I climbed out of my room and made my way to the bridge. The dual-city of Hong Kong filled the screen. I still couldn't get over it, how could any city become so crowded that they built another city on top of the existing one? Vega glanced at me before returning her attention back to flying. Probably was still mad at me literally kicking her out of my bed. Who the hell did she think she was? Like I would ask her for help. I can handle my nightmares by myself thank you very much.
I certainly wasn't going to confuse her for Beck. As if I would confuse him for anyone. I watched as Vega pulled into city, following the traffic as we made our way to the port. We had been paid at the first half and Andre and Vega would go and collect the rest while Cat and I dealt with fixing the ship.
After they left on the once again fixed pack-rat thing, Cat and I started working. Thankfully it was mostly cosmetic shit so all I had to do was fix the wiring and patch up holes. Holes that were about the size of my hand. I keyed the little walkie-talkie thing and said "It's the twenty-sixth century, shouldn't there be shields and shit for space ships?"
"Those are expensive. Maybe we can get a good one if we hold off on buying anything else. You'll have to ask Tori." Cat answered, for once not going on off on about something weird. "One time my brother decided to use a shield-."
Annnndd I spoke too soon. I tuned Cat out and flipped down the short face mask and started up the plasma torch. Holding a small circular metal sheet, sparks flew as the plasma met the metal and it took me several minutes to complete a circle and tap it a few times to make sure that it was secure. I turned off the torch just in time to hear Cat finish her story with "And he finished the girl off with the one foot that wasn't in the bear trap. Weird huh?"
"Very."
I don't know what she was talking about and I didn't want to know. Especially when it ended with finished off with a foot. Somethings are better left as a mystery. I moved along Nostromo, finding bullet holes and patching them up. After a few hours of work, I opened one of the top hatches and climbed down the ladder into the ship. I pulled off the mask and groaned. I was always lucky that I don't sweat, though I still felt the need for a shower. Unfortunately that was going to have to wait.
Lunch was calling and there was still more work to do. I turned on a deep pot of oil and waited a couple seconds to heat up before throwing in some chicken. A few minutes later and I had some chicken tenders. Sitting down to eat, I was just about to take a bite when the lights went out. At first I ignored it and started eating. Not like I haven't eaten in the dark before and a power outage wasn't going to interrupt my meal.
At least that was my line of thinking until the power flickered on and off several times in less than thirty seconds and then stayed off. That would be concerning alone if power hadn't come on and stayed on with a tortured scream that went on for a solid minute.
New to the future or not I knew for a damn fact no ship is supposed to scream like a cat that got stepped on. The scream seemed to echo from the engine room and I sprinted towards it, cursing the whole time. I turned a corner and ran over Cat.
Grabbing her, I started to drag her towards the closest exit, she dug her heels in and had to yell a couple times to get my attention. "Jadeykins it's okay! I thought about what you had said and fixed the shield generator! It works now."
I stared at her as if she had sprouted a second head. "That was the shield generator starting?" Cat beamed and nodded. "It was. I made it work. I think."
"What? The hell do you mean you think?"
"Well…" Cat started and then beamed again. "We can't run it all the time, but during a fight we can make it work. Or it might explode."
"It might what?"
"Who's hungry? I am. Let's go eat something." Cat said quickly, completely ignoring my question. She skipped out of my reach and quickly down the hallway towards the kitchen. I shouted after her and Cat started to move faster away from me. I growled and started to move after her when a loud banging sound got my attention. I frowned and turned towards the sound. It came through again and I sighed. I walked towards the airlock door and went through both of them.
Standing outside on some kind of small hovercraft thing were two men. Both were of Asian descent and wearing black jackets with some sort of sword and shield emblem on the right shoulder. Cops of some sort. "If you're worried about the noise, it was just some issues with the engine. Fixed now and shouldn't be exploding." I said.
"We don't care about that." One said. The one who spoke was shorter than me with close cropped hair he stared at me with a flinty expression. The other cop was my height with shoulder length hair slicked back. He didn't have as flinty an expression, but more one of that was really bored with everything. Perhaps the good cop to the shorter one's bad cop? Short guy spoke again "I am Detective Li and this is Detective Hao. We're with the Hong Kong Metropolitan police."
"Okay then?" I asked, pausing to give them a chance to speak.
"We need you to come with us and answer some questions." Hao said. "What? Why?" I asked.
"Because we do." Li said. I opened my mouth to say something when Hao snapped something in another language and the Li grabbed my arm and yanked me forward. "Hey what the fuck?!" I tried to pull my arm out of his grip but it was like being wrapped in a steel bar. I yelled in pain as they twisted my arms around and then cuffed me. "What the fuck?!" I yelled and tried to kick them. They easily avoided my kicks and then back handed me across the face.
