Tag: Action Sci-Fi

The Collective: Part 6

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

6.

Follow the Money

Lex stood in the center of a basement hideaway that smelled of damp mold. It was poorly lit by a few, LED lamps on tables and a desk. A large cable-spool formed a make-shift table between she and Rachel whom sat in a stinking couch. Its tattered edges said it was decades past its expiration date. Around the room were men and women dressed like Lex, blades at their back and eyes fixed on her attentively. The fresh scents of blood and sweat mingled with an organic putrescence that told of recent murder; at least a few of the group had been in the Garden, their blades recently wet with the blood of Calista’s snipers.

In the table’s center, a holo-projector splayed the faces of three people into the air. Rachel knew them all by reputation, if little else. Two men and a woman, all three well-known public figures.

“In order to bring the Collective to its knees, we need to stem their flow of money,” Lex said to the assembly. “The first target is this man, Ryota Tanaka.”

One of the faces took the place of the others. The Japanese man looked to be in his mid-forties, but the graying of his hair, and sagged corners of his eyes said he might be much older. Undoubtedly, he was one of the Collective’s elders whom long ago received the anti-aging drug, and halted their biological aging in its path.

“Hiro. Kaz. Tanaka is your mark,” Lex said to two of the faces in the room. “Each night he dines at the Kobe Ranch, one of the few non-synthetic cuisine restaurants left in the city. The place is largely empty, but heavily guarded. Be prepared. As soon as you enter, you’ll have his men on you.”

The man and woman bowed their heads respectfully to her. Turned for the basement’s exit.

“Ryo, and Yang-Lee,” she said to two men. The image changed again; the blonde woman in her late fifties with heavy, Anglican features from a Germanic heritage– or something near it. Lex confirmed it, “Your target’s the German investment banker Ava Martz. She will be meeting with her ex-husband to exchange their children at his apartment uptown. Yang, you will escort Mr. Martz and his children to Ava’s awaiting limousine and commandeer it while Ryo completes the hit. See to it that they’re taken somewhere safe and report back once the job’s finished.”

Yang’s scarred face had seen its share of violence, was obscured in shadow from a bow mirrored by Ryo beside him. They turned to leave, disappeared as Hiro and Kaz had. Lex scanned the remaining faces in the room, then her eyes fell to Rachel, “Ms. Dahl, you will accompany me to capture and interrogate this man.”

The final image overtook the others; a man in his mid-thirties. There was something vaguely Scandinavian in his ice-blue eyes, an almost formal-lethality to his pointed features.

“Ville Andersson,” Rachel said.

“Correct,” Lex replied. “Tell me what you know about him.”

Rachel sat forward to a whiff of mold, “Swiss banker. Youngest member of the Collective. He runs money through various would-be legitimate organizations and charities, all of which are tax-dodges. The Collective donates roughly all of their profit through him, allows them to evade any tax laws. Then, it’s stored in his private vault in the Alps.”

Lex was impressed. Rachel judged by the room’s silence that most others were as well. She refocused, “Very good. Then you understand why we must capture him and extract the vault’s location and security details.” Rachel swallowed hard, nodded. “Good.” She looked to the others in the room, “Rachel and I will secure Andersson and report what we learn as soon as possible. Until then, stay vigilant.”

With that the assembled parties dispersed. Most left through the basement entrance. The others sank deeper into its shadows or labyrinthine blue-print. Soon, only Rachel and Lex were left in the main room. Lex deactivated the projector as Rachel rose from the stinking couch.

“Alex–” Lex glared. She corrected herself, “Lex. Why me? Why not someone more capable?”

Lex was firm, sincere, “Because I don’t trust you alone with my people. And recognizing you will confuse Ville long enough for me to eliminate his security detail.”

Rachel chewed her bottom lip, “You killed my sister. Then you have the nerve to say I’m the one that can’t be trusted?”

The tendons in Lex’s jaw tightened, shone through what light dotted her face, “Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. You’re valuable– to us, and to the Collective. At least if you’re here, you’re more likely to remain intact. But don’t think for a second I won’t cut your throat if I suspect treachery.” Lex stepped past Rachel, shoved her way out the door and into the rain, “Come on, or we’ll be late.”

A quarter of an hour later the two stood beneath an awning in a central district of town.Neon and LED shines sliced through the endless, warm down-pour. Clearly whatever force controlled the Pacific’s Typhoon season had seen fit to unleash an early attempt to drown the city. In its midst, both Lex and Rachel were caught, the latter soaked to the bone for lack of the former’s leather coverings.

