Chapter 3: Labor Negotiations

"Artemis!"

A young woman lowers her handycomp from her face. "She must be calling for you," the young woman says. She waves two fingers in a shooing motion at the miniature glass huntress sitting on the crate on which the young woman also rests her legs. "Go on. See what she wants."

The figurine stays put, staring at her icily. It might be intimidating, if the arrow were still intact. Instead, half of it is tied around its waist with a small length of string.

"What? You think she wants me?" Artemis asks it. "Well she'll have to come get me at the office. It's, uh, improper to yell like that. The principle of the thing, you know."

"The office" is composed of eight empty metal crates, six stacked to form two walls of a makeshift cubicle, one for her to sit on, and the last as a desk, or rather currently a footrest. The entire arrangement is placed against the hangar's outer wall, to enclose all but one side. There's no real purpose to it, other than for Artemis to allow herself to feel a little more comfortable out here, away from a steady stream of... well, everything that Athie says to her.

"Artemis!"

"Nope," Artemis says under her breath. She brings the handycomp back up over her head and leans back. She has mail to read before going back inside.

Hey there, Princess,

I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'll have to be short today. They have the whole installation locked down tight since they apparently "saw something" out at the edge of the system that shouldn't be near us and they're tightening security "for our protection." Honestly, I'm surprised they care that much. So what if a whole bunch of convicts die, huh? I could have dropped dead a month ago and they'd have clinked their glasses to a job well done but now it matters to them?

Everyone seems pretty confused, but your good uncle's got his nose to the ground he does. Know what I've heard? One of the guards says it was a ship, and it didn't look anything like what we can make. And he means "we" like "we humans," you get it? Now I'm not saying it's aliens, but well. You know.

That's the part where I waggle my eyebrows all knowingly, if I really wanted to convince you. But... It's so boring over here, I think people are ready to jump at anything and pretend it's all big and exciting, yeah?

Anyway, that was recent news. They'll be back to whipping our arses soon enough I'm sure, whenever the whatever-it-is passes. So onto more important things! Like your birthday in two weeks, though I suppose it'll be passed already by the time this letter gets to you. And unless my calendar's wrong, that makes you fifteen, doesn't it? Which means Dr. Krandt probably started you on the second part of your meds by now. I hope your mother hasn't found out yet, since well, she'll probably flip out. I'd swear she and I aren't related but then I'd have to renounce you as my niPEhUTUwgeG1sbnM6byA9ICJ1cm46c2NoZW1hcy1taWNyb3Nv Zn QtY29tOm9mZmljZTpvZmZp
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The rest of the letter is similarly garbled. This has happened before. Uncle Terry isn't actually allowed to send messages like this out, but in his seemingly bottomless network of "I know a guy" he found someone who encrypts and puts his correspondence though. Except sometimes it doesn't quite work. Artemis makes a mental note to have him resend the second half.

She rereads the last complete line. No, her mom hasn't found out yet, at least as far as Artemis knows. And she's been trying to keep it that way. It isn't quite that what she's doing is illegal, but Doctor Krandt (also an "I know a girl") told her that it was really borderline. Most body modification is shunned among Trade Order worlds, though the Order itself can't actually mandate against it as it falls outside of their jurisdiction, and entirely on the individual planetary governments.

But Artemis wanted it done anyway. Just so she could be a normal, healthy girl.

"Artemis. Get out of that fort or I'll knock it down." Well, she finally showed up. Speaking of body modification...

"I told you, it's my office," Artemis calls back.

"Whatever. I need you, so get your ass over inside the hangar."

Artemis tries to gauge how angry Athie is by the sound of her voice. It doesn't sound that bad, although it's difficult to tell, as the girl always sounds more than a little severe. To be on the safe side, Artemis quickly pockets her handycomp and steps outside her wall of crates.

"Alright Athie, you got my attention. What do I have to do this time?" Artemis smiles, hoping to deflect some of the bad mood. There's a reason she'd been avoiding Athie today.

"Don't call me that. We aren't friends."

Not for the first time, Artemis finds herself staring a little into the green light of the thin device covering Athie's right eye. No, she corrects herself, it is Athie's eye. The first time Artemis started at that eye, its owner was prompted to a long-winded explanation about information capture, and vision enhancement, and neurological augmentation. Artemis, however, simply couldn't get her mind off of how strange it was.

She still can't. It's almost pretty in a way, especially with that shade of green against Athie's dark skin. Normally the device should attract hate, or at least ridicule from the general population, but Athie is Opulentsia. This supposedly means she comes from somewhere important, and can't be touched.

Supposedly.

The girl's six months younger and fifteen centimeters shorter than Artemis though, so Artemis would be damned if she let Athie boss her around all the time.

"So what do you need from me?" Artemis bounces on her toes a little to emphasize her height advantage.

"If you'd been helping at all today, you'd already know."

"If you'd let me do anything useful, I'd help more!"

"If you could actually be useful..." Athie had started walking back toward the hangar entrance, but she stops fully every few seconds to turn and make sure Artemis is following. The third time this happens Artemis gives her a sarcastic wave.

"You're insufferable," Athie mutters.

"You need me," Artemis needles back.

