In Which Justina is in the Wrong Place and Dani Has a Day


Justina stepped out into a room filled with a thrumming hum. Computers lined one wall, above them was a solid mass of large displays and readouts that meant very little to her. The other walls were covered in pipes and tubes as well as doors and access panels of varying sizes, the light was bright and everything impeccably clean. Despite the chaos of what looks like several different styles of infrastructure carefully pieced together, the whole place felt loved. A lot of work went into this space, and every detail was carefully attended to.

"How in the bloody hell did you get in my engine room, Lassie!"

She turned, startled by the very loud and very Scottish voice, to see a thin and wiry middle-aged man with a shock of graying red hair poking out from under a blue knit cap.

He cringed as she stumbled a bit and put out an arm. "Hey now don't touch anything. Just get out."

He herded her backwards toward a sliding door wedged between banks of computer consoles and she went willingly.

"You're Scottish." She said, blinking.

"No shit."

"You're a Scottish chief of engineering?"

He squinted at her. "Are you pished? You don't look it."

"No, I'm just lost."

He grunted, clearly not believing her, but didn't press the issue. He relaxed a little once he got her through the door but still watched her warily. The teenager leaning on the wall next to the door startled as they came out.

"Wha-" She managed before he interrupted her.

"I don't care if you're bored and sleepy, and I don't care how much she paid you. The only people allowed in engineering are engineers. Otherwise we will all die in a great fiery explosion that will be your fault. And your crispy wee atoms floating around in the vacuum of space will all be miserable because my crispy wee atoms will be beating the living shit out of them. Do I make myself clear."

"But sir, I was awake and she didn't come past me, I swear."

He grunted. "She said she's lost. Take her back to the residential decks. We'll talk about what's going to happen to you when you get back, lass."

"I swear I didn't do anything wrong! Check the door logs! It hasn't been opened since you went in two hours ago!"

His eyebrows snapped together and he pointed down the hall. "Go."

Lips pressed tight, the girl took Justina's arm roughly and started towing her down the hall. But when Justina looked back the man was still standing by the door working at a digital panel. Just before they passed around the corner he turned and stared after them. The hairs stood up on Justina's neck, but she couldn't place his expression.


Danielle Wyn was having a day. It hadn't begun that way. It had begun wonderfully. She had woken to a knock on the door. She rolled out of bed silently scooping up the RivetCo™ Handheld Welder from the top of her tool box. She could have gone for the stunner, it would be much less lethal if a confrontation turned ugly, but since it was illegal and the welder was not she left it in reserve.

She slipped up beside the door and keyed on the security camera. A grin broke over her face. Noah Marx was standing outside, hands jammed carelessly into the pockets of his uniform. She flung open the door crying, "Noah!"

He flung his arms wide. "Dandelion! Ah, you're going to put that down before you hug me right?" He eyed the welder with a little trepidation.

She laughed and pulled him into her apartment. The door slid closed, the welder went back on it's box by her bed, and she tugged the covers straight out of habit.

He watched, amused. "Did I wake you? It's almost 4pm, station time." He glanced around her spartan apartment, and his forehead pinched a little in concern.

"I have a third cycle shift. For me it's basically 8am." It was true but not the whole truth. She only worked 2 days a week, and on consults. Just enough to count as station personnel and gain access to the outer layers of the station. She swapped enough shifts that her schedule tended to spin around unpredictably. She struggled with sleep as much now as in the weeks after she had left the Astraea Free Mercenary fleet, and Noah, behind. She grinned at him, brushing aside the lie of omission, and hugged him fiercely. "It's been too long."

"It has." He sighed, "you could-"

"Don't. "

"Yeah, I know." He ruffled her hair. "Ell still loves the present you sent her, I'm not sure how I feel about giving a 12 year old a functional electricians kit, but she's following the safety guidelines to the letter so I can't exactly find fault even when her inventions do weird things to the lights. Did I tell you she built her own mini debri bubble? Seals us out of her bunk when she's mad." His complaints were rendered less than convincing by the proud grin he wore.

"Well, that's what you get for marrying a genius, a bunch of little Marx way smarter than you!"

"Hey now!" He laughed.

"Just wait until the twins learn to read, you won't stand a chance."

"You joke, but yesterday Leo asked me how a space suit cycles oxygen and before I could even open my mouth Sharon said, 'The carbon scrubber, silly.' and Leo just went "Oooooh!" and ran off nodding."

"Sounds about right right." Dani laughed.

"Yeah. Your godchildren all send their love by the way." He held out a hollo-card. "It's very cute. They are still back in orbit around some dull dust ball with their mother. We were hired to train them on the first space ship their planet bought. You aren't allowed to watch that until I leave, you know."

"That seems like a nice and safe place to stash the kids."

"Well, yeah. And educational."

"And Grace was okay being on babysitting detail? I, of course, mean the downsiders. Not your kids."

"Are you kidding? She has a captive classroom! She's in heaven. And if she ever needs to take them down a peg, Ell is happy to come guest lecture."

"How long will you be staying?"