“What do I do?”

“If our intel is accurate, in five minutes Andersson’s limo will arrive outside that building,” she said with a nod to a massive, television broadcasting building across the street. “He’ll be ready to review the latest advertising numbers and ensure they match with his projections.”

“And you want to get him before he goes in,” Rachel surmised.

Lex replied with a sole nod, explained, “The attacks on the three Collective members will be synchronized to ensure any security response is chaotic, disorganized. With too many places to be at once, it will take the GSS that much longer to deploy.”

The two women went silent under the gentle cascade of rain and tinny downspouts that mixed with near-audible shifts of the LED screens above. Together the sounds formed discordant symphonies of nature and technology.

Distant tires splashed beneath a quiet, electric whir. Lex rocketed into the shadows of a dumpster’s alcove across the street, hunkered down to wait for her opening. The limo splashed into view, rolled up outside the station’s brightly-lit entrance. A door opened on the rear, passenger-side; three men stepped out with large rifles, formed a wall around the door. A lanky, blond-haired man emerged behind.

A subtle movement from the shadows Lex occupied signaled Rachel. She started forward in hysterics. She stumbled across the road, groped for and around the limo’s trunk. The rifles trained on her as she blubbered incoherent cries over the security detail’s shouts. Andersson recognized the more youthful of the Dahl Twins, waved off his guards to grip Rachel’s arms. Lex watched, waited. They exchanged frantic words, the security detail distracted with their eyes locked on Rachel.

Lex slipped around the corner, sidled along the building. No-one noticed her, not even Rachel. She sobbed about Calista’s murder, enthralled the four men. Lex moved from cover, drew her blades slowly. In a flash, two of the three guards were decapitated. Their feet slipped, bodies fell in writhing seizures. Blood spurted from stumps of former necks. The katanas angled back for the third man. A foot dislodged his balance. He smacked the limo’s side. The blades went into his torso, out again to shatter the vehicle’s side-window.

Andersson stumbled back, tripped over the curb. He soaked his back-half in a puddle as he scurried back on his hands. Rachel retrieved a GSS rifle, trained it on Lex. There was an obvious moment of conflict before she swiveled, aimed the gun on Andersson.

“Ville,” Rachel said. Lex stomped past, re-sheathed her blades. “We need to talk.”

Lex grabbed the man’s lapel, planted a heavy fist against his face, and knocked him out cold.

Short Story: Wrath of a Universe

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 3 Comments

A low smoke lay over the sprawling field in the pre-dawn hours. With it were blazing bonfires from bodies piled three-men high, alight to give illumination for those that still lived. The crackle of their flesh and cloth-padding beneath their chain-mail was hidden by the sounds of clanging metal. Thousands of swords from men in both red and blue cloth flashed and shined in the light of the smoking plain.

Behind the Blues a way, the closed draw-bridge of a newly erected castle from the English King gave protection to the royal, inner-guard just inside. The archers atop its walls nocked their arrows together, fired volleys into the Reds’ rear-flanks that had yet reach the swordsmen. A few, Blue knights, their armor blood-stained and their horses fatigued, cut swaths through Red and Blue swords alike to gallop in a charge for the Red Knights that rallied within the chaos.

The charge was met with war-cries from the Red Knights, their immense broadswords heaved overhead ready to smite the would-be invaders. One Knight shouted something about no quarter, but it was lost in the blood-bath beneath him. Not long after, his horse was taken by a Red’s arrow. He tumbled forward, end-over-end atop the horse. He landed either dead or unconscious, beneath the horse, his face pressed into the muck stirred up by the days-long siege on the castle.

The plain was a swamp of bodies, blood, and mud, the pervasive stench of rotting and burning flesh as much meant to burn the dead as to stagger the enemy. The Reds had grown used to the smell by now, but the Blues had been too comfortable in their fresh, clean castle to experience the stench first hand. At that, many of the Blue’s front ranks met the Reds only to wretch and heave out their decadent, pre-battle meals. Most died by the sword, taken advantage of in their moment of humanly weakness.

