9

Got Nothing but Time

She hasn't come out of her cabin—Dad's cabin—all the rest of the day. I think I understand. It's the only place on the ship with a door she can lock from the inside. Eventually, I just went back to mine, slammed the bar down hard so she could hear it, but never heard her stir. Guess that still didn't make her feel safe coming out.

She'll eventually have to. We'll see about tomorrow.

The solitude and darkness of my own cabin doesn't make me feel any better. I churn inside the zero-gravity hammock, and stare at the ceiling, a stranger to sleep.

Having finally beaten Miranda for once should feel better than this.

No, wait. Astonishingly poor choice of words.

That's the problem, isn't it? Taking out those drone-things was defeating her, exactly what I wanted. What she deserved. Got every right to be proud of that bit.

But afterwards… I beat her. Literally. And for what?

Anger? Resentment? To prove a point? To teach her a lesson?

I don't know.

I've kicked plenty of ass before. You don't work as a roughneck, you don't hang out with roughnecks, without getting in a brawl or two. Flatlanders might find that shocking, but for Belter work crews, a dustup can be nothing more than a way to clear the air, let some grievances out. Settle things. It's a guy thing. You're friends again afterwards.

Didn't understand that when I came out here. Shortarse nerdy Flatlander kid, liked science fiction books and video games, boss's son, and so on. Dad knew I had to learn it. Dad never bailed me out.

They're doing this for a reason, Marc. Yes, they are simple, but simple isn't the same as stupid. Hazing the new guy isn't pointless sadism; it's a test. They're testing to see if they can rely on you to have their back out there. You need to prove to them you have the guts to do your part in a crisis.

I haven't fought so much, lately, of course. People look at me and don't want any trouble. But back then, yeah. Hell, sometimes you even gotta throw the first punch. You don't stand up for yourself, they might be wary of who your daddy is, but they ain't gonna respect you. I took some beatings, and dished some out, and earned some respect both ways. Working men like courage, even when it's the courage of a little skinny brat getting up for the third time because he's more afraid of being ashamed of himself than of being knocked down again.

Eventually I got left alone, even accepted. One of the guys. I loved that. I was somebody. I belonged.

But… what I just did… it's different. This wasn't like those fights. This wasn't teaching some seven-foot Orbital rock-jock with a mohawk haircut and a buncha neck tattoos, when to keep his mouth shut.

This was… well, it felt like bullying.

For all her condescension and spite, for all her poisonous tongue and rotten personality, Miranda is just a tiny little girl. She's just as defenseless against me with her hands as I am against her money, and her lawyers, and her documents.

Money is what she chose to beat me with. Natural reflex of a race of genteel backstabbers who will steal everything you have, and smile while they do it, but never, never throw a punch, because that's against the rules. Like they can do whatever they want to you, but you're not allowed to hit back, because that would be violence.

Well, now that I think of it that way… fuck that.

Maybe these people need to feel the consequences of their actions. Maybe being punched in the face is the only thing that will make them understand we're real, not just pawns on a chessboard laid out between big financial enterprises.

I don't think she deserves it any less just because she's beautiful.

I don't.

That's just a tool she has that helps her get away with shit like this. I remember the smug self-satisfaction in her voice the day she blackmailed me and stole my ship and my life. How proud she was of how neatly she'd sewn me up.

She deserved it. Really.

She did.

She did.

But I just keep picturing the terror in those huge liquid eyes. How I could read her thoughts straight through them, clear and obvious: “This is it. I'm dead. He's going to kill me.”

Dustup on a rock site isn't like that. Bar fight isn't like that. You see the medic, get patched up with medigel spray and plastiskin, maybe a brace and some bone growth factor injections, and you fuck off home to nurse your wounded pride. How would the skinny, nerdy Venusian kid have felt, if he believed this or that seven-foot asteroid miner was out to end him, instead of just to take the boss's privileged kid down a peg or two?

I turn onto my side, but that isn't any more comfortable than my back. Neither is my other side, and now my zero-g net's all tangled. I turn the pillow over, but it doesn't seem to have a cool spot anywhere.

I don't want to hurt her. I just want her to…. I don't know. Be different. Nicer. Be the person you would think she was from just looking at her.

Or, failing that, to be as ugly on the outside as she is underneath, so I can stop wanting to touch her. So I don't get a fucking hard-on just from getting close to her. That's what it was. Not the violence. I'm not sick.

I'm not.

She was just too soft and pretty, and I was too close, and it's been too long since I… nevermind.

