Page 2 of Her Consort
“I know how to do my damn job,” she sniped. “I’ve been doing it long before I found you!”
“Yes.” He inflated again. “But only half as well.”
Now it was Piper’s turn to deflate. So… that was what this was about. “Hey, Kogan,” she said without enthusiasm. “Wanna help me scavenge the Ocymit ship?”
Kogan brightened. “How kind of you to offer. I would love to.” He stepped out of her way, grandly gesturing for her to lead on. “Women and children first, I believe your saying goes.”
“Only if the ship’s about to explode.” She took the lead anyway. “Asshat.”
“You humans and your colloquialisms. There are too many to keep track.” He fell into step, following her through the narrow corridor that led to the docking hatch. Here Piper had her pick of the dozen or so silver-gray pressure suits that lined the walls. Kogan only fit into one and so it took extra time while he combed over every inch of it in search of the tiniest oxygen-escaping perforation. She helped him. When she finally decided to kill him, she was determined to do it with her own two hands. Not through carelessness or oxygen deprivation.
They helped each other with the lightweight O2/CO2 conversion tanks, each no bigger than a deck of cards, which plugged into their forearm controllers and which guaranteed at least six hours of breathability so long as they didn’t tear their suits. Which was always a possibility on a salvage run, she wasn’t saying otherwise. But regardless of what Kogan thought, Piper wasn’t reckless or careless with her safety, and she was good at her job.
And because she was, before she turned her attention to opening each of the two ships’ hatchways, she entered her passcode into the security panel just outside this nook of a room and passed out firearms. She preferred the short-range plasma gun, with the long barrel that reduced the kick of each shot and the contoured grip that fit the palm of her hand. He always took the disruptor rifle, because it was so big. Between the dual cartridge and the scope, it was bulky too, and it packed almost two hundred rounds. Not one of which he’d yet had the opportunity to fire. They were salvagers, not pirates. Still, hope burned eternal.
“I’ll go first,” he said, as she opened up their side of the hatch and began the tricky process of hacking into the Ocymit’s system through their exterior access lock.
“A person could leap to his death from the top of your ego,” she muttered, snipping two wires in half. “I’m captain of this vessel. At best, you’re a passenger; at worst, you’re the ship’s very hairy mascot. You’re only coming because I allow it. I’ll go first.”
His censuring frown crackled over the speaker in her helmet when he said, “I am not hairy.”
“Please. I could wear your chest for a sweater.” A spark leapt when she struck the ends against one another, but lights all around the door also flickered on, then off again, and she heard the click of the lock releasing. The door opened easily after that.
“Captains go down with the ship,” Kogan said, snagging the back of her suit and yanking her behind him. Ignoring her squawk of protest, he took the lead.
“That’s only if we sink, you idiot!”
“Colloquialism.”
“Asshat!” But there wasn’t much she could do. She might be the captain and the only remaining member of what had at best only ever been considered a skeleton crew, but that still didn’t mean she could give him orders. She couldn’t physically knock him out of the way either. Especially not when, like now, he seemed determined to take charge. “I’m supposed to give the orders and you’re supposed to take them, damn it.”
“Hush.” Shoving her behind him and using the threshold for cover, he hunkered in the doorway, rifle at the ready as he peered down the long, dark Ocymit corridor beyond.
Nothing moved, although as they slowly ventured inside, at first it was hard to tell. The corridor was full of junk—bits of wall and periodic ceiling panels, broken furniture, empty supply storage containers, and garbage mounded knee-deep in places—but none of it looked alive. The lights kept flickering, creating a strobe-like effect that cast eerie garbage shadows on the walls and ceiling. Emergency lights weren’t supposed to blink like this. Either they had been tampered with or they had become damaged over time. Judging by the layer of dust she wiped off the cover of the light near her foot, the ship could have been drifting on dwindling batteries for a very long time. And yet, she couldn’t help thinking there seemed a symmetry to how the garbage in this corridor was thrown about. The longer she looked at it, the less the mounds struck her as random and the more it took on the deliberate appearance of an obstacle course, with the dark ‘dust’ smudges on the wall beside her taking on the ominous hues of old disruptor fire.
“Stay close,” Kogan told her, but Piper was already leaning in to get a closer look at the nearest smudge. She wiped her finger through it, feeling tiny blisters of cooked wall through her gloved suit, telling her brain something her eyes only belatedly confirmed.
“Wait,” she said, but too late. Only a handful of steps in, Kogan found the first booby trap. She heard the click when he stepped down. Fortunately for them both, he heard it too.
He froze.
She swore. “Don’t move.”
“If you don’t know how to disarm panel mines, I’ll be moving at least twenty feet at very high velocity in every direction.”
Grumbling under her breath, Piper headed back to her ship.
“Where are you—”
“I need light,” she snapped. From salvage mission to cluster-fuck before they got out of the hatchway. That had to be some kind of record, even for them.
It took ten minutes for her to rig enough lights to see by, then she had to clean the garbage from around him. Working slowly, in constant search of more booby traps, she shifted enough trash to cut through the floor panel directly behind him. Crawling head and shoulders into the hole, she aimed her wrist-light at the nest of wires (and, oddly, at least a greenhouse or two worth of dead ivy-looking vines) surrounding the explosive beneath Kogan’s foot. It was armed and blinking.
“Maybe it’s a dud,” Kogan said optimistically.
Crawling back out from under the subflooring, Piper said, “Don’t move,” and headed back into her ship for the toolbox she’d accidentally half-buried under a mound of shifted garbage. Finding her wire cutters, she once more got down on her belly and leaned head-first into the hole. There wasn’t a lot of space in the subflooring to maneuver around, only a foot or so, at best. She twisted upside down, using her legs for balance as she angled and reached.
“Look for the black wire,” Kogan said helpfully.
