it likes, but unless you pay us fifty, you’ll be paying seventy to some cutthroat Mongolian in six months when you run out of material for your fabricators. Unless you want to ask head office to send some of their cheap shit your way.” They grin. “Can’t imagine they’d be happy about having to spend money on freight.”
The flunky is starting to look unnerved now. As he should be. Shay’s bargained with tighter purse-strings than his, and they’ve always gotten a good price. They can talk the tail off a starwhal and convince it to pay them for it afterwards. Plus, on the way in Mahala had spotted some nasty dents for a recent meteor storm – they need metal to fix it, and even stingy Alterrans will pay up when the alternative is depressurization. “Listen, miss-“
“That’s mx to you, mister,” Shay says warningly.
“Mx, then. We can’t pay you fifty. Head office would have our hides.” He fidgets nervously. “I suppose we could nudge it up to twenty-five considering the hardship-“
“You’re kidding, mate. The lowest I’d go would be forty, and that’d be skimming real deep on our budget. Either you give us a good offer or we go sell to someone more reasonable.”
They’re lying brazenly, of course. Avery’s double-checked their financials and they’re comfortably in the black. Anything above thirty a ton would be enough profit to make the trip worth it. That said, Shay hadn’t been lying when they’d said Mongolian traders would charge nearly double that, since they’d be paying top dollar in the first place from the bigger mining companies. Satisfied that the quartermaster will get the deal done, he grabs his PDA and makes for the dock office.
“Quinn!” As he walks in, the harbourmaster grabs his unimpeded hand and shakes it vigorously, laughing. “Been a good while since we’ve seen you in this corner of space. Was starting to think those hostile aliens had come back to finish the job.”
Avery smiles faintly, racking his brains to try to remember the guy. Fuck, he wishes he had Kailani’s memory. “Hah, yeah. Haven’t seen you since – when was it again?”
“Still remember you limping into the station, man. Boosters half blown off and patched to oblivion. Your engineer’s a tour de force to have kept you running that long.”
Avery winces. It’s (unpleasantly) coming back now. Johnson, that’s his name, had been here two years back after their… escapade with that water planet. He hasn’t thought about that one in a while, and doesn’t particularly want to relive it. “Yeah, Mahala’s Mongolian-trained, and those guys have to plan for contingencies out in the remote parts.”
“Was sure interesting, though,” Johnson continues, utterly blind to Avery’s discomfort. “Never seen a ship get so bashed up. I’ll tell you, you had the place buzzing for weeks after you left about alien marauders.” There’s a mocking tinge to the guy’s voice. It would piss him off if he wasn’t kind of sympathetic. No one had believed them when they’d said it’d been some kind of alien superweapon that had blown them to pieces – they’d all just assumed Avery was bullshitting to cover for getting smashed up by the debris field. Which is frankly insulting. He’s no genius, but he’s manoeuvred through enough nasty space junk and asteroid belts to clear one unscathed.
“Yeah.” Avery stifles a groan. “Look, can we just process this paperwork? I wouldn’t wanna hold you up.”
“Sure.” Johnson opens his own tablet to let Avery flick the registrations over. “I assume you won’t be staying. Your ship’s not in bad enough shape to need dry dock.”
“Nope,” says Avery with unfeigned cheerfulness. “We’re doing another run out to port in the Mongolian States. Somewhere nice and sunny where the drinks are cheap. We’ve saved up enough to afford a couple weeks of R&R.”
“Sounds nice, man. Sounds real nice,” Johnson sighs wistfully. “Welp, I’ll file these. You get your holds unloaded and your ship fuelled. I’ve got the authorisations processed now – the price of that ore includes provisioning you, and don’t worry, I won’t fleece you. We’ve just got in another shipment of fabricator protein.” He squints. “Vegetable, don’t worry, although I’ve no damn clue why you made such a fuss about it last time.”
Avery shrugs in the universal signal of ‘long story and I’m not telling it to you’. He’s not in the mood to debate comparative religion with some Alterra guy, or spend twenty minutes explaining what the hell Islam is and why one of his crew members practices it anyway. The company’s legitimately insane about that stuff. He’s been to backwoods extremist insular stations more tolerant.
Something nags at the back of his head as he gets up to leave. He pauses in the doorway. “Hey, Johnson?”
“Yeah?”
“You know what happened with the planet? I haven’t heard anything about when the rescue ships got there. Would’ve assumed there would’ve been something on holos about a salvage mission that big.”
Johnson snorts. “That’s cause they never got there.”
“What?”
“They never got there, man. You got bad ears? Company wrote off the entire capital ship, decided whatever metals they could salvage weren’t worth the 4-year round trip. They lost the phasegate contract anyway – some Mongolians took advantage of the crash to outmanoeuvre them.”
There’s a cold feeling in the bottom of Avery’s stomach. “What about the survivor?”
“Survivor?” Johnson waves his hand vaguely. ‘Oh, yeah, you said you saw someone alive down there. Made a right stink about it too. Head office was furious about the bad PR.” He shrugs. “Been two years, man. He’s dead by now. That he made it a couple months down there alone is impressive enough.”
The cold feeling is rapidly developing into a toxic combination of fury and guilt. “Why didn’t Alterra-“
“4-year round trip, remember? By the time the rescuers got there he would’ve been long gone. They did try, though, so don’t give me that look. They loaded blueprints for an escape rocket onto the ship’s databanks before they lost contact. He was an engineer, so they figured he could’ve cobbled it together if he’d lived, but no dice.”
Avery sets his teeth. Johnson probably knows as well as he does all the angry rebuttals he could spit out. There are stations around this area that could’ve mounted a rescue with a skimmer craft in a couple of months. It wouldn’t have needed the heavy equipment of a salvage team. And engineer or no, the likelihood that the survivor could’ve built a rocket requiring tons of rare metals and a hard power source from planetary materials was straight up zilch, even if he’d stripped the wreck of the Aurora. Alterra had just left him to die because saving him would’ve been unprofitable.
