Starship Repo Ch 1-4: Keep the Comments Coming (Patreon)

Hey folks!

To answer a couple of notes - yes, as I am writing on my tablet and really just getting things out, these chapters are VERY first draft. I've figured out how to do a decent spellcheck without needing to do a full revision, so I've gone back and done that for Chapter 1 and am reposting (note: I haven't changed any content in the chapter, just spelling/grammar, as the goal here is to get as much of a first draft done this week as I can.)

The notes so far have been really great, thank you and keep them coming!

Cheers from the woods!
~Break.

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STARSHIP REPO

Chapter 1

System: ZR702.3 ‘Serin’s Pearl’
Planet: BAJ450.6655D ‘Opalescent’
Big Ol’Ton’s New & Used Space Liners

The wind didn’t help with the heat, it just kicked up dust and spread it around, and Rake asked himself for the third time that day what idiot had named this place. Pearls were created by water creatures, and there wasn’t an ounce of it to be found on this damn planet - everyone knew someone had been getting creative back when the ass end of the Zolani Cluster was being explored, but this just felt ironic and petty.

“You see them?” Emerald asked over the comm.

Rake reached up and triggered his comm from the shoulder unit on his worksuit. He’d changed into it once Brick and Widget had gotten on board the target but it wasn’t helping with the dust or the heat, it just made him look more official for the inevitable. “Yeah, I see them. Looks like that speeder is bouncing off the dirt.”

The speeder in question was still a ways off, and Rake lifted his rangefinder and zoomed in on it. The little jerry rigged flatbed was the same unit that Ol’Ton had given him a tour of the starship lot earlier that day cycle. The Pecomini owned almost fifty acres of dust covered rock on a planet of dust and rock, and he had fifty-seven starships ranging from little single-being atmospheric delivery jumpers to big transport cruisers which were just warehouses with engines strapped to their asses. None of them could really be considered space liners but the branding sounded better than what they were - broken down pieces of crap. Rake’s best guess was that maybe seven of the starships on the lot could actually turn over their engines and get off the ground.

Hopefully the Beshel-class freighter they had come for was one of them.

“Widget, we’re going to have a problem in about a minute,” Rake cued his comm. “Please tell me you’ve got this thing ready to fly?”

“It’s a mess. I think there’s a stinky, dead spacebat in the exhaust shoot!”

“Will she fly, sis?” Rake asked.

“Not if you keep bugging me.”

“Can’t rush art, kiddo,” Brick’s gruff, staccato voice clipped through the comm.

“Can’t rush art,” Rake mumbled to himself, rolling his eyes, then cued the comm again. “Alright, I’m going to need to run interference here. Try to pick up the pace.”

Brick just responded with a double click of the comm, acknowledging he’d heard.

The rangefinder showed Rake that Ol’Ton was driving the speeder, his squat and shelled Pecomini body crammed into the driver’s seat. The flatbed was filled with the big Guberdammer security guard that Rake had seen at the prefab office shed earlier - he had six arms and could probably pick up the speeder and carry it faster than it was flying, but also seemed to be a particularly dopey member of the powerful species. There were also two or three Lincits in the back with him, the smaller insectoid race worrying him more than the big guy since they were hive mind drones and would care little for their own lives. They were the engineers that supposedly maintained the ships on the lot.

Sighing to himself, Rake flipped open the covering on his plasteel tablet and opened up the official files he was going to need. This was probably going to get messy.

It took another minute for the speeder to finally come to a stop, the lower guidance array actually grinding against the bedrock under the dust as it lowered to the ground.

“What the vents are you doing!?” Ol’Ton yelled, his voice coming out warbelled as he struggled out of the driver's seat. “Get away from my merchandise! Tours are by appointment only.”

“I’m not here for a tour-”

“Hey, are there people on my ship?” Ol’Ton growled and turned to his big Gruberdammer employee. “You, meathead, get him out of here!”

The Guberdammer hummed to himself as he hopped down from the flatbed, two of his arms cracking their knuckles in front of him while another two stretched above his head. “Yarp.”

“Hold on,” Rake said, holding out his hands, one empty and the other holding his datapad facing them. “My name is Rake Solar, I’m a bonded worker for Solar Repossession and Insurance, and acting as a legal appointed agent of OmniBank.”