A second volley of arrows was aimed further inward, fired just as the Knights met one another in the center of the field. Their blades clashed, clamored for anywhere they might draw blood. Instead, they bounced helplessly off thick plate-armor. Most were equally winded by the blows, but fought onward with a breathless, valiant effort. The hail-storm of arrows descended with the prompt of nearby screams and thuds from the dying and dead. A few Knights were caught unawares, saved only by their plating.

Third and fourth volleys were nocked, arced upward through the smoke that strained the archers’ vision for their targets. Each man made a kill, but whether it was an enemy or ally, none could truly be certain. Such was the chaos from atop the ramparts and behind the turrets’ loopholes, that a man could only be certain of his kill by measuring the breadth of the wave that fell as the arrows rained down. If there were a break in the wave at that man’s position, he knew he’d failed.

The morning came with ease, the Reds’ tactic for attacking in the night near impossible to miss by now. Though the cliff’s-edge the English King’s castle sat upon was unscalable, impenetrable from beneath, it was a Western outlook. When the sun began to peer over the hills and mountains of the East, the archers were blinded, as were most of the swordsmen. Their orientation gave them the full glare of sunlight in their eyes, forced them to fight half-blind. They could only listen to the clank of their swords against armored parts to know they were on-target. Otherwise, they were helpless to know whom their opponent might be.

The tide turned in the Reds’ favor. The Blues were pushed back toward the closed draw-bridge and the deep moat carved into the Earth in a half-moon around the castle’s entrance. The blinded archers were forced to fire with lessened accuracy, their waves broken, no longer uniform.

It was then that a streak of fire, as if cast downward from a merlin-esque figure in the heavens, hurtled toward the Earth. Most of the men didn’t notice, but the Blues’ archers were forced to. It was all they could see even through the smog and sunlight. The cowardly and brave alike fled at once, terrified that the Reds had developed some great catapult to rain destruction upon them. But soon even the Reds began to take notice.

The object was ablaze with a firey tail, its trajectory on course to strike the battle-field. Whether friend or foe, the men fled together. The battle waned with only a few that took advantage of the precious distraction to soak their blades or arrows with blood. Soon, even they were drawn toward the figure above. A distant sound like the crackling fires of the dead began to engulf the area. Men of both sides stood to watch in fright, their necks and faces caned upward to see the frantic destruction ready to strike.

At once, the battle ended. It was still chaos, but now arms were cast aside. Bodies formed a sea that surged with erratic movements. Some men shouted about the wrath of God, others cried for their enemy to be slain by him. The rest simply ran, as if compelled to by little more than instinct. Those that chose the latter shed armor, weapons, padding until near-on full-nude to flee more quickly for the trees and distant hills in the East.

As the fireball drew nearer, the low-rumble and crackle of its blazing tail shook the ground and scorched the air. The air atop the trees in the hills caught fire. It spread through the pines and evergreens as if dry kindling. The men there choked, coughed, writhed in pain on the ground from their innards being flash-cooked. The men’s terrified fleeing had stolen away their breath even in those with the best stamina, but the lesser men were already dead. When the others fell to the ground, they writhed long enough to see the last moments of the battlefield itself.

The fireball landed with a bright flash and a tremendous quaking of Earth. There was no-one left to watch from the inside, but from the outer edges of an eagle’s view the destruction was unmistakably total. The great fireball had leveled the castle, the men, and the field, left only a smoking, orange-edged crater. The impact scattered dirt and debris for countless distances, halved the cliff’s-edge so that not a mark of either side’s presence remained.

It was later said the English King had incurred God’s wrath and spite, brought destruction upon both sides equally. As the ages of monarchs gave way to that of reasoned men and their fields of science, mathematics, and astronomy, the theory was changed. However guilty the men had been of immorality– the King among them– their deaths were coincidence. While some outright argued it was not evidence against God’s wrath, others mirrored the sentiment more poetically. It was, they reasoned, a firebolt of anger from the Universe itself mean to dispel man’s wrath, overcome him with humility at his smallness. Whether poetic, true, or not, none at the battle would disagree. Were they not centuries dead, it was certain each of them knew would remark upon their smallness having been witnessed first hand to the wrath of a great, vast universe. Not even the most foolish fools among them would disagree they were much smaller after the battle than at its start.

The Collective: Part 5

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

5.

The Exchange

Lex stood in the park’s center, beneath a clearing in the trees that made her visible to any possible angle a sniper could have in the buildings above. It was a show of strength and lack of fear; even Calista wouldn’t be so stupid as to take a shot before Rachel was secure. Beside Lex, stood the captive with her hands still bound, looking none the worse for wear. She rubbernecked the building-tops with a furtive glances and fidgeting nerves. She’d never seen anyone murdered, didn’t care to start now. All the same, Lex stilled her with a word.