But not for much, she reluctantly admits to herself. Sure, at first she'd tried to throw herself into Athie's project with enthusiasm, but it wasn't long before Artemis found herself napping in the middle of the work, and eventually just unlocking the hangar every afternoon before sneaking off elsewhere. It isn't so much that Athie failed to give her anything to do, as Artemis had said, but that she's been possessed of a growing impatience that drives her away. She has a restless desire to just see it done, and ceased wanting to know just how far away from that they were a long time ago. Eight months it's been since the start, and Athie's given no indication it's anywhere near complete

The girls round the corner and enter through the hangar doors, into the home of the El Nath Amalgamated Shipyards product known as the Vagabond. It's the same generic, square craft as it's always been, but to Artemis it's also a means through which one can become a fascinating and experience-ridden person. Not that she knows exactly how this would come about. Somewhere in her mind she assumes that she would find herself in high orbit, at which point she would be spontaneously endowed with a quirky personality, earth-shattering confidence, and a sure knowledge of which phase lanes lead to adventure. (Also potentially a link to a smuggling organization and an enforced trip to a penal world, but Artemis is pretty sure she can avoid that part. Pretty sure.) Or maybe it's something about the hardly-understood phase space itself, and the unknown energies found within.

"So I remember you telling me that the Order tried to confiscate the ship at one point?" Athie asks as they climb through the hold and start heading for the pilot house.

"They were crawling around here for days," Artemis says.

"But they didn't take it."

"No, they did. They just replaced it with one that looks exactly like it. They're sneaky like that."

Athie stops for a second, sighs, then continues. "Anyway, I found out why it's still here. I discovered this some time back actually, but didn't bother making much of a fuss about it as it wasn't necessary to deal with at the time. It is now, of course, which is why I bring it up. It... seems your uncle had a bit of a contingency in place..."

"Oh, I thought they were just stupid."

Athie raises her voice and keeps going. "Many of the controls to important systems… ahem, many of them are shut away or otherwise disabled. Multiple times, some of them even all the way back to the systems themselves. Things like thruster control, certain pieces of life support, even the phase drive. There's locks, and not even electronic ones, but it would appear not one of them can be forced without breaking something really costly. And money's already running low for this."

"Well ask for more," Artemis says. "Your folks already gave you twenty times what I get in a year's allowance."

"Under different pretenses."

"Pretenses," Artemis mocks, throwing her hands up.

"Stop. Look, we need the keys, and I couldn't find them anywhere here." Athie glances into a cabin as they pass it; the door's normally closed but right now it shows its contents of clothes and other personal articles strewn about haphazardly. The other cabins had been cleaned out by their owners (and later, occupied by the girls for overnight work), but this was instead left to be sifted through and ransacked for evidence (or possibly loot). Granted, It had looked much the same in there when it was being used, but still…

"You went through his stuff?" Artemis asks suddenly.

"Everyone else has. It hardly matters."

"Yes it does! You should have asked me." Artemis shoves past Athie to shut the door. Not that it makes much of a difference at this point. "It's the… principle of the thing!"

"He's not here anymore to care about the state of his quarters."

"You say that like he's dead." And yet here she is trying to maintain the sanctity of some sort of perverse shrine to the man. Artemis slams the door control and hears it whisk shut behind her.

The door makes a convenient surface for Athie to pin her against by the shoulders. "It feels as if we're graverobbing anyway."

Artemis wrests an arm from the other girl's grip and takes a swing. Athie twists but the fist still connects with the side of her chest, and then in a blur she's trying to push Artemis over, and Artemis is dragging her to the ground, and they end up a mass of flailing limbs and bites and scratches, and then Athie is sitting on Artemis's stomach, holding her wrists to the ground.

There's that entrancing green dot again, just centimeters from Artemis's face. Artemis finds it slightly easier to look into that rather than Athie's other eye. "It doesn't make a difference what I say right now," the eye's owner says. She forces the words out evenly, but stops between sentences to pant out a few rough breaths. "You and I both know that your mind can't hold nearly enough spite to stop you from coming back here, tonight, keys in hand. You can't not see this through."

When Athie begins to relax her grip, Artemis immediately shoves her off and scrambles back to her feet. Artemis glances at the girl now sitting on her ass on the floor, but then drops her gaze and mumbles, "I'll get them."

Her exit is hasty but Artemis doesn't forget to grab the other Artemis from the "office" before beginning the walk home.

The route she takes cuts through the forest. Sunset's already beginning hours early as the gas giant that this world orbits is out, and the sun sinks behind it before reaching horizon. But even though Artemis travels mostly in shadow, it's impossible for her to miss the subtle trail branching off of the road at one point. Her imagination takes her off the main road, crunching through the undergrowth of a path mostly unused, to the creek whose waters one could outrun if she could avoid tripping on the scattered, smooth stones, and eventually to the clearing. The clearing that seems too large for one person, even one who has since grown up significantly.

Her feet keep her firmly to the road home. Artemis had tried going back a number of times. She'd tried laying among the brilliant pink ferns and watching the sky, tried to use it to clear her mind to make gains on a stressful assignment or other piece of work. There was just something about the place that seemed to demand it be shared, but capriciously insisted at the same time that no one Artemis thought of bringing was good enough for it.

Or maybe it was Artemis it wanted to keep away. Maybe it blamed her for the loss of its real caretaker.