“OmniBank!” Ol’Ton grunted as he managed to pry himself out of his seat and hopped down to the ground. Most of his body consisted of his exoskeletal mottled blue and black shell, and as he landed his insectoid-like head bobbed up and done before his eyestalks slithered out to their full height. “I don’t have any deals with OmniBank. All my financing is through the MultiCredit Unions.”

“I know,” Rake said, still holding his arms up to try and pacify the big Gruberdammer that was looming slowly towards him. “Unfortunately for you, I’ve identified the vessel behind me as the Mark’s Meatwagon which is currently flagged for repossession due to missed payments.”

“You have no evidence that this is the ship you’re looking for,” Ol’Ton growled, stomping forward on his wide, flat feet. “I bought this ship fair from a licensed dealer out of Vkik III - I even have the tags on file. And you didn’t identify yourself as a legal representative of OmniBank when I gave you a tour of my lot, which makes this an illegal seizure.”

“Well, first off, when I took your tour I wasn’t acting on OmniBank’s behalf,” Rake said. “I was a private citizen until I positively identified the ship. And as for evidence, you definitely scraped all of the designation RIDs off, but I still got a partial hit when you were telling me all about the custom ventilation system. You were also helpful enough to show me the engines, which let me get a radiation read that matched the signature of the Meatwagon, and the system backup ID on the stock transponder is still registered to the previous owner. Also, scrubbing the paint off the top just made a big clean spot spelling out the name. I could practically see it from space.”

Ol’Ton’s mouth gaped open and closed several times, his big beady eyes staring unblinking at Rake as he processed this news.

“Now, I’m taking this ship unless you can show proof of payment for the full missing amount, which…” Rake checked the paperwork. “Is 783 thousand units and change.” The fact that the Pecamini was selling the ship for 620 thousand, and had dropped the price to 530 when he thought Rake, in disguise, was interested told Rake that it wasn’t likely to happen.

“So, what? I’m supposed to just let you take my merchandise?” Ol’Ton growled. “Maybe I just have my boys here wring your neck and bury you out in the dust?”

“I guess you could try that,” Rake said. “It wouldn’t exactly go well for you though.”

“I’ll take my chances. Shoot him,” Ol’Ton said, turning to the Lincits that had hopped off the speeder behind the Gruberdammer. “Kill anyone on board.”

That would have been very, very bad for Rake. Gruberdammers were known for throwing their enemies around and into things with their six arms, while Lincits were almost equally known for opening fire and not stopping until well after their ammunition had been expended - something about the hive mind losing track of ammunition counts between drones.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Rake said, his voice raising as he raised his hands higher.

“OminBank Repo-Reps aren’t allowed to carry weapons during a repossession,” Ol’Ton laughed. “What are you going to do, fistfight my security?”

“Yeah, I don’t have a blaster,” Rake said. “But I do have that.”

Rake pointed up in the sky and, right on time, Emerald brought the ship down in a roar of engines to hover directly over the Meatwagon. The backwash of the exhaust ports on the compact tugship blasted the dust in a swirling cloud away in all directions, leaving everyone blinking for a moment as they covered their faces. The SolaRepo IV wasn’t exactly a flashy ship, or a speedy one. Or particularly large. But it’s stocky shape was half engines and the wind gave a much more dramatic effect than it might have been worth.

“I’ve had an open comm line since you walked up, by the way,” Raked said, then asked over his comm. “Emmie, you got the threat recorded for the Omni file, right?”

“Got it,” Emmie said, her voice booming out of the external loudspeaker on the tugship.

“So, if you decide to attack me or my crew,” Rake said. “My fabulous pilot up there is going to use the only weapon our ship is allowed to have to make you pay for it - she’ll turn our engines on you. And, honestly, she might do that anyways because she doesn’t like me all that much so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s already got her finger on the throttle.”

“You know me so well, Cap,” Emmie said through the loudspeaker. Rake had left the comm open so everyone on the crew could hear how things were progressing.

Ol’Ton said something in a gibbering language to the Lancits that Rake’s universal translator didn’t understand. The little device most people had implanted in their aural sensory organs wasn’t a decryptor - it held the fifty most common languages across the galaxy, plus you could get another dozen or so local ones updated into the firmware. Whatever Ol’Ton had spoken, he’d probably picked it specifically so he couldn’t be understood.