“Stop,” she instructed sternly. “You will be fine.”

Rachel was adamant, almost begging at light-speed, “Look, I know who you are. I knew when I saw you. If you let Calista move her men into position, they’ll kill you! You don’t need to seek revenge. You’re smart, talented. Don’t die over some petty grudge.”

Lex’s eyes met Rachel’s. With a shuffle of fabric and metal, Lex drew a sword from her back, brought down. Rachel swallowed hard. The blade met the binds on Rachel’s wrists, cut them free. She nearly fainted as the sword fell to its downward-point, joined soon after by the other.

“I told you; if I’d wanted you dead, you’d have died in your bathroom,” Lex said as she faced the forward area.

Rachel rubbed her wrists, “Alexis, don’t do this.”

Lex’s eyes narrowed, grip on her blades steady, “Don’t call me that.”

“Please,” Rachel argued. “I see it in you. I know you want revenge for your parents, but it wasn’t Calista that did this. It wasn’t any of the people you’ve killed or plan to.”

Lex’s tongue was acidic, her eyes forward, “Quiet. They’re coming.”

Protest perched on the edge of Rachel’s lips but her eyes followed Lex’s. Calista appeared in gleaming heels and jet black, silken skirt and blouse. She followed the downward slope to the central garden with a saunter that owned the place, was above it. Undoubtedly her sniper’s were already in position, but she made no inclinations toward them. Instead, she stepped, one foot before the other over the soft clicks of heels on earth, stopped just out of reach of Lex’s blades.

Smart, but not smart enough. Lex smelled her fear, a terror that said perhaps the snipers weren’t enough. If only she knew.

Calista’s face finally emerged from the shadows thrown cross-wise from old, dirty flood-lights and Tokyo’s general aura. The lines and bags of her eyes had doubled, expertly hidden by more make-up than any woman should own. Somewhere beneath all the cover-up and faux-toned blush was a good-looking woman, albeit aged. The beauty was as lost as any claims she had to mercy.

Calista recognized Lex with a serpent’s smile– wicked and cold, “Alexis Thorne, murderer. I knew they should have never let you out.”

Lex was quiet. Rachel begged, “Calista, don’t. We don’t need more blood. Leave.”

“Shut up, Rachel,” her sister barked, eyes locked on Lex’s. “The whole world’s seen what you did to Li and Kay. They had to clean Li’s intestines off the side-walk with a shovel.”
A corner of Lex’s mouth tensed smugly, “It’s a good look for him, if you ask me.”

“No one did,” Calista countered. “In fact, no one knows it was you. Not officially. So whatever message you meant to send is lost.”

Lex’s head gave only the smallest tilt, barely visible, “The people don’t need a message, they need a wake-up call.”

“And you believe killing me will do that?” Calista condescended.

“Among other things.”

“Rachel,” Calista said, eyes never leaving Lex’s. “Go. There is a car waiting outside the park.”

Rachel refused to move. Lex finally cast her a look, affirmed with a nod. Rachel began to inch forward. She was just past Calista when a single shot rang out through the park. In a blink, Lex was in the air, blades spinning with her. Calista breathed; the shot was off. Something had happened to the sniper team. She should have known, prepared. In a flash, she had a pistol out. Lex landed her front-flip just as the gun leveled on her. The blades went up, in. The woman’s body hunched forward, half-suspended. The gun fell from a limp grip.

Lex snarled an inch from Calista’s face, “You should have stayed hidden.”

A sound of bone crunching gave way to a gasp. The blades spun a quarter-circle, wrenched through organs and ribs, slipped out with a river of blood. Calista fell to her knees, crimson flowed from her mouth, down her chin. She slumped sideways, dead.

Rachel was frozen, had turned in time to see the gun slip from Calista’s waist-band and everything after. She hurried toward a Japanese maple, fell to all fours and vomited. Lex stooped down for a clean swath of Calista’s clothing, wiped the blood from her blades. She rose, sheathed the swords, then made for Rachel near the tree.