I hate being affected by her this way. The difference between men and women is that men know we're shallow, that humanity is nothing but apes in spacesuits, still dreaming of nothing nobler than more sex and more bananas. I'm not super proud of it, but, hell, I'm that way, too, just like everybody else.

The pillow still doesn't have a cool spot, and my back itches, of course right in that one little patch between my shoulder blades that bulked-up weightlifters can't reach. Not that I don't try. After some futile thrashing about, I trigger my neural lace, bring it up just enough to get a clock display.

0232.

Seven minutes since I checked last. The night is going by in bite-sized pieces, and sleep is as far away as it ever was.

It's not just Miranda, is it? I keep going back and forth between guilt and thinking she deserved it. But there's someone else here, isn't there?

The Artificial Intelligence. The construct. It didn't do anything to deserve this. Nothing at all. It never had a choice about anything. Whatever I think about Miranda, it… she… got hurt today. Hurt bad. That scream…

Is that on me?

Because I told her the truth?

Is that really such a bad idea? Is that what the research says? Not sure I buy it. Not sure if she's gonna shut off or go mad now, like Miranda says, or just sulk like a teenage girl.

Have to see what I can do about that. Maybe. If I can. I don't know how, maybe just… try to talk to her? Tell her I'm sorry? See if she's still there to listen? Try to get her to talk again? If she's not… I dunno. Broken.

Yeah. That, at least, makes sense. Try to put at least one thing right. Gonna try to do that.

Still can't sleep, though.

Miranda still doesn't emerge the next morning, either. She may have moved around in the night, I dunno. I think I eventually slept. Some. A little bit.

Still, whether she's still hiding or not, I took the opportunity to lock both doors of the inner hold airlock open. Then removed the crank wheels and hid them. Only then, when I'm certain there's no way she can close it, do I risk entering the hold again.

When someone stuffed Miranda's lab into a shipping container, they didn't know that cargo carriers like the Cat tend to stack them vertically. Everything would be sideways under thrust. That's okay. With the engines stopped, I can float at whatever orientation I want, or sit in a lazy ball in midair, facing the flickering lights on the pod display.

She… it… the AI construct… hasn't said a word since her meltdown.

“Nothing to say, huh? Crawled in a hole and pulled the hole in after you? Okay, well, I won't force you, but I'm ready to listen whenever. I mean, I admit this is partially my fault. I might have screwed up back there, kinda. I'm sorry you had to find out like that. I'm not a psychologist or anything, I just cut up rocks for a living.

“But you had a right to know. So I wasn't just going to help her lie to you, or just take her word for it when she says that's what's good for you. People like her, they think they know what's best for everyone. And, ya know, somehow, by some astonishing coincidence, it always turns out to be exactly the thing they already wanted to do to begin with.”

The casket is silent. The instrument lights flicker and change, but not in any way that seems to react to anything I said.

“Look, I know you can hear me.”

Still silence.

“Alright, like I said, you don't have to talk. I'll talk. I know you're pissed at her. Maybe me, too, I dunno. But I heard what you said about her. Can't blame ya. She's like that. She'll do pretty much anything to get what she wants, and lying is the least of it.

“Anyway, I mean not to lie, so I should tell you that one thing she said about me was true. I did some bad stuff. I was, well, sort of a pirate… hijacking mining cargoes. But it's more complicated than that. People hear 'pirate,' they think it's kinda like doing armed robberies, you know? Like you're flying up to someone and sticking a gun in their face and saying 'your money or your life!' And, sure, if it were like that, yeah, guy who decides to do that, he's pretty much a guy who's eventually gonna end up murdering people. Like, he's already decided he's willing to.

“But that's not how the whole asteroid mining business works. We don't fly ships around with cargo in them. Why would we? Space isn't an ocean. Your stuff can't sink. And vacuum's a perfect insulator. It doesn't degrade things or rust them up or anything like that.

“So you just take all your cargo, your ore, your refined metals, whatever, hook all the containers up into a big barge, like, just a big bundle of stuff, and give it a push. There's no air friction, so it just keeps going. So if you do the math, you know where it's gonna wind up in six months or whatever it takes to get where it's going.

“So you just shove it on its way, maybe attach some boosters, and go back to cutting rock. It reaches the other end, you gotta business partner, or maybe your customer, with a tug waiting to intercept it, slow it down, and haul it off. 'Throw-and-catch,' we call it.

“That's how I got started. I just kinda flew up to cargoes in the middle of that trajectory, gave 'em a push in another direction, fenced 'em off to somebody else who wasn't inclined to ask questions. No stickups, no shooting. I just took stuff.”