Luckily, Rake was good at reading people. Even people with bug faces.

“Brick, Widget, we’re about to have issues,” Rake mumbled for the sake of the comm. “Secure what you’ve got. Emmie, get ready to haul this thing out of here.”

“We’ve still got damage on the fourth grapple,” Emmie replied over the comm.

“Then we’ll do it with three,” Rake grunted. He’d started slowly backing away from Ol’Ton and his goons. The little Lancits were garbling away and looking antsy. “I’m running out of time out here.”

At that moment the engines of the Meatwagon thrummed to life, shooting up a whole new wave of dust swirling around the area.

“I got it!” Widget crowed over the comm channel.

Rake backed all the way into the landing ramp. “Pleasure doing business with you!”

The Pecamini snarled at him and then turned and barked an order at his employees. The Gruberdammer started moving towards Rake and the ship with a confused look on his face, and the Lancits pulled out little hand blasters and started shooting. The first laser blasts were the most dangerous, and Rake fell back onto the ramp to use the bracing hydraulic support to give him some cover. Thankfully once they opened fire the three little insectoids just kept pulling their triggers wildly and the Meatwagon caught the blasts on its hull.

The entire ship groaned as it lurched into the air, and for a second Rake thought the boarding ramp was going to fall straight off the bottom of the freighter, but then he was holding onto the hydraulic as the ground started to lower away beneath him. At least, it was until two big hands covered red fur on the knuckles grabbed onto the ramp from below.

“Nope! Not today,” Rake said and stomped on the fingers.

It didn’t do anything.

“Oh, crap,” Rake said and stomped again, but a third hand was now holding onto the edge of the ramp and the Gruberdammer’s head pulled into view as he was deeply frowning. It was like the big guy wasn’t sure why he was doing what he was doing, but definitely knew that he should be doing it.

“Kid, need you in the cockpit,” Brick called over the comms. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Little busy!” Rake shouted, trying to stomp on the Gruberdammer’s fingers again but almost getting caught by a big hand instead.

The ship lurched again, this time heaving up and down hard enough that Rake bounced off the landing ramp, whacked his head on the seal above him, and then hit the ramp hard.

The good news was that the huge lurch caught the Gruberdammer by surprise as well, and he’d been in the middle of pulling himself up onto the ramp and was off balance enough that he let out a little “Urk!” as all six of his arms pinwheeled and he fell backwards into open air.

The bad news was that there was a distinctly dangerous sounding whine from the starboard engine of the Meatwagon that wasn’t stopping, and as Rake blinked his vision back into focus he saw that it was smoking heavily.

“Shitshitshitshitshit,” Rake mumbled to himself as he picked himself up off the boarding ramp and stumbled up into the ship, slapping the worn ‘close’ button at the top. The middle interior of the vessel was one big open cooled storage unit the previous owner had used to ship, or possibly smuggle, meat and meat-byproducts. Rake had to stumble his way to the ladder that led into the front cockpit area, almost slipping twice before he managed to get up into the short corridor. The lurching of the ship, and a loud bang somewhere behind him, didn’t help matters.

Finally popping into the cockpit, Rake looked to the pilot’s chair. “Brick, what’s the matte-”

“Rake, I’m flying the ship!” Widget grinned at him. His kid sister had her usual energetic, spunky gleam in her eye that had gotten her into plenty of places she shouldn’t have been at the age of eight. She was wearing the custom, miniature version of the rest of the crew’s work jumpsuit that Rake had gotten her when he’d convinced their father to let him take her aboard rather than leaving her back with the old man. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a couple of little buns on top of her head the way she liked Emmie to do it for her, and if it wasn’t for the fucking dire circumstances Rake might have actually thought it was cute.

“Widget? What the-?” Rake pushed forward and slid down into the copilot seat, not having time to pry his sister out of the main one. “Brick, why the shit is my sister piloting this ship!?”

“Wait, that’s Widget piloting?” Emmie asked over the comms. “Good job, kiddo!”

“Not. Helping,” Rake grunted at the same time Widget cued her own comm, “Thanks, Emerald!”

“Had to let her, Rake,” Brick grunted through the comm. “I’m a little busy down here. This pig ain’t gonna fly for long.”