"A couple weeks this time. The Popinjay took some damage on the last job. We all got shore leave while the engineers get her properly fixed up."

They continued talking easily, catching up, avoiding deep topics. Dani got Noah a chair and disappeared for a minute to pull a simple workers tunic vest over the soft black basic knits she slept in. It was a common practice among station workers, although most tried to change them every night and morning. Dani figured if they didn't smell too much yet it wasn't worth wasting the money to clean them.

They talked about safe topics, Dani took him on tour around the station. He ignored the mutual looks of wary distaste she shared with station security, smiling blandly.

They wound up in a little hybrid caffe bar with actual windows looking out on the open park wide enough to see the curve of the station that tripled as a recreation area, food garden, and oxygen producer.

They talked about this, that, and the other thing. Places he'd been, tools she had designed. She told him about the new debris collector she was working on that was semi autonomous and was going to help keep the space around Pegasus Station cleaner faster and easier, as soon as she could figure out that little overloading problem. She was just beginning to go into detail when she felt a tug on her sleeve.

She turned and smiled at the ten year old standing there. He dropped her sleeve and started twisting his hands together nervously.

"Hey, Hawke. How's your sister doing?"

He still looked nervous but a shy smile lit his face. "So much better, Mistress Dani. Thank you for getting the doctor to look at her. The fever's all gone and she's crawling around again and yesterday she pulled herself up to stand!"

"That's wonderful!" she ruffled his hair.

"But, um, Mistress Dani…" Hawke looked between her and Noah, still twisting his fingers. "Your, uh… The... dockmaster asked me to tell you that your, ah… your shipment of… feminine products came in." He blushed furiously, though whether it was because he was a bad liar or because of what the lie was about Dani couldn't tell, but he continued doggedly. She could see his mind churning furiously as he tried to remember all the code phrases. "He wants to know... what color delivery box you would like."

"Thank you. I think green would be best this time."

He nodded seriously and took off, weaving his way through the lunch rush.

"So anyway," Dani turned back to Noah, "I think it's the smaller particles that are causing the clogging-"

"Dandelion." Noah interrupted. "Do you think I'm an idiot?"

"No, of course not. But that show wasn't for you."

"Are you a smuggler now?"

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to."

"God damn it, Dandelion! That's what's so important here? You gave up a career as one of the best protectors in the galaxy so you could become a petty station smuggler?"

"I'm doing good here!"

"You're making sure rich people get their drugs!"

"No! Never that! I'm surviving and when I can, I make sure others are surviving too. There aren't a lot of options here if you aren't already rich."

"You have options. You could come back. Damn it Dandelion, we need you back!"

"I can't be responsible for people's lives anymore, I just can't."

"Of course you can! You were the best. You are the best!"

"I am not! People died Noah, everyone died!" Our friends, those poor colonists, their children! They all died because you told them I was the best, that I could dismantle a bomb Blanche, that mad monster of a Pirate Queen, had hours to build."

"You've saved way more lives than we lost that day. You did everything right! You got them to evacuate!"

"And every lifepod was destroyed!"

"You couldn't have known that would happen!"

"I should have! If I was the best I would have known!"

"You are the best! Mistakes happen! But we lived! We have to do something with that gift!"

"Gift! You sealed us in an airlock, that's not a gift that was reckless blind luck!"

He dismissed her words with a sharp gesture, "You could be so much more than this! You can do something with this life. You have the skills to save so many people and here you are hiding on a pretentious backwater station waiting to die!"

"And you're flying around playing hero building the same damn monstrosities that destroyed our crew, pretending you are any better than the people you fight!"

"We keep supply routes clear. We keep people safe!"

"Those who can pay!"

"You know that's not true!"

"Isn't it though? You haven't had to pick recently whether to go with the higher paying job when there are too many? And there are always too many!"

"Only so we can afford the ones who can't pay as much! And we wouldn't need to if we had more ships! Which we would have! If only our best engineer, and oh yeah, bomb disposal expert, hadn't run away when we needed her most! I stayed and I fought. It might not always be pretty and it might not always be clean, but I've done what I had to do."

"You blow people up!"

"They are bad people!"

"Not all of them! Not always!"

"That's part of the job! That's the price of peace and keeping people safe!"

"Is that what you tell yourself at night? At least the only innocent lives on my hands are from my failures!"

Noah froze. The blood drained from his face. Dani stood paralyzed; fists clenched, angry, and horrified. The constant terror she had lived with for the last few years was threatening to swallow her up again. She couldn't speak. She couldn't take it back.

He turned and left without another word.

Dani sank back into her chair and her stomach just kept sinking. Her face and fingertips were numb.

What have I done.

~I… I'm so sorry. Do you need…~ Xanaria trailed off as Dani turned her whole attention inward.

How long have you been here?

~Just the last minute or so.~

Great. You here to drink then?

~Ah. Sort of. I was. Not any... Is there anything I can-~

No.

"Hey, Kid." Dani jerked her chin at the young bartender. "I'll take your special."

Go wild. Put it on my tab. If they make you pay, my credit chit's in the watch. Becklin's Bar makes a really good Cross Time Ale. The Blue Door is shit and the owner hates me so avoid that one.