The humming of the air circulation fans, the silent darkness of the cargo racks, offers no opinion on whether that's any different.

I don't say the other part out loud. The part where you get tired of having your stuff stolen, and you hide their shipments and trajectories. Space is really big. Easy to hide a flying barge in, with no big glowing drive flame to give it away. Unless somebody talks.

And for the right money, someone always talks.

So then you put trackers on it, and recording instruments. Which your thief then learns to knock out with an electromagnetic pulse from a deliberately misfired fusion drive.

So then you send armed escorts, a nest of angry little wasps clinging to your payload, strong drives, modest fuel tanks, a railgun, and not much else. By this point, you're good and mad… escorts are expensive and they eat into profit margins.

But what else can you do? It's not like we're on Earth and have governments to go pirate hunting for you. And even if there were… well, wait'll you hear about something they call “taxes.” At least I don't pretend to be your friend while I rob you.

And one day, some rotten scoundrel like me is gonna happen onto one of your escorted barges, and your angry little wasps are gonna do what they came along to do. And I'm gonna shoot back, because, hey… self-defense, right? Here I was, minding my own business taking your stuff, and you just started trying to punch holes in my ship, you bastard.

What choice did I have?

Except the choice to not be there. To not pay the loans. To see the last remnants of Dad's business go down the drain, sucked into the greedy maw of the Starlight Coalition, and SpaceX Inc, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Maersk Orbital, and whoever else wants a bite.

It not like I knew they'd eventually send human piloted escorts instead of automated systems.

…guy who decides to do that, he's pretty much a guy who's eventually gonna end up murdering people…

Dad, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to… I never thought…

I shake my head, try to clear it.

“So that's how she got to me,” I say, speaking again to the gathering silence. “She found out. Said she'd turn me in unless I did what she said. And when I didn't wanna do it, when I started trying to get out, she set those drone things on me. Maybe you saw the recordings. Dunno what you saw.

“I guess we both got dragged into this.”

A green indicator bar pulses up and down, irregular, meaningless to me.

“I know you're listening. You could say something, you know. Tell me how ya feel about all this. Maybe what you want. So maybe we can all work something out, and not sit here gliding along towards interstellar space.”

Humming silence. Nothing else. Somewhere outside the container, in the darkness above, there's another hum. But I know the Cat and every sound aboard her. It's just a heater turning on.

“Okay, well, I'll be back later. Maybe tell another story. Or whatever. I suppose I got nothing but time.”

The next morning, after avoiding me all day, Miranda's sitting in the galley. Well, floating in a seated position by the table, calm as a cup of water. Waiting for me?

She's drinking a bulb of some sort of heated Terran concoction from a noisy machine she brought aboard. “Cough-y” or something, I think. Whatever it is, it smells like a tank of dead algae and is probably imported from Earth at an expense that would feed a family of Belters for a year.

She's dressed in jeans, below something silky, iridescent, and expensive-looking, and fresh makeup, which for some reason she hasn't used to cover up the purple and red bruises on her neck, nor the purple-black ring around her left eye.

I know she deserved it. Really. She did. So why don't I feel vindicated? All I feel is vaguely sick. I wish that this had all never happened, that she'd picked some other broke Belter trash to mess with.

She's staring at me, deadpan, not visibly anxious in the slightest. Like she doesn't really care what I do, but is vaguely curious. Like I'm only slightly more interesting than the wall panels or the “cough-y” machine.

I plant myself in the chair across from her, and stare back. If this is going to be awkward, let it be awkward for her. I can do this all day.

The moment stretches.

“Well, here we are,” she finally begins, and that Mars-accented soprano is just a little bit scratchy this morning. Hoarse. I remember the feel of her neck in my hands… I put them under the table. I don't want to look at them right now.

“It's obvious,” she continues, “that you get off on hitting little girls, but that doesn't change anything.”

That I what? No. That's unfair. I'm not into that. I'm not. It was just cathartic, that's all. That, and, well… her. The way she looks. The way she moves, all feminine posture and feline grace. I hate her, and I hate that I want to touch her, and I'd rather die than let her know.

Except that my body already told her, didn't it?

“I still have control of the ship, so this doesn't change anything. Are you prepared to stop acting like an animal, and be civilized?”

A flare of irritation jolts me out of thoughts I'd rather not have.