Rake slapped a couple of the buttons on the panels and the double joystick went live in front of him as he took control of the ship. “How much longer can you give me?” The readouts said the starboard engine was sputtering, trying to restart but failing, and the port engine was straining under the extra pressure and quickly redlining.

“Maybe thirty seconds,” Brick grunted.

In all honesty, Brick probably should have been the one up front and Widget should have been in the back with the engine. Brick was a decent engineer, but a better computer tech and he’d handed off all the mechanics work to Widget over on the SolaRepo. She was like a natural magician with anything that ticked, clicked our thrummed, and it infuriated Rake to no end that her usual response to being asked how she did what she did was that she ‘just talked to the engine to find out what’s wrong.’

But Brick also had a major soft spot for Widget, and there was no way he would put her in the sort of danger that being wedged between two near-exploding engines mid-flight would be.

There was another bang that rocked the ship.

“Make that ten seconds!” Brick shouted.

“Oh, fuck,” Rake grunted. “Emmie!”

“What, do you need saving or something?” Emmie asked over the comms.

The SolaRepo zoomed in over the cockpit of the Meatwagon and Rake watched the sensors while his hands gripped the joysticks hard enough that his knuckles cracked. The metallic clang of the first mag-grapple hit, quickly followed by the second.

“Hang on to your panties, folks. Things are about to get bumpy,” Emmie said. Then, more quietly and likely not intended to be over an open mic. “Come on, you piece of junk. Show me what you got.”

The Meatwagon lurched again and both Rake and Widget got jammed back into their seats. The internal gravitational stabilizers were either shot or went out when the engines died. Rake struggled and reached over to put a hand on Widgets chest - neither of them had the seat harnesses on and they were dangling back behind the chairs.

Kroiinngggg!

The Meatwagon swung, and Rake half slipped from his chair and bashed against the side bulkhead of the cockpit, but his hand stayed planted on Widget’s chest to keep her safe. Then the ship swung back the other way. One of the mag-grapples had snapped.

“Emerald!?” Rake shouted

“Just- a- setback- is all,” Emmie grunted through the comm.

Another metallic clank, barely heard above the clanging and groaning of the heavy freighter, and the ship jumped as it heaved upwards. Emmie had managed to get the third mag-grapple in line and had hooked the Meatwagon. The fiery glow of escape velocity burning out of an atmosphere washed over the front cockpit display as the gravitational forces mounted, pushing Rake and Widget into their seats again.

The pressure was huge, but soon the weight started to lessen and zero-g took over as both ships made it through the outer atmosphere and into space. Rake was sweating bullets, felt like he needed to puke and shit at the same time even though her chest was tight and his ass was puckered tighter. He and Widget both started to float, along with some trash that the previous owner had left behind.

“Woo! Let’s do that again!” Widget giggled and cheered.

“Maybe not right now, kiddo,” Emmie called over the comm. She sounded how Rake felt.

Chapter 2

System: ZR702.3 ‘Serin’s Pearl’
Planet: BAJ450.6655D ‘Opalescent’
Far Orbit

“Let’s never do that again,” Brick said as he pulled himself into the cockpit.

The Yauk was looking worse for wear - his usually dull orange fur was spattered with some sort of a fluorescent coolant and he was sporting a quickly developing black eye. Yauk’s were a notoriously hardy species, which had led Brick’s nickname to begin with, but his thick simian-like body looked like he’d been tossed into a trash compactor. Even his worksuit, made of the durable hybrid material that was supposed to be stain and tear resistant, was looking ratty.

“Agreed,” Rake said. “Are you alright?”

“Need a shower,” Rake grunted. “When we hit zero-g it got a little messy back there.”

“I can tell.”

“Brick, go back outside,” Widget said, plugging her nose. “You stink.”

“Gee, thanks kiddo,” Brick sighed.

“Emmie, what’s the situation over there?” Rake asked over the comm.

“Well, it’s a good thing we got out when we did,” Emerald said. “It looks like they were trying to power up that Pyfin-class gunboat to shoot me out of the sky. The engines on the thing are shot, but with an external power source they still could have caught me.”

“Well, shit,” Rake grunted. He’d seen the gunboat but the thing had been so covered in grime and rust that he figured it had just been a source for parts. “How about the tug?”