The newly singular twin fell sideways, her back against the tree. She wiped her mouth, couldn’t bear to let her eyes grace her sister’s corpse ahead. It was too much. She’d been a twin her whole life, and now, she was nothing. She and Calista were even closer than sisters could be. Every important moment of their lives had been shared. Now she was dead. Rachel was alone.

Lex knelt beside Rachel with a metal flask from her coat, “Here.” She unscrewed the top, “It’ll help. Trust me.”

Rachel couldn’t think. She took the flask with an autonomous movement, downed the pungent liquor inside. It was something old, vintage, nothing like the synth-ahol they made now. More than likely Lex had raided an old distillery, or even someone’s basement. All the same, it warmed Rachel, settled her nerves enough to think. It was good; Lex needed Rachel to think, but rationally, not emotionally.

Her voice was calm, softer than normal, “Listen to me Rachel; you’re in shock, but it’s important you listen.” Rachel nodded autonomously. “Good. You only saw this because Calista ordered her people to kill me with you still around. She had no intention of honoring the deal, trading herself for you. She was ready to risk your life for her own. I’ve no doubt if it truly came to it, she’d have chosen herself over you. Somewhere inside, you know that. Accept it. Now is the only time you can. You’re going to be angry soon, at me, but at her too. You’re going to wonder why she did this. The truth is, it was because she was selfish. Nothing more.”

“Sh-she… was my sister,” Rachel breathed.

Lex leaned in carefully, “And that meant much more to you than to her, Rachel. Accept it.” Lex rose, straightened, “You have a choice now, one no-one can make for you, but that you must make soon. You can come with me, help me fight the Collective, or you can return home. If you do leave, you have to accept that any protection Calista’s kinship afforded you is gone. More than likely, the surviving members of the Collective will have you arrested and interrogated. If you know anything about their methods, you’ll know it’s torture. I can offer amnesty. They’ll offer treachery. The choice is yours.”

Lex turned away, began the walk back across the garden for the shack they’d occupied. As much as she’d been wrong to kidnap her, Lex’s predictions had been accurate. Combined with the obvious logic in her assertions about the rest of the Collective, Rachel saw little recourse but to follow Lex. Otherwise, she’d be subjected to more, unimaginable horrors than anyone had in decades. Whether or not Calista had done so out of malice, or sheer ignorance, Lex was right; she’d risked her sister’s life for selfish, self-preservation. It wasn’t a stretch to believe she’d have sacrificed Rachel entirely if it came to it.

As difficult as it was to admit, her sister had been ready to kill her to live. The only real choice left now was whether to put her anger where it belonged; on those that had turned her sister into a sociopath. The Collective might as well have put the blade in her themselves. They’d rotted away Calista’s mercy, innocence, and more importantly, her compassion. Were it not for their influence, the world might be better off. Perhaps Lex was right about that too.

Rachel took another swig from the flask, winced at the fire it set in her mouth. She rose on weak limbs, stumbled back toward the shack. She only kept herself from falling in to it by firm grip on the door. She slammed it behind her, swayed with a sickness in her limbs and gut.

Lex watched her feet plant, back straighten, “Alright. I’m in.”

Missed Part 4? Read it here!

Short Story: The Grand Oops

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 3 Comments

The ship had lost control, the Pilot with his hands at its helm as useless as the Engineer in the decks fighting to restore lost power. The planet’s atmosphere set fire to the ship’s steep angle while the alarm klaxons blared inside of it. Sparks rained over the cock-pit from the largest bouts of turbulent friction that fried more systems, jolted the ship further from the Pilot’s grasp. Were he a less stubborn man, he’d have fled for the escape pods with the rest of the crew.

Unfortunately, even the inkling of fear he had was suppressed by his concentration and attempts to keep the stick straight. The Engineer would fight to her last breath to return control to him, patch the blown conduits and re-fire the engines. Until then, they were in free-fall at precisely the right angle to burn them up on re-entry or pancake them against the ground on impact. Emergency lighting kicked on through the ship, a main conduit severed on the exterior hull from the heat.

Another, apex up-heave from friction and the ship was cast sideways, helpless against the planet’s gravitational fury. The ship was certainly lighter now, beginning to spiral like a poorly thrown football. Still the Pilot fought, the Engineer cut, soldered, re-connected. Like the pilot, she knew of nothing else but the whims and will of her instincts exerted over her body. Long bits of copper cabling were yanked from one panel’s dark innards, sliced, spliced, and welded to another’s. Light flickered in the engineering compartment, then went out, plunged her into total darkness. She tripped over strewn tools, boxes, spare parts, groped for the dead-center of the room with a spanner in-hand.

