Chapter 1: Hawks and Doves | page 6

Tiberius punched the glowing green lock button. The ramp hissed as the seal broke. It lowered with a mechanical whirring that grated and ground a bit more than it should have. Gripper did not exaggerate the ship’s age or disrepair.

Outside, the blastphalt abutted expansive white walls, studded with yellow fluorescents and striped in colorful map tracks. The ceiling above was ribbed with arcing beams as wide as Maeve was tall and covered by a network of huge yellow-white lights, dimmed for the late night traffic. The landing that Maeve was to pay for was not expensive enough to merit one of the Level One open-air pads.

A massive mechanical claw clasped the Blue Phoenix where it had set the hauler down, crampingly close to a bulbous Hadrian bulk transport and a smaller Dailon personnel carrier. The Phoenix was not a large ship, well suited to handling cargoes too small to command the attention of the major shipping companies or whose owners wanted to avoid attention. The Blue Phoenix was a little less than five hundred feet long, almost half of that length dedicated to the cargo hold and engines. That left little space aboard to accommodate the crew. The corridors were narrow and quarters were small, resulting in an abundance of scraped knuckles for Gripper and scuffed wings for Maeve.

The Blue Phoenix was shaped like a narrow cone, bisected from base to tip. The cargo ramp extended from a sloping bulge in the otherwise flat underbelly of the ship, nestled between three stout landing legs. The underlying shape, however, was almost invisible under a multitude of sensor spars, invaluable in scanning for salvage. They thrust out in every direction from the ship like the spines on a drunken porcupine. A pair of wings, lumpy with stabilizing jets, jutted out from the forest of sensors, with a matching rotational thruster on a fin on top.

Only the nose of the ship was smooth, marked only with the long horizontal slash of the viewport around the cockpit. The window was not strictly necessary, since pilots flew almost entirely by instruments and computer readings, but shipbuilders had learned centuries ago that most beings liked to actually see where they were going.

With her slender silver fingers firmly wrapped around his embroidered sleeve, Xia led Duaal from the ship. Gripper knuckle-walked behind, a small computer folded under his chin. Maeve moved to follow, eager to finish her paltry task and see to her own interests, but Tiberius caught her by the shoulder.

She flared her wings at him. The captain glanced down at the feathered lengths. The humans of Prianus esteemed birds over all other animals and Maeve was sure that her wings had something to do with the captain’s patience with her. Of the coreworld species, Prians alone treated the Arcadians with anything like decency. It was a shallow sort of respect, warranted only by the fairies’ superficial resemblance to their beloved birds, but it was something. Maeve never hesitated to use it to her benefit.

Not this time, it seemed. Tiberius held her fast.

“Maeve, I’m serious,” he said. “You stay out of the lower levels. I don’t want you coming back to the ship low on something or beat to blast from some fight that you picked.”

She narrowed her eyes at Tiberius. “What I do with my own time is my business and none of yours,” she replied frostily.

The broad-shouldered Prian captain shook her angrily, like he would an unruly child. “It is every inch my business, girl,” he growled. “I need you to keep this crew together! I didn’t choose you as first mate for your looks, dove. I don’t know how to manage people! Never did. If I’m going to keep the Phoenix in the sky, I need you to keep the crew in order for me and you can’t do that when you’re out of your skull on some chem!”

“I will consider your desires.”

Tiberius grunted and released Maeve. It was the best he was going to get, for now.

“Eight hours,” the captain reminded her before stumping down the cargo ramp. He vanished into the throng of travelers pouring from the other ships, out onto the busy streets of Axis.

Maeve followed suit. She closed up the Blue Phoenix behind her, punching the code Gripper had given her last week into a keypad outside. The airlock hummed and cycled, then the light ticked from green to red. Secure.

- End Chapter 1 -