Estella whispered to me, “We need to slow him down, it’s still early, they’re probably still at his office.”
I hurried to catch up with Scorsby. “Hey, we still haven’t talked about the jobs you wanted us to take off you.”
“Let’s have one last drink while you tell us for the road, whatever your favorite is here, let’s make it a grand send off.” Estella suggested.
He stopped and turned around, grabbing at the chari back to steady himself. “Well, why not?”
Estella smiled happily, “Bartender one more round!”
“Well, I guess I should thank you. We haven’t had drinks like this in, well, in some time.” He was slurring quite a bit.
“I think we should take you home once we’re done here.” Estella offered.
Scorsby got up again to go, holding himself steady. He tapped his head. “I swear there was something I needed to tell you but it seems to have gotten lost in this foggy brain of mine.”
“It’s okay, you can tell us another time.” Estella reassured him, glancing at her watch.
“No, it was…” he swayed, burped, “important. Can’t believe I forgot.”
“If it’s that important, then just sit and chill out for a while, it might come back.” I told him.
He acquiesced. “Oh… that’s it!” He tried to snap his fingers but he made no sound. “Got an odd job a few days ago, was working through it. Somebody wanting me to track down where some ship had been. Interesting work, interesting, uh, challenge. I got about halfway through tracking it before I realized… Realized…” He tapped his head. “Oh, that it was the Xing.”
“Who was it that hired you to find our ship?” Estella pumped him for information while I raised my eyebrows. Wasn’t expecting that.
“Data… Stars… um…” He tapped his head again. “It’s in my notes somewhere”
I looked across at Estella meaningfully. “Thanks for the tip, old buddy. We got it.”
He nodded and wandered towards the door.
“Let’s escort him back to the office, let him sleep it off in his chair, when we get close I’ll break off and head in first, make sure our team is cleared out, if not I’ll give them the heads up then help you carry him in.” Estella whispered to me.
I nodded. “Look, you are all unsteady here, we better escort you back, old boy.”
He nodded. “You are.. too… too.. um… kind.” he said and reached out a hand.
Estella grabbed one of his arms, while I took the other and we walked him towards his office, pausing to pay the bar tab.
By the time we got him outside he was singing. Estella sang along while I tried my best to ignore the two of them.
It was easy enough leading him back to the office. He crashed on his couch when we let him go and was snoring within seconds.
“Let’s hope they found what they were after.” Estella said.
“Looks like our job here is done. Let’s head back to the bar.” I suggested.
“Smells like something burnt out,” Estella tried to turn on the computer. The screen remained black.
“I guess they smoked his machine.” She grinned suddenly. “Sam, help me put Scorsby into the chair at his computer.” She rummaged through the desk drawers and came up with a bottle of booze. “We can spill this onto his computer, make him think he ruined it so he doesn’t blame us.”
I slapped her on the back. “Good thinking.”
Estella grinned at the compliment, “Thanks.” She made sure to spill some of the booze across his keyboard and onto his shirt before tipping the bottle over on the desk. “He needed a night cap after we dropped him off apparently.”
I looked across at the old boy. He was snoring.
“Looks like he’ll be out for a while, let’s go meet the girls outside the bar.” Estella said. I nodded and followed her out of the office back to the bar. Guppy was just driving up when we were heading inside the bar.
Estella flagged her down, hopping in with an excited smile, quickly explaining how we left Scorsby.
“Have you…er… looked at the footage?” I felt uncomfortable with the discrepancy between Scorsby and Jessica’s tellings. Something was not tallying up.
Aurora nodded, “Yes, you can see it for yourself once we’re back at the ship, but it looks like self defense to me, just…” She hesitated, “She was pretty enraged at the end.”
“Right.” I left it at that, deciding to see for myself what it was.
“Home please Guppy.” Aurora said before going on to explain what happened to Jessica when she saw the footage.
“Now she’s talking about wanting to use it to clear her name, she wanted it all destroyed originally, and I’m not sure this will do her any favors if people fixate on the wrong part.” Aurora summarised the current situation.
“You said she was angry at the end, right?” Estella gave Aurora a coy smile. “Just delete the last few seconds of the footage to hide that detail, no reason to condemn her for being mad about getting beat half to death.”