“We lost another grapple, so we’re down to two and that’ll make hauling this thing through superlight a real bitch. That’s not our only problem though - it looks like the right powerturbine took a beating on that pull through the atmosphere. I’ll need Brick or Widget over here to fix it.”

Rake sighed and ran his hands through his hair. Once again he was struck with the frustration of his position, being the nominal ‘captain’ of the crew without the power to fix things ahead of time since his father held the purse strings. Widget had said the right turbine needed a couple of replacement parts two jobs ago, but their old man had deemed the engine to be fine.

“I think we should all head over,” Brick chipped in. “I’m surprised the entire engine block of this heap of scrap didn’t fall out of its ass. Hull integrity is probably sketchier now than when I did my initial scan.”

“Alright,” Rake nodded. “Let’s get the docking tube hooked up and all head over to regroup.”

Soon Emmie had the flexible tube snaking out of the bottom of the SolaRepo. It took a long moment for the magnetic seals to clamp down around the boarding porthole on the Meatwagon, but once it had they were able to pressurize it and all start clambering in. That brought Rake to another frustration with his father - the fact that he’d installed a transparent boarding tube on the tug. Doing a spacewalk with mag-boots and microthrusters on a proper suit was one thing, but Rake hated the boarding tube. Other than one thin strand of lights running the length of the tube, the entire thing felt like he was crawling naked through space. The only good thing was that as crawled he was able to do a visual check on both ships.

The SolaRepo was floating maybe twenty yards off of the Meatwagon and their ship didn’t seem like it had suffered any debilitating damage. The two attached mag-grapples were hanging slack between the ships since Emmie had gotten them far enough off of the planet that they were in a distant orbit and weren’t in danger of crashing back into the atmosphere.The third grapple cord was dangling loose, however, like a flyaway thread on an otherwise decent jacket.

The Meatwagon wasn’t so pretty - the freighter had already been one ugly piece of machinery on the ground, but now it looked like the thing had been rolled through a campfire and had lost one in every five outer hull panels. All of the new damage had likely been caused by the drag coming out of the atmosphere - all starships were designed with one or two specific ways they wanted to enter or leave atmo, and doing it otherwise was often bad for the paintjob. For a ship like the Meatwagon that had spent too much time groundside getting beaten by the elements it also meant a hard test of whatever weaknesses had formed.

Thankfully repoing an old hulk like that didn’t require it to be in any sort of specific condition other than ‘whole.’ OmniBank adjustors could figure out what to do with it once it was delivered; Solar Repossession and Insurance would get paid either way, and thus so would Rake and the crew.

“Move faster!” Widget grunted from behind Rake, hitting him in the leg. “Don’t wanna look at your gross butt.”

“You know I can’t open it from this side,” Rake said. “Stop shoving me.”

Brick had closed the airlock to the Meatwagon after he followed into the tube, which made it safe for Emmie to open her side. The airlock opened with a chunk-whish as the locks disengaged, and she was standing in the entrance with a smirk. “Do I need to put you two in time out?”

“Emerald!” Widget cried, shoving past her older brother and scampering the last few yards to leap out of the boarding tube and into the pilot’s arms. “Did you see me flying the ship!? I did the startup sequence all by myself and got it off the ground just like you showed me. It was sooo much fun. And you were so fast, I can’t believe you caught us!”

“I did see, kiddo,” Emmie laughed as she caught Widget in her arms and spun the girl around in a circle before putting her down. “You did so good. And I’ll always catch you, OK?”

“I know,” Widget grinned and hugged her, then let go quickly. “I’ll go check on the engine. He was grumpy after superlight but shouldn’t have broken.”

“Hold on, Widget,” Rake grunted as he pulled himself from the boarding tube. “Crew meeting first.” Once he was standing he stretched out his shoulder where he’d hit the bulkhead in the Meatwagon cockpit and then turned to Emmie. “Thanks for the save, Emerald.”

“Couldn’t let you fall too far, Cap,” she said and put a hand on his shoulder. “Besides, you aren’t getting out of those chore duties you bet me on so easily.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Rake grinned as his stomach tied up in a little knot when she smiled at him.