He forces himself to uncurl his fists. “What was his name?” he asks quietly. “They must’ve identified him if you know he was an engineer.”
Johnson squints at him. “Why d’you care?” Seeing the hard set of Avery’s jaw, he adds hurriedly “Not sure I can remember off the top of my head. R-something. Roberts, Richardson – oh, Robinson. That’s it. Ryley Robinson.”
“I’ll remember that,” Avery says softly as he walks out.
Shay catches up to him as he steps through the airlock door. “I got thirty-five,” they say with glee. “For the whole cargo load, that’s a damn good price. It covers our expenses plus a whole week of sunbathing on Khobur.” They raise their hand for a high-five, but give him a look when he returns the gesture listlessly. “You alright, Cap?”
He waves them off. “It’s fine, it’s nothing. Well done on the bargaining. Harbourmaster said he’ll fuel us up and then we can be off for sandy beaches and load up some of those planetary spices on the way back.”
They narrow their eyes. “We’ll get it out of you eventually, you know. I’ll sic Isaiah on you.”
Turns out that’s not an empty threat. Isaiah hauls him into their ersatz common / meeting / dining / bargaining / holo-watching room as soon as he’s done supervising the unloading. “We could’ve scammed those guys real easy, you know,” he comments. “They know nothing about ore grades. Pity we have ethics.” He slaps Avery on the shoulder. “Shay said you were moping.”
“Traitor,” Avery mumbles. “I told them it was no big deal.”
“C’mon, cuz, spill the beans. Something’s clearly on your mind.” Isaiah gives him another look. “I’ve known you since we were kids, Avy. If something’s bothering you, you know I won’t give up until you tell me. Why d’you think Shay sicced me on you instead of Kailani?”
Avery groans. “Did you hear Alterra gave up on the capital ship?”
“The Aurora?” Isaiah winces. “Can’t say I’m surprised. It’d have been an expensive salvage. They just sent a skimmer for our guy?”
“That’s the kicker. They didn’t.” He folds his hands in his lap and stares at the table. “They left him there to die.”
“Oh,” Isaiah breathes. He can see a similar pain in his cousin’s dark eyes. They’d all seen the man down on the surface, their lowest approach enough for their short-range scans to make out his face. Avery still sees that face in his dreams sometimes; he knows he’ll be seeing it a lot more from now on, slack in death or twisted in accusing agony.
“I promised him I’d make sure help came.” He folds his hands over his face. “But I broke that promise. If I’d just-“
The rest of the crew have joined them now, taking up accustomed places around the table. “You thought you had,” Mahala points out. “It’s not your fault Alterra are a bunch of heartless-“ She breaks into a phrase in what sounds like highly insulting Arabic. “When I think about the things those snakes will do for money – it’d make the most cutthroat usurer blush.”
“She has a point,” Rohin says softly, hand on his shoulder. “That said, I know that probably doesn’t make you feel better. I can’t say I feel good about it either.”
Kailani kicks back in her seat, staring at the ceiling. “There is something we could do,” she offers. “If it’s weighing on your mind that badly. The planet’s only a few lightyears out from here.”
Shay holds up a hand. “Gonna have to stop you there. You remember what happened last time we went in too close? Mallie had to damn near strip the cargo holds for enough material to jury-rig those boosters, and we were on hard water rations and burning three times average fuel by the time we made the station. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the idea that they left our guy down there, but it’s a suicide mission.”
“Not if we don’t get too close.” Kailani taps one of the charts pinned to the table. “Listen. We go to Khobur. But we slingshot around 4546B on the way. It’s not so much of a deviation. We keep our distance, just get inside scan range and check the surface for life signs. We find nothing, at least we get closure. We find something, we sling right back here and get up the tail of the Alterra administrators until they send someone out with the firepower to take out that weapon and bring our guy home. Sound like a plan?”
Avery grimaces. “I can’t ask you guys to take that risk just to-“
“What, you think we don’t want answers?” Isaiah gives him that eyebrow raise he’s never been able to damn replicate on his own face. “I’m for it as much as you. But we can put it to a vote if that’ll untwist your knickers. I vote aye.”
“Aye from me,” says Kailani. “It was my idea after all.”
“Aye. I think he could’ve made it. The planet was habitable.”
“Aye if you all think it’s a good idea. Besides, Avery said he was an engineer, so we can’t leave him behind.” Mahala grins. “Us repair tool pointers have to stick together.”
Shay groans. “Ugh, fine, if Mallie’s for it. Aye.”
“So that’s settled, then. I’ll punch in the coordinates. Will someone take first watch on the fuelling? I’d rather those dodgy cranes not bash up the doors.” Kailani’s already tinkering with the computer settings, swearing under her breath as the chipped touchscreen shifts. They really need to fix that at some point.
“I’ll go pray and then I’ll keep an eye on them.”
“If anyone asks we’ll tell them you’re doing corporate-approved meditation,” Shay says cheerfully, eliciting an eye roll from Mahala.
“You jest, babe, but these guys are crazy. Please do.” She deposits her plate on the kitchen counter. “We leave in the morning?”
“If we’re fuelled up by then.” Isaiah puts a hand on Avery’s shoulder. “Try to get some sleep.”
“No promises,” Avery says, resigning himself to the memories he knows will start playing on loop the second he closes his eyes. He knows he’s going to struggle to catch more than a few hours. He just hopes they can clear this up before he goes mad, and get off to Khobur where he can drown his sorrows in homebrewed planetary liquor.
In the middle distance, as Kailani zeroes in on their destination, 4546B’s yellow sun twinkles.