“That’s… Not a bad idea actually, and pretty easy to pull off, I could do it before she sees it again too, spare her the traumatic memory.” Aurora thought about it and said.
“And the old boy had a different tune to sing about why he was keeping her unlicensed. Some mystery group that wanted to use her. And it’s serious, the old boy got all shaky-fingered about it, like.” I was saying aloud what was nagging me still.
“That’s not good, did he give a name for the mystery group?” She glanced down at Jessica, still softly stroking her hair while she slept. That’s our mother figure for you.
“Nope, lips all sealed, he was.”
“He said something about Data Stars at the end, so…” Estella sighed. “We’ll sort it out once he sobers up. Plus, he’ll be needing some help to restore his computer come morning.” She visibly brightened at the prospect, still hot with her own idea. Then again, I would have been pleased in her place.
“So you want me to fix the computer I just broke?” Aurora chuckled. “That’s devious.”
“It also lets you ensure all the data on it is sadly irrecoverable, or at least the stuff we don’t want him to have.” Estella indeed.
“I think there’s some ethical issues with all of this, but it’s too good of a plan to quibble morals on.” Aurora admitted with a grin.
“Sam, can you help me carry her to her quarters? I’ll let you girls see the footage afterwards and edit out the last bit once we get her tucked in.” Aurora asked me as Guppy pulled up next to the Xing.
I assented. Aurora tucked her in comfortably (removing her shoes and jacket first) and then went to her quarters to show us the video footage before editing it.
She looked at us. “I could cut the footage of her being angry, replace it with a slice of earlier footage then corrupt that piece, or just end the footage before it shows her angry, what do you all think?”
“I don’t get it, Aurora. She’s a badass in that. Anybody sees it, they know never ta mess with her. Why doesn’t she like that?” Guppy asked.
Aurora gave her an understanding nod. “The look at the end, of all that anger, people would see that and get scared she might lose control if she ever got angry like that again, or think all that anger meant she liked hurting those people when that’s clearly not the case.”
“They’d be afraid to let her treat them as a doctor if they knew her touch could kill,” Estella shook her head. “I know, it’s dumb, a doc could kill them with a scalpel, or a lethal dose of countless medications, but people panic easy over stupid stuff.”
“Well, I think people are dumb. Jessica’s not like that. She’s super nice.” Guppy said with a pout.
“That she is, I trust her completely.” Estella agreed.
Aurora smiled and nodded in agreement, “Me too, I mean anyone in that situation would be pissed off, I’d be more scared if they were calm and collected. But yeah, this corporation wants her so they can use her or clone her power, do something awful with her against her will anyway, and she’s one of us, so we’ll do whatever we can to keep that from happening.”
“The old boy has got it in his head that this is deliberate murder.” I shrugged, I didn’t think that was what I was seeing on the tape. “And he told us who’s after us. Surprise, it’s the black building that we are going to infiltrate next.”
“That means they know what Jessica looks like if they’re after her, so taking her with us would be kind of a bad idea, wouldn’t it?” Estella said. A good point.
“It’s the last thing they’d ever expect actually,” Aurora pointed out, “And we can dye her hair, give her some glasses, disguise her. But I want to keep her close so we can protect her, we leave her behind, they could kidnap her, with us she’s safe.”
“Hang on, when did he say whoever’s after Jessica and after us is one and the same?” A logic discrepancy suddenly hit me. We were jumping too fast.
“That’s… A really good question Sam.” Aurora acknowledged my point.
“It follows that they want us to get the asteroid location from so they can get more plants, they want her to keep the infected from running rampant, she can maybe keep them alive, or kill them if they get unruly, use her as the puppet master, maybe have someone force her into it with a shock collar or some kind of mind control brain washing.” Estella had a theory.
Aurora nodded grimly. “I got a crazy idea then.”
“Hey those are my specialty!” Estella protested with a laugh.
I signaled Aurora to continue.