Sure, Emerald Horne was almost a decade older than him, but that didn’t matter. He’d grown up with her picture on his wall - well, one of her recruitment posters for the UE Navy, at least. Everyone, at least all the human guys he knew at the time, had been crushing on her. She’d single-handedly doubled the human enlistment numbers when she’d become the face of the Navy’s recruitment drive across four sectors. Her bright, vibrant red hair, her statuesque jawline and her bright green eyes had all drawn guys in droves hoping they would get to meet her some day. Rake likely would have been one of those recruits if he hadn’t had Widget to look out for, and then three years later Emerald had shown up at the Solar Repossession office with a dataslate copy of their ‘Pilots Wanted’ ad in her hand and a Y-shaped scar running down the side of her face that creased her milky right eye and turned the corner of her mouth into a permanent smirk.

Rake didn’t care about the scar, he still thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, and she’d been his pilot for two years now.

Brick was the last out of the airlock and he shut it behind him with a bump of his fist to the controls. Rake wanted to let him at least go get cleaned up, but with two ships in disrepair and the possibility - however slim - that Ol’Ton might try to catch up with them in one of his other dubiously working starships, they needed to figure out their situation fast.

Soon enough all four of them were sitting around the display board in the interior room of the tug. Nearly the entire back half of the ship were the engine compartments, while the front half was made up of the cockpit, the main room, and the small crew cabins and storage compartments. The main room served as the galley, rec space, repair bay, conference room and basically anything they needed to do that wasn’t engine, piloting or sleep related.

“I ran some more diagnostics,” Brick said, tapping on his data tablet and shooting a projection up onto the wall-mounted screen for the rest of the crew to see. “The Meatwagon is kaput. Both engines are out of alignment so even if we could get it started, it would be just as likely to rip itself in half as travel in a particular direction. We’re going to need to full-tow it the whole way, which means repairing the mag-grapnel that snapped. It would be better if we could use all four, but…”

“But,” Rake sighed. Chalk another one up to his father’s tight grip on the purse strings. “Guess that’s me doing a space walk then. How are we looking, Widget?”

Rake’s little sister sucked the last of the liquid out of a disposable juicebox with a loud slurp through the straw, then set it down on the table with a sigh almost like she was a little replica of a grizzled old spacer at a bar. “The powerturbine is grumpy and mad at Emerald. It will probably take me a while to calm him down. And then he took it out on the inertial dampeners on his side, so they need to be put to sleep for a bit too. I might need some chocolate to get it finished quickly.”

“Kiddo, is the chocolate for you or for the engine?” Emmie asked with a little smile - it had taken a while for the three other members of the crew to read her expressions properly because of her scar - anything other than a broad smile or a deep frown was turned into a smirk.

“The engine,” Widget said, lying her pants off. Then she cocked her d to the side a little as she listened to the sounds of the ship. “Also the left battery feed is stuffy again and needs calibrating.”

“I’ll take care of the calibration,” Brick said. “After I get cleaned up. Some of this collant might be flammable.”

“I guess I’ll keep an eye on the kiddo, unless you need me at the helm during your space walk Rake?” Emerald asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Rake said. “I might be a shitty engineer, but I can patch a cable.”

Widget snorted and giggled, and Rake shot up from his chair and his little sister shrieked as she took off from her own seat, running in circles around the room as he chased her. Then she scampered down one of the access tunnels for the engines, laughing and giggling as she disappeared.

“One of these days you’re going to need to accept that she’s a better mechanic than you,” Emerald said, now giving him an actual smirk.

“I do,” Rake said, chuckling and shrugging. “Just like I accept you’re a way better pilot, and Brick is better at pretty much everything else this operation needs than me. But she doesn’t need to laugh about it.”

“She’s got your number, and you’re wrapped around her little finger,” Emerald said, smiling again as she stood and headed for the larger accessport to the engine space. “Not that that’s a bad thing for a big brother. I’ll go make sure she gets her chocolate and doesn’t lose a limb in the turbine.”

That left Brick and Rake alone in the main room.

“You know you are more than just the worst at the things you listed, Rake,” Brick groaned as he stood up.

“Oh, for sure,” Rake sighed. “I’m great at being a distraction. Or bait.”

“You’re our Captain,” Brick said, striding up to Rake and putting his big gnarled hands on Rake’s shoulders. “That means something.”

“I’m your Captain because my father couldn’t manage to wrangle me into being his accountant,” Rake said. “Mostly because I’m bad at math, too. This ship could work perfectly fine without me.”

