“How are you doing?” Aiden asked in a whisper. I could barely see the outline of his face on the dark screen.
Clearing my throat, I replied quietly, “Pretty much all fine. How’s Hamish?” He couldn’t see the sorrow in my eyes as I thought about what it was like on-world right now. I was glad; he didn’t need to see that. When he didn’t reply, I changed the subject, “Tosin promised to bring you on the next mission if I can manage to keep the intern alive.” Again, silence. “My plan is to leave him here. If he’s here, he can’t die,” I chuckled, trying to keep it light.
Finally, Aiden replied, “They’re closing in, Dey. Like, down the street, close. What’s the mission?” Hearing the terror in his normally-strong voice hurt.
“It should have been me stuck there,” I spat.
I was going to continue on a rant when he cut me off, “No. I couldn’t be keeping it together up there. I’d be in jail and you’d be stranded.”
“Well, it’s been five days and I have only managed this one opportunity and it may already be too late,” I murmured around the lump in my throat.
“Just finish the mission and come get us,” he stated simply before the call cut out. It was spotty there and the ship’s communication array didn’t include a booster to the planet’s surface.
I stayed in the pod for a long time just running through the conversation with Aiden. When I went to leave, I whispered, “The agreement doesn’t include Hamish. I don’t know if we’ll be able to save him.” For months, the three of us had managed to survive that hellscape of a planet and now I’d made a deal for just one of them. I’d have to tell him Tosin barely agreed to the deal as it was, which was true, but I knew it wasn’t going to make a difference.
Stepping out, I nodded at the next person in line who ducked in and shut the door. The line stretched all the way down the hallway and around the corner; some of these people were going to waste their entire personal time just to get a few minutes of time speaking with a loved one. Most people are reluctant to use the pods; that time is very precious and it was hard to see loved ones in such turmoil.
I turned down another hall and found myself at the center of the ship; the atrium gaped out and up like a globe fish tank. A half-dozen floors opened to the space with elevators and other lifts whirring across, carrying goods and people at amazing speeds. Sighing, I walked up to an escalator and hopped on the revolving mat as it flew up from the main level and headed along a magnetic track towards the top floor. Everyone wore metal-soled shoes so they could ride transport like this without falling off. I passed a gaggle of girls chatting idly about a visit to the mall ship while a gentleman with a traditional spacesuit helmet tipped his head at me. The patch on my jacket let everyone know I was an interstellar pilot, which afforded me respect so a nod wasn’t unexpected. If only they knew I’d only been off-world for a few days. They certainly wouldn’t be bowing to me.
When I got to the right floor, I stepped off and took a few shaky steps; I still wasn’t entirely used to the gravity and transportation here. Confidently, I showed the human guard my badge and he waved me through to Mission Plaza. Only the highest level missions and crews were permitted up here. Clearly, someone had made a mistake with me, but I wasn’t going to remind them.
I reached the office I reported to and used my badge to open the door. Inside, the crew was already sitting around drinking vibrant green liquid and snacking on bricks of brown matter. When I sat down, Tosin cleared her throat and announced, “Now that Dey has finally joined us, we can begin.” What she meant to say was that a stupid on-worlder was holding up their mission.
I flicked the autopilot switch and checked the stability as we hovered just above a large plot of sand on a planet whose name I couldn’t pronounce. Because I’d been trained on-world, this kind of flying was my specialty and the main reason I was on the mission list; no one really wanted me there, but some higher-up management person thought I was the best choice. Nodding to Carver and Illian, I stood up and slipped my bag onto my shoulder, grabbed a large electric machete, and hooked a flare onto my belt.
“Do you really need that stuff?” Carver asked as I stood beside the door and checked my jet fuel.
Rolling my eyes, I replied snarkily, “We’re dropping on an inhabited island on a planet we don’t know a lot about and are going to enter a dense jungle. Yes, I really need a machete. I’d go for a regular metal one, but this is all we have available.” I was more comfortable in a fight than anyone else on the mission, but they staunchly refused to take my lead so my partners were relatively defenceless as we made the short drop to the surface. Turning back as the boys headed towards the forest, I confirmed the ship was stable and radioed to the other ship, “Landed, about to embark, ship stable. Over.”