“We head back to the asteroid, find out way down into its guts, that parking area and station built in it, find its power plant, and set it to overload, blow that asteroid to space dust and flee right before it goes bang.” She grinned at the notion. “We leave a little message in a bottle with Scorsby to dump on their doorstep after the asteroid pops, where in we claim that we blew it up along with Jessica to keep them from getting their mitts on it. Then we, along with Jessica, leave this system and head out further onto the fringe of space, try our luck elsewhere, the company thinks maybe we died in the explosion, and with everything they want blown up revenge won’t make them any profit so I doubt they’ll hunt too hard for us.”
“But the fireflies…” Guppy looked horrified.
“We’d take some of them with us of course, Guppy,” Aurora gestured towards the garden. “We got a place to keep them all happy, and we can drop some of them off somewhere on the fringe on another asteroid so they can start over, safe from the corporation.”
I didn’t know there were real fireflies on the asteroid but I did not say anything.
“So blow the asteroid rather than sneak into the corporation?” Estella confirmed.
Aurora nodded, “Is there any reason to sneak in there anymore? We know what they’re after and who, going in there unless we plan on blowing the building up I don’t think serves a purpose, and if we wanted to blow it up we could just torpedo it into a crater, which would get us wanted by the corporation. This way gets them off our back and keeps the fungus from being used as a bioweapon ever.”
“We need to sneak in there to make sure they don’t have any samples left, and destroy all their research?” Estella offered. I guessed she saw the idea as too fun to give up on yet.
“Hmm, true, though I don’t think they have much of it or they wouldn’t keep smuggling more in.”
“Blasting the asteroid does save Jess quickest, and keeps anyone else from ever stumbling into it again, do you think you can overload its reactor?” Switching back to the realist now.
“The place is full of stripped ships, I can sync all their reactors to overload if need be, but the place has power, the elevator still works, so there’s something down there I can rig to go bang I’m positive.”
“And where does the old boy come in? Are we letting him in on the full plan or not? We need him to leak out our supposed demise?” I asked them.
“Good question, what do you girls think?” Aurora bounced the question to us again.
“We could leave the letter at a courier, with instructions to deliver it to the company in a weeks time, plenty of time for us to pop the asteroid, that way Scorsby doesn’t get dragged into it?” Estella suggested.
“Probably for the best that way.” I said.
“Guppy? Are you on board with the idea?” Aurora asked.
“We need to get Jessica’s input too.” Estella added.
Guppy shrugged. “I guess. So long as you save some of the fireflies.”
“We will, she can hear our plan when I hand her this data, it’s up to her whether she destroys it or what. I promise Guppy, we’ll save a bunch of the fireflies, and find them a new home,”
“Can I save some as pets? Since Vines isn’t a good pet. He’s always hanging out with that boring guy.”
“If Jessica says it’s safe, certainly,” Aurora nodded. “If not we’ll get you a pet of your own, there’s sure to be some pet stores around here somewhere, maybe get one of those feathered flying snakes that’ll wrap around your shoulders like a cloak?”
Her eyes got big. “Do I hafta choose?”
Aurora laughed, “Well it’s your pet, so it’s up to you what you get.”
“So long as it doesn’t chew on the ship.” Estella reminded them.
“And not too many. Space is limited.” I added.
“I promise,” she smiled and that somehow made her look more fishy than trustworthy.
“Remember this conversation when the entire lower deck is some kind of freaky menagerie of alien critters all trained to work this ship like a passel of space monkeys.” Estella remarked with a grin.
“Hey, a crew we can pay with food sounds good to me,” Aurora retorted with a wink. Guppy’s grin got bigger.
“I’ll get us in the air then, we can tank up at the starport, drop the letter with a courier there and then head for the asteroid?”
“All right, Aurora, you write the letter? You’ve got a better way than me with words.” I suggested.
“Sure if you want, just let me finish editing this video first. If anyone has any last second business on this rock now’s the time, once we blow the roid we’re bound for..” She gestured vaguely to her right. “Thatta way.”
“The edge of charted space, and closer to finding out why we keep losing touch with our colonies.” Estella said.
I shrugged to indicate there’s nothing for me and looked off far away where Aurora was pointing.
Guppy sighed. “C’mon, Sam, show me again how to practice with the torpedoes, please? I wanna be ready in case the asteroid fights us back.” She grabbed my hand and tried to lead me towards the gunnery station. I complied.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 