It was like getting hit in the face by a baseball bat. Dazed and blood flowing from a split lip, I sat down heavily in the car. "Is there anyone else on your ship?" one of them demanded. It took a second for me to think. "No. No one else." I muttered and swayed on the seat.
So going to sue for police brutality. Fucking shits. As soon as they slammed the door shut we lifted off and flew through the city. My head started to clear after we arrived at the police station. I was dragged through the station into an interrogation room and then bolted to the chair. Overkill in my opinion.
Hao sat down while Li left. "Your ship, the Nostromo recently took a job that had you running down to Miami. Correct?"
I didn't say anything. One thing my dad had repeatedly drilled into my head was that I never talked to the cops without a lawyer present. Even for a rich family like ours was. Hao stared at me and I stared back. "Is this true or not?"
"My head hurts." I said instead. "That's nice." Hao said. "Now answer the question." I rolled my eyes. "Lawyer." I snapped. "Why do you need a lawyer? You're just answering some questions. Answer them and you'll be on your way. I promise."
I don't think that I have rolled my eyes this often except for maybe when Vega was running her mouth. "Lawyer." I repeated. Hao sighed as Li walked in with three cups. I watched the steam waft out of the styrofoam as Li put all three cups down on the table.
"Coffee?" He asked. Normally I lived on coffee but I refused to drink it. What if they had drugged it with some sort of super-truth serum? It's the twenty-sixth century who the hell knows what they could have done?
"Lawyer."
Li and Hao both sighed. "Just answer us." Li said. "Not until I get a lawyer." Hao sighed and drank one of the coffees. "Okay look. We're trying to finish this case on corruption alright? We just need you to answer a few questions. We know that you're innocent in this. You're just a courier after all." Li said gently.
I rolled my eyes for the umpteeth time. He must be the good cop. "Lawyer." When Li pursed his lips and glared at me, I glared back and had the satisfaction of him looking away. Hao pushed himself away from the table and stood up. "You can stay here and think for a bit about your situation. We'll be back in a bit."
Both of them left and I was sitting in the room, bolted to the floor. I thought about this situation. I barely knew anything about cops back in my time, I certainly didn't know anything now. Could they really just arrest me right out of Nostromo? How long could they keep me here? And Why did they care so much about one delivery to a bombed out city?
These thoughts kept bouncing around my head as I sat for what seemed like forever. Once or twice they would come in and ask a series of questions. Questions about the delivery, what we delivered and which parts of Miami, who hired us et cetera. I refused to answer everything and only glared at them.
My head had stopped hurting but my split lip still stung a bit. After about the fifth or so time they came in, Hao walked over and undid the locks tying to be the chair. Not so gently lifting me up, he shoved me out the door and into the waiting room where a furious Vega glared daggers at them and every cop in here.
"Jade!" She yelled when she spotted me. Rushing towards me she grabbed my shoulders "Are you okay?"
I blinked, wondering why she wasn't still mad about me literally kicking her out of my bed. "Yea. I'm fine."
"Ms. Vega, as you can see your girlfriend is fine-" Li started say. "First off we aren't dating." Vega snapped. "Secondly not once did any of you follow the proper procedures for arresting someone and you didn't let her speak to a lawyer or anything. You want me to continue listing every illegal thing that you all just did? Or we free to go?" Vega snapped, just shy of yelling. Her voice still carried and I noticed that several people were staring at us. Including one dude in a suit and tie who was glaring at Li and Hao.
Hao coughed. "You're free to go. Good night Ms. Vega. Ms. West." Vega turned and marched out of the station as I gave those two jackasses a one-fingered salute before following her.
"Sorry about taking so long. Cat called me right away and they wouldn't give you up or acknowledge that they even had you. I had to call my dad to get anything done." Vega said as she flagged down a taxi.
I shrugged. "I'll let it slide this time." Vega gave me a half-smile and tapped her foot as we waited for the taxi. "They do anything to do you? Hurt you or anything like that?" My hand unconsciously went to my split lip and then dropped. "No. Nothing bad." I answered and then changed the subject "The hell was that about?"
Vega shrugged. "Who knows? Good money that they were corrupt and working for one of Tonkin-Hainan's rivals." We climbed into the taxi and I closed the door and stared at the window. "Is that normal?" I asked.
Vega shrugged again. "For the most part yea. Most cops try to do their jobs and are good people. Some though...some aren't. It really depends on the area. Earth is pretty bad and LA is one of the worst."
Let's hear it for some things being the same in the future! Corrupt cops and probably corrupt politicians too. They probably go hand in hand. Then another thought occurred to me. "Why does everyone seem to think that we're dating?"
Vega rolled her eyes. "I don't know. They normally never comment about my dating life."
"Probably because it's dead."
"Oh shut up you ganky-jerk!"
A short chapter as I write a much longer one. Decided to break them up into parts as to make my life easier and not have you all waiting for so long. I hope you all enjoyed.