For a moment, my radio was silent before Tosin replied, “Copy. Same. Out.” She wasn’t the chatty sort, but she could fly a spaceship better than anyone I’d ever seen.
After about five minutes, having struggled through a few feet of dense brush, the guys realized they needed a machete. I took the lead and we made it to the blue hole in a matter of minutes and stood at the edge of the forest in awe. It was a large pool of water so deep it looked inky black and was dotted with caves and water plants floating near the edges. Hanging all around were vines and flowers, but there were no birds or creatures. “Something seems wrong,” I murmured to the guys as I crept around the water, checking for signs of intelligent life.
Illian took out his sample kit and replied, “I’m just happy we aren’t fighting off, what did you call thems?”
“Jaguars?” I sighed as I listened intently to the sounds of the forest. Water dripped, winds blew, and waves crashed, but no animals could be heard. I started off into the forest on the other side of the pool, to the annoyance of my partners. After a minute, there came a deep, mechanical rumbling sound that made me stop. Suddenly, a hole opened up just a few feet from me and a giant metal vehicle breached the surface like a giant sandworm. A door opened up and a woman in armour of leaves and metal stepped out with a large metal knife. “Oh, hello,” I gasped, surprised to find another human.
Glaring at me, the woman snapped, “What are you doing here?” Her stance relaxed slightly as I put the machete on my belt and held my hands up.
“Oh, we’re looking for a substance in the blue hole back there. Something about fuel. I’m not the scientist on this mission, I’m the pilot,” I explained, uncertain what to say, exactly.
She touched her face and sighed with exasperation. “That’s why we’re here. We came a few decades ago and have been digging for it ever since,” she explained, motioning to the metal monster around her. Shaking her head, she stepped forward and passed me a mission disk. “Can you bring this back with you and tell them we’re still here. Maybe send some food and reinforcements. We still can’t reach it and we’re running low on some stuff,” she stated as though leaving a mission team abandoned on a hostile planet was normal practice.
Unhooking my communicator, I handed it over and assured her, “Of course. You can use this to contact them directly and I’ll leave a com beacon in orbit so you won’t get cut off.”
She took the device, nodded at me, and returned to the giant metal worm. As the ground rumbled again, it disappeared again and I headed back to the blue hole. When I stepped out through the trees, Carver and Illian both looked relieved.
“We thought you were dead,” Illian commented as he held up a small bag of foliage samples. Shoving them into his bag, he asked, “What were you doing?”
I rolled my eyes and showed them the disk. “I was speaking with the last group they sent on a mission to determine the viability of whatever is in this planet. They’ve been stuck here for decades,” I grumbled as I put the disk back into my pocket and tapped my controller to summon the ship to our location. Staring up into the bright stars, I exclaimed, “Get ready to fly up there in a second.”
“Look, I just wanted to talk about general practices, if that’s something that can happen,” I pleaded with Tosin as she typed on her screen.
For a moment I sat, wiggling my toes, in my chair until she finally looked up at me and glared. “Look, I’m writing out this mission report so if you don’t mind,” she snapped, making a shooing motion with her hand.
Groaning, I asked, “Did you not realize we found a lost mission on that planet?”
Again, she was immersed in her typing. When she looked up this time, she asked, “I thought you left?”
I stared and shook my head. “Fine. When are you going to save Aiden?” I asked, making sure she was looking at me as I did so. She tilted her head and I clarified, “My friend on-world. You said I, if I kept the intern, Carver, safe, then you’d save my friend.”
“Oh, that,” she groaned, turning off her screen and setting me with a sorry smile. Sighing, she replied, “Well, see, the next mission is on-world. He won’t be able to come back with us, but he can be part of the mission while we’re there.” She read my shocked features and added, “Bit of a misnomer on my part. Apologies. Now, get out or I’ll not let you see your friend.”
I found myself in the communications line, twenty people deep, without memory of how I got there. When I finally shook my head, I left the line and returned to the atrium. With a sigh, I walked into one of the restaurants and asked the worker, “Do you have any lilac honey?” It was a completely innocuous sentence, other than no one had seen a bee in nearly twenty years.
Nodding, he replied, “Yeah, my grandma makes it herself.” He waved me through a door that opened into a back room. I went down the long hallway, through the kitchen, and through another door at the far end. Up three flights of stairs and with two right turns, not straight, I found myself deep in the bowels of the enormous ship. I opened a door with a special key and stepped into a large library.