And without further ado Dani crawled into the back of her own mind and shoved Xanaria to the front.

~Okay…~ Xanaria accepted the quickly brought drink with a smile and took a sip. Her eyebrows went up. It was sweet and fruity but under that was a strong kick of alcohol. She decided she liked it.

She finished it, perhaps a little faster than she wanted to, but she needed to find Justina and this body didn't seem to be affected as quickly as her own would be.

The instant she finished the bartender was back asking, "Another Dani?"

"No thank you, I have to be somewhere. Um, put it on my tab?"

"Of course." He bit his lip, "Um, I'm sorry about your friend…"

Dani ignored him. Xanaria nodded once, unsure what to say and left the bar.

~Now, if I was Justina, where would I be?~


The surly teenager led Justina to an elevator, and aggressively pushed the lowest button in the middle section. There were three sections to the elevator's button pad. The top buttons were just labeled "Command," the middle seven or so we're labeled with numbers, the bottom three were labeled "Station Operations," and the bottom most one was red and labeled "Docking and Hull Access."

"Up or down?" Justina asked in the silence.

The girl looked at her like she was insane. "We're going in."

Justina nodded, pretending that made sense. She looked around some more. There was a plaque on the wall above the buttons. It caught her attention for a moment. Instead of an elevator number it read: Pegasus Station NNE-Q. Her curiosity stirred but was quickly crushed by the weight in her gut. I don't care. She thought, knowing it was only half true.

The elevator moved smoothly and soon opened onto a bustling hallway.

"Where are we?"

"Where you are actually allowed to be." The girl pushed her out of the elevator.

"I don't suppose you know where I could get a drink?"

"Even if I knew, why would I tell you? I have to go get fired now. Thanks. Asshole."

"I'm sorry, I didn't intend to come out there."

The girl snorted and the elevator doors closed.

Justina sighed, and turned to the hall. It looked for all the world like a busy strip mall with extra little booths and stands set up between stores. She began walking, picking a direction at random. She sidestepped a couple walking arm in arm and giggling. She got swept up in the flow of foot traffic as she looked around trying to figure out what to do next. Before long she saw someone using a computer in the wall. She made her way toward it, arriving just as the previous user left. It was dark except for a circle that said "On" in the middle of the screen. She pressed it.

"Hello!" The screen said in a bright and cheerful font. "Are you a Resident or a Visitor?"

She selected "Visitor."

"Would you like Free access, Premium access, or Sponsored access today?

She pressed "Free," realizing there was a flaw in her plan to get drunk and wait for Xanaria. "Capitalism." She grumbled.

All color drained from the screen leaving it black and white, except for a window in the bottom right corner playing ads. There were three options on the screen now: Map, Call, or Query.

She pressed Map. The display showed a labeled diagram with two angles. The first picture looked like the rings of a tree. The central rings and the outer rings were grayed out. The center was labeled command the outer ones labeled Station Operations. Radiating lines were labeled like a compass which she guessed marked elevators. The ring marked 1 had a star on it right near the line marked NNE.

The other looked like a side view of a long tin can sliced into layers and the oddly shaped end caps were grayed out. Each layer was labeled with a letter, although she noticed it skipped E, N, and ended at Q. So there are… 15 sections? I suppose that makes sense, but you'd think they would find something simpler.

She tapped the ring in the first diagram labeled 1. The screen changed to a wide rectangle split into 15 sections each labeled with a letter, like in the second diagram. Once again there was a star over the section labeled Q. She shrugged and pressed the Q. It did nothing. She tried zooming like she would on her phone, and it worked. She zoomed in until it began to display the names of corridors and rooms. She stared at the busy map blankly and rubbed her hands over her face.

Changing tactics she looked for a search bar. She eventually found it tucked away in the sidebar menu. It was one of the few options that wasn't grayed out. She searched "Bar."

"I'm sorry," The computer displayed, "This is a Premium search. Would you like to switch? Free searches include: Exact addresses for directions, Elevators, Medical, Waiting areas, Arrival or Departure Resources, and other Essential Infrastructure"

Justina hesitated, then typed in "arrival resources" figuring it was about as close to accurate as she could get.

The screen then gave her a list of locations sorted from closest to farthest away. She selected the closest thankfully. The directions were pretty simple and she read them twice before walking off. Still, she had to stop by two more wall computers before she eventually found herself in front of an official looking door.

She was about to follow a tired looking group of tourists inside when a hand grabbed her arm.

"Bad idea, Justina."

She turned, smiling, "Hi Xanaria, and hello…?"

"Her name is Dani, but she's a bit catatonic right now."

"Is she okay?"

"No, but she doesn't want help either. She says she wants a drink. So we're all on the same page. Ready?"

"Absolutely." Justina followed Xanaria through the crowd to an elevator. "How did you find me?"

Xanaria shrugged. "Educated guess. Plus, Dani has quite the network of information. An… unofficial one, if you understand."

Justina nodded, assuming that meant illegal, and dropped the topic.