“Oh, that's rich. Civilization. Would that be the civilization that says it's okay for you to blackmail me, steal my ship, and kidnap me into some insane scheme of yours? That says it's okay for you to cut up kids' brains for profit? That says you deserve everything in life just handed to you because your famous great-granddaddy bought a bunch of companies and took credit for other people's work?”

She turns her bruised face towards me, raising her chin a bit to display her eye.

“There's a hairline fracture in my eye socket,” she says. Calm. Like she's discussing what snacks to serve at a charity-benefit party. “I found it with your resonance scanner, and then I had to open every cabinet in medbay until I found some OsteoVec to inject in my cheek. So, yes, Marcus. Civilized behavior.”

I rear up in the chair, standing with my ankles locked around it, and pull my tshirt off, over my head. As I toss it away, there's a faint hiss of breath past her teeth. Over all the muscle and old scars, the bruises the drone left are still very fresh indeed. And the burns covered with plastiskin.

“That look civilized to you, Princess? Does your violence not count because you're a woman and you do it all by proxy? So now you act like your hands are lily-white when someone finally hits you back? Seems to me like that when you say civilized, it's just a fancy word for 'Miranda Foxgrove gets to do whatever the fuck she wants, and the rules only apply to other people.'”

“What I mean,” she says, “is 'Are you ready to use your words like a big grownup boy, or are you going to hit me again?' Because if you are, just do it and get it over with, so we can get to the part where you admit to yourself it changes nothing.”

“Oh, yes, very mature of you, Princess. You're surely the adult here. How very adult it is to expect that you can just come along and wreck a man's life, and he's just going to sit there and take it. What the fuck did you think was gonna happen?”

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she says. “It's pathetic. You act like you were just fine, like you were doing just great, and I came along out of nowhere and ruined everything just for spite. But I didn't ruin your life. You ruined your life. I just came along and picked up the pieces because I foolishly thought that you might still be good for something.

“You were three months, at most, away from total bankruptcy. Don't even pretend you weren't. I've seen the numbers. I know what they mean. I'm smarter than you, and that's what people like me do. We run businesses. We build things. You weren't building anything. You've never built anything in your life. You were busy destroying yourself. All I did was interrupt your self-destruction.”

“Even if that were true, it doesn't give you the right to—”

“Marcus, it gives me every right. I bought those debts fair and square. I didn't force you to borrow all that money. I didn't force you to screw up your father's company. And I didn't force you to turn pirate and start robbing people at the point of a railgun.”

“Bullshit. That's not the point. It's not like I'm sitting here claiming I'm a good person, or something. Sure, I turned pirate. Fine. I didn't say I was proud of it. I never claimed what I did was somehow okay. But you're not all about fair play and civilization either. Otherwise, you wouldn't have hacked my ship, or had it hacked for you, which the fucking civilized rules you keep talking about definitely do not allow you to do.

“Instead you would have turned me in, collected your bounty, and had yourself a nice little payday, and gone on your way. And yeah, that would have sucked for me, but it would have been by the contract. Legal. That was the set of consequences that your civilization allowed you to impose. But that wasn't good enough for you, was it? That wouldn't have allowed you to push me around, which is apparently what you get off on. Well, I'm not a slave, and you just found out what happens when you forget that.

“So fuck you. You may control my ship, and I may not be able to do much about that, but you can't control me.”

I don't quite know when I started shouting, but by the end, I am, or at least close to it. And her voice is raised as well, when her answer comes.

“Listen, you sore loser. I am one of the least—” she stabs an accusing finger in my direction “—controlling people you know. Just do what I say, and follow the plan.”

”Your plan.”

“Yes, my plan. You messed up your life on your own, before I ever came along. My plan gets you out of that. Pays off your debts, keeps your dirty little secret, and bails you out of the hole you dug yourself into. So why don't you just be a good boy, do as you're told, and let my plan fix your screwup?”

“My screwup?”

“Yes, that's what I—”

I hold up a hand, palm out, for silence, and, miraculously, silence is exactly what I get. I don't understand why she shuts up so quickly, without even trying to talk over me…

…until I see her eyes closed and her shoulders hunched, cringing away from me. Bracing for the blow she expects to come.

She thinks I've raised my hand to hit her again.

I knew a doctor on the Clement Ring, used to pull insane ER shifts trying to raise the bribe money to get the rest of her family off Earth. “You can always tell the abuse injuries,” she'd say. “Men hitting wives. Mothers hitting kids. Lesbians hitting each other. Nobody talks, but you can tell. They're always just a little too concerned, a little too solicitous. Guilty. As if they wish they hadn't done it, and perhaps, in that moment, that's how they feel. But it almost always happens again, and there are new injuries, new excuses, and new stories that don't add up.”