“Dey, I didn’t expect to see you today. I thought you had a mission,” Zela commented, looking up from a book on polar bears.
Slumping down at a table, I dropped my head on the cold metal surface and grumbled, “Tosin lied. She won’t bring Aiden or Hamish back, just let me see them on-world.” After a minute, I sat up and asked, “What would you do? What would a real member of the Seven do?”
She chuckled and replied, “Well, a real member would probably hire the Bear, a political henchman and supposed pirate, and fly him into airspace to do what you need to do. He’s a big, burly guy who’s a lot nicer than he looks.” Glancing back at the book, she murmured, “But I’m certainly not telling you to do that because Tick would be pissed to know I’m telling you to use someone outside of the Seven.” After thinking about it, she put the book down and glared through me. “I don’t get why Tick thinks we need to adhere to known jurisdictions when it comes to personal missions, yet we can’t possibly trust someone outside of the unit,” she snapped. For a rebel group, they did tend to stick to some restrictive rules.
“Where can I find this Bear?” I asked, standing.
Zela was our eyes and ears on the ship and, consistently, knew where people were. “Well, The Duchess is trying to get rid of the Duke, so, I’d say at their lunch,” she replied quickly. She knew. It wasn’t a guess.
When I got to the restaurant they were eating at, I showed my badge and was permitted a table. Spotting the couple, I looked around for a large man. He was seated behind them, hands crossed on his table and food untouched before him. I was about to walk over when the small orchestral band on the stage started to play an upbeat song and the Duke and Duchess got up to dance; it was custom for wealthy and powerful people, apparently. They went on for a good ten minutes before they left, leaving the Bear sitting solemnly at his table.
He spotted me staring and glanced around before nodding at me. Leaving, he left a note on my table and I quickly followed, waving off the waiter as though my date didn’t show.
Outside, I looked at the note and went to the office number in uneven writing. I knocked and the door opened on its own to reveal a tiny space with two chairs and a filing cabinet. Seated beside the cabinet was the Bear.
I stepped in and sat down. For a few seconds, the Bear sized me up, taking in the patch on my uniform and the way my hair wasn’t perfect. “What do you need?” he asked in a gruff, warm voice. He actually kinda sounded like a bear.
Nodding, I cleared my throat and replied, “I uh, I need someone to rescue my friend. From the surface.”
“I can do that. I’ve rescued people all over this region and others. I’ve also procured items from far away for, well, for a price,” he explained, pitching his skills.
“I don’t have a lot of money,” I murmured, thinking back to what little coin I had hidden on-world and the small amount of provisional currency the Union had bestowed upon me to start me off off-world.
Smiling, he shook his head and changed the subject away from payment, “Is there any chance the person you want picked up is still, you know, alive?”
“Ostensibly? No, I don’t. And it’s two guys that I need,” I replied quietly. When he stood up, I sighed, “I shouldn’t have come. It was a stupid idea and they’re probably already- Wait, what are you doing?”
The Bear had gotten to his feet, flicked a hidden switch in the back wall and was now pursuing a large wall of gear that had appeared. As he pulled a large swath of fabric out, he murmured, “Getting my spacesuit. I’ve seen your work down there but your ship can’t protect me from everything and who knows what I’m gonna face down there.”
Standing, I asked, “Why would you do this? You don’t owe me anything. And I don’t have the money for a suicide mission.”
He turned to me, towering like a bear, and stated, “You’re the Seven, right?” When I nodded, he continued, “My sister was with the Seven. She uh, she didn’t make the last mission she took.” There was a tear in his eye so he turned back to the wall.
“Then why would you do this?” I asked.
Sniffing, he replied, “Because I owe you guys more than I can express. We were from on-world and you guys, you saved her. She was spiralling watching the world burn and then she found purpose.” I could see the sadness in his eyes when he looked down at me. When he spoke again, it was with a catch in his throat, “You guys, girls, are the reason I’m, well, I’m a-”
“Pirate?” I finished for him, grinning up at the bear of a man.
He nodded and the Bear put a helmet under his arm before announcing, “Let’s go save your friends or die trying.”
Pretty Twisted Mirrors 