The Pilot watched the blue sky turn red around him, become spackled and splattered with the gradated yellows and browns of a dusty, dune-laden desert. The ground approached at terminal velocity, ready to greet him with emptiness and death.

The Engineer’s hands worked double time. Her forehead poured sweat into already-useless eyes, burned them. She swallowed terror to crank back a nut that would re-seat the engines’ igniter. Then with a slap of a hand against a console, she lunged for the far wall, smacked a control panel.

“Light it up!”

The Pilot fought his turbulent tumult for a set of switches, tripped them up. Then with a mutter of “about fucking time,” he threw the ignition switch. The turbine-shaped engines at the ship’s rear glowed blue, sputtered and spit fire. Then with blast of thrust, the turbine’s rocketed the ship forward toward the ground.

“Woah, woah, woah!” The pilot said.

He yanked back on the stick, control returned to him. The ship’s trajectory made a wide, deep parabola, its vertex only meters from the ground. Another jolt said something was ripped off the ship’s belly as its rising ascent signaled a high-pitched, roaring laughter from the Pilot. It bled through the ship’s open comm to the Engineer’s ears with a heaving bosom in the darkened enclosure. She sank back against a wall, leaned forward with her hands on her thighs.

“You’re worth every penny, Em,” He shouted between laughs.

“Thank you, sir,” she panted. She took a breath, then, “We need to set down to asses exterior damage. We can’t follow the pods’ tracking beacons until I restore power to the Auxiliary systems.”

“Roger that, I’m on it.”

He straightened the ship out mid-way up the parabola’s far-side, jetted forward at full speed to come around again. The ship angled downward gradually, sank onto a damaged landing gear just over the rise of a high plateau that made a mockery of the ship’s ninety-foot height– even more so of its blocky, three-hundred foot length and hundred-foot wingspan. It set down at a lean, its left-most rear gear jammed in place from a severed hydraulic line somewhere in its housing.

The Pilot jogged through the ship’s innards with a set of flash-lights. All along the way, the random, over-loaded circuits of secondary and tertiary systems spit angry sparks at him, or arced the last of their currents over load-bearing struts and supports. He hurried into the Engineering compartment, ready to aid the woman doubled over against the wall.

“I wanna’ raise,” she panted at him.

He laughed with an affirming nod, “Consider it done.”

“Good,” she said as she straightened from the wall. “Let’s get this tub back in order.”

It was only a few hours before she’d gotten the ship fully-running again, retraced the escape-pods’ trajectory toward the crew. They were mostly intact, save a few cuts and bruises from their bumpy rides and rougher landings. In less than a day, the ship was repaired– even the landing gear’s hydraulics that required the ship to be re-started. It hovered above the ground as the last gear extended, and with an exhausted collapse, fell back to the ground more level than before.

The ongoing question all through-out the repairs was what had happened. There had been no epic space battle, no forced ejection from hyper-flight, nothing as an obvious prelude to damage. In fact, the flight had been rather dull; a routine delivery of medical supplies to a Galactic Alliance outpost– a high-paid, by the books courier job. Sabotage was the next concern on the list, but all of their advanced tech and good-old fashioned interrogation techniques told both them no-one aboard was guilty of wrongdoing.

All theories of foul play were thrown out as the Engineer set about searching for the problem’s physical source. The main culprit had to be a conduit between the engine’s cock-pit controls and the engines themselves. Indeed, it didn’t take much in-depth examination to locate the faulty part; a stripped and corroded, five-prong connector mid-way through the ship’s wiring.

“It was supposed to have been replaced,” The Pilot said cheekily to the Engineer.

“Yes, sir,” she dead-panned. “Then you said to leave it and if the tub was gonna’ fall outta’ the sky that you’d make sure it never hit the ground.”

“I did?” The Pilot asked blankly.

“Yes, sir, right before you unbuckled your pants and closed the door to the consort’s chambers in my face,” the Engineer said.

“Oh.” He stared off with a distant duality of shame and mortification, “Oops.”

“A grand “oops,” sir,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

He shrugged, shook off his trance, “Well, I was right though, we didn’t hit the ground. See? Gotta’ trust in your Captain, Em.”

He turned from the Engineering compartment with a smarmy smile. Em stared upward in defeat, shook her head.