I never understood those stories. If they didn't want to, why do it? But I think I understand now. I'm filled with the sudden, insane urge to reach that same hand out and stroke her cheek, comfort her, to tell her I'm sorry, to tell her I won't hurt her again, that it will be okay.

No. No way. That's a stupid thought. The last thing she'll ever want is me touching her. Not before, and especially not now. She must wish to be rid of me as much as I do her.

I sink back into the chair, lower my hand. Slowly. I set them both carefully at my sides.

“Look, Princess, you do know how people like me get their hands on Starlight Coalition fusion drives, right?”

She opens her eyes and looks at me, puzzled. “I don't know. I'm not in the shipping business. You borrowed money, and you just… bought it, right? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Wait, I was being rhetorical. You mean you actually don't know this? Where the hell do you think your family fortune actually comes from? No, I didn't buy it. People like me can't buy Starlight drives. Starlight doesn't allow that. We're not special enough to actually buy from them.”

She's looking at me, face full of bruises and—expectation? Curiosity? Is brutality actually what it takes to get her to stop interrupting me and listen?

“Look, fusion drives are based on alien technology. The stuff they found on Sedna. Do you know how the Artifact War ended?”

“Yeesss, all the major combatants made a treaty. They agreed to share the technology. So what does that have to do with what happened to you?”

“So they formed the Starlight Coalition. New company. Stock split equally between all twelve players. That includes your family, Princess. One of the twelve. And they reverse-engineered Tomb Builder tech and made fusion drives.”

“Yes, Marcus, that's basic history. I know that. Everyone knows that. So what?”

“So they only actually sell Coalition drives to those twelve stockholder companies. If anyone else wants one, one of us peasants, for example, we can't just buy one. That's not allowed. We have to lease them. Paying whatever rates the Coalition decides. Which can be raised at any time. Over and over again. Forever.”

“Oh, okay, yes, I can see how that works. Good revenue model. Ensures a steady cash flow even if demand is down. But so what? It's a voluntary transaction. If you couldn't afford it, that's your fault. You weren't forced to sign that lease. No one is.”

“Oh, please. Of course we are. Starlight is the only game in town. It's a monopoly. We pay whatever they want, or we're stuck using chemical fuel rockets. Burning huge amounts of fuel, and burning more fuel to move that fuel around, and carrying a lot of heavy liquid oxygen to burn that fuel with, which of course costs more fuel, and oxygen, to haul around. And we're still flying about the solar system at a crawl. Taking months to go where ships with Starlight drives can get in days.

“So we can't compete. We can't move cargoes fast enough, or find valuable asteroids before others do, or move passengers at any reasonable speed. We can't grow our businesses. We have to stay on the fringes, picking up small contracts that the real players don't want. Picking scraps that fall from your table.

“Or, we can sign that lease, and have them—and by them I mean your family, Princess—latched onto our necks like vampires. Forever. Or until we run out of blood for you to suck.”

“Where are you going with this, Marcus? Socialism? You want to form governments again? Like on Earth? You think that would fix all your problems?”

“No, of course not. I'm not some statist zealot. I don't have a grand political plan. I'm just telling you that the game is rigged in your favor, and has been since the moment you all got your hands on alien tech that we don't and can't have. It's a monopoly that the so-called free market doesn't fix. Competitors can't duplicate Starlight's research, because there is no research to duplicate. They didn't invent anything. They just picked apart something that was already there, something we don't get to look at.

“You—your family—have broken the system, and then, when you've screwed us all good and hard, you have the nerve to sit here, with a straight face, and tell me about 'personal responsibility' and how it's 'all my own fault?'”

“Marcus,” she says, with an exasperated look, “Since the moment I met you, up until last night, when you decided to choke me half to death at the first opportunity you had, I have never had any intention of screwing you. You're not that important. You're just a means to an end. I found something valuable, and I want to go and get it, and you'll get paid. We both win. What more do you want?”

“You don't get it, do you? You really don't. You just think you can just… buy people. No matter what you do, no matter what you want to get away with, you just think you can throw some money at people and buy the right to exploit them. Well, fuck you.”

“What are you talking about? That's not exploitation. That's an exchange. This for that. No one has to take any deal they don't like. They decide what their price is. How on earth is paying people exploiting them?”