“You say that now, Captain,” Brick frowned at him. “But we wouldn’t be here except for your quick thinking. Now, do you want to wait to do the spacewalk?”

“Nah, I’ve got it,” Rake said, waving the Yauk towards the one refreshment pod the tug was equipped with. “Just try not to clog the suction drain with all that gunk. I’m going to be sweating my balls off in that space suit by the time I get back in.”

Brick snorted and nodded, and they split up.

- - - - - - -

Outside, space was cold but the thermal protections of the suit kept in and reflected every ounce of heat back at Rake. It wasn’t all space suits that did that - most of them didn’t, actually. Most space suits were climate controlled and the wearer could adjust it as necessary to their species and personal preferences.

Not the suits that Seller Solar bought for his repo crews though. No, the old man was always looking to save a buck. As long as they sealed and had mag boots, they were good enough. Rake was almost surprised that they had the directional jets on the boots as well since it would have cost a little extra, and keeping them fueled was an added expense.

Still, even though he was hot and already starting to sweat, Rake couldn’t help but take a moment to look out at space in one direction and the pale white of the planet in the other direction.

“From far enough away, I guess the name makes sense,” he grumbled to himself.

He was tethered to the SolaRepo by a long, industrial utility cord that slowly unwound from a winch near the primary airlock that was opposite the one that was still connected to the Meatwagon via the boarding tube. In an emergency he could trigger the winch to reel him in, though it was a painful experience since his space suit only had a reinforced belt that would yank on him hard when the reel kicked in. Most of his movement was accomplished through the mag boots, slowly releasing one magnetic grip and taking a step to relock it on the hull, then the other foot. It was slow going and slipping around the hull in zero-g would have been a lot faster, but Rake had gotten cocky once and paid for it by floating off into space and needing to use the reel. His torso had been bruised for a week.

It took Rake almost five minutes of slow, ponderous steps to reach the winch for the snapped cord, and he had to use the bulky gloves of the suit to open up the access panel on the side of it so he could get the manual lever out and start pulling the cord back in.

Rake sighed heavily.

“Did you trigger your comm just to sigh at me?” Emmie asked over the comm.

“No,” Rake said. “Well, maybe. Sorry.”

“What is it, Rake?”

“It’s just- This was supposed to be an easy pickup after how messed up the last two were. And we’ve broken three parts of the ship, and the repo is a piece of junk so there’ll be no bonuses for anyone. My father is going to be pissed.”

It was Emmie’s turn to sigh. “You need to get out of your own head. There are a lot of worse ways to make a living out there than working for your family’s business.”

Rake grunted as the winch hitched for a moment he had to give it an extra shove to get it going again. “That’s easy for you to say. You made a choice to do this. Widget and I… we have to. No choice about it.”

“What, you think this was my first choice when I came out of the Navy?” Emerald asked. “Or my first pick at a life? Time to look at growing up a little, Rake. You have a dream to own your own ship. Last time we talked about it, you didn’t know what you would even do with it other than ‘fly far away from here.’ Have you figured that out yet?”

Rake stood up from working the handle of the winch. “No. And I know, you told me already. It’s a galaxy. We come along and repo other people’s dream ships all the time because they don’t have realistic goals, or they bank on luck.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Emerald prodded him.

“Emmie, I- Hey, when did you come out here?”

“What?” Emerald asked.

Rake had finished winching and the snapped, woven durasteel cord end looked fixable, but when he’d looked up to judge whether the jump over to the Meatwagon was reasonable he’d been surprised to see that Emerald was already over there, carrying some tools in her hand as she walked her way across the hull.

“I thought you were keeping an eye on Widget, not coming out here to help me,” Rake said.

“Rake, I am in the engine hold with Widget,” Emerald said.

“But… there’s someone on the Meatwagon,” Rake said as the figure looked across the gap between the ships at him and waved.

“How can you tell someone is in there?” Emerald asked.

“Not in, on. Out here with me,” Rake said, starting to feel panicked. “Wait- hold on. They just jumped!”

The figure had leapt from the busted up hull of the Meatwagon clear into space, and from the looks of it they weren’t tethered down. They could save themselves if they had directional thrusters, but they weren’t triggering them.

“Rake, are your O2 levels alright?”

Rake squinted, looking through the faceplate of his suit as the other spacewalker floated away