“Because you think everyone has a choice! Being alive isn't free! People need to pay for air, food, water, for a space to live. They don't have a big stack of money to fall back on if they don't like the deal. It's not negotiation if you can't walk away from the table. They take what you offer, or they die. They're your slaves.”

She gives me this look, like I'm child. A child with a runny nose. “They can always go work for someone else, you know.”

How can any human being be so obtuse? She's never done a day's work in her life.

“Yeah, nice theory. But you don't have any idea what you're talking about. You've never had to worry about anything. You could just do whatever you wanted, because you knew you'd be okay whether it worked out or not. You have no idea what reality is like because you've never been punched in the face!”

Her little head cocks to one side, and the look she's giving me is straight-up disbelief now, like I've just said something incredibly stupid.

“Uh… yes, Marcus. I have been punched in the face. You punched me in the face. It hurt. A lot. Did it make you feel better?”

Oh, wait. I did just say something incredibly stupid, didn't I?

Fuck. She's way better with words than I am. She just twisted this whole conversation to make it look like she's somehow justified, or at least like I'm somehow as bad as she is. She's sitting here absolutely defenseless, delicate as a hothouse flower. I could close my hands and crush her right now, but somehow, she's still beating me at… whatever this pointless game is that we're playing.

I push up from the table and turn away, needing to move. It's impossible to pace in zero gravity, but at least I can stand up. Sort of.

“Yes, it did,” I say, towards the wall. “It did make me feel better.”

Maybe if she can't see my face, she won't spot the lie.

“Not the hitting part. Despite what you seem to think, I'm a human being, not an animal. But I want to think that maybe now you understand what it feels like when powerful strangers just come along and fill your life with pain for no apparent reason.”

Her voice follows me. “That's insane. Are you even listening to yourself? You think it's okay to hurt people on purpose just because someone hurt you by accident? What's wrong with you?”

“By accident? Is that how you describe just using people to get what you want, knowing they're going to die, and just not giving a fuck?”

“Die?” She sounds confused, but I don't want to talk about people dying. I don't want to think about that. I don't want to think about the angle of his neck.

I don't want to think about the blood…

No. Stay focused. Talk about what's in front of you.

“You want to know what it is I want?”

She ignores my question. “What did you mean, 'die'?”

But we're not going to talk about that. I turn to face her, lean forward, put my palms on the table. “Someone died. Nevermind. Ancient history. You asked what I want. Do you want to hear it?”

She sighs, squeezes her eyes shut, runs a hand through a fall of glistening black hair.

“If there's something that you actually, really, want right now, that will get you on board with this, that will make you stop fighting me and breaking stuff and yelling, yes. Because so far, you've assaulted me, broken my things, and you may have completely destroyed my life's work.

“So I'd rather not fight more. But all you seem to want to do is have childish tantrums about how evil I am. And they don't serve any purpose, because you still can't fly the ship without me. “

“Yes, I know. I know I can't. But that doesn't matter. You wanna know why?”

With this, I lean down further, plant my face inches from hers. She doesn't flinch this time. When I speak it comes out as a snarl.

“It's because right now, I would rather float off into interstellar space and slowly die than let you control me.”

Finally, I've found some magic combination of words that will shut this bitch up. Finally, she has nothing to say, she just stares at me with parted lips, the whites of her eyes showing.

“So you're going to treat me like a fucking human being for once. Not just some game piece you can move around. You're going to give me back control of my ship. You're going to give me my life back. And then I drop you off, unharmed, at the station of your choice.

“And if you won't do that, then I still won't hurt you. Not anymore. The airlock was a mistake. I lost my temper, and I don't mean to lose it again. I won't lay a finger on you. Not one. But I also won't lay a finger on the controls, either. Or the drive system. I won't fix the ship. I won't fly the ship. I won't lift a finger to keep us alive. And we can just keep sailing off into space until something breaks, or we run out of something, like food, or oxygen, or power, and we die. Together.”

I push off the table and stand up.

“You're bluffing,” she breathes. “You have to be bluffing.”

“So call my bluff. Go for it. See what happens.”

“You're insane. You're literally insane. What is wrong with you?”

“I'm tired of being pushed around, that's what's “wrong” with me. I'm sick of your shit, and I'm not going to put up with it anymore. Ball's in your court, you useless spoiled little pixie brat.”

Slowly and gently, oh so gently, I reach out, pluck the “cough-y” bulb from her limp, unresisting fingers, and squirt the rest of it right down the vacuum sink.

“And stop brewing that stuff in here,” I shoot back over one shoulder as I head for the hatch. “It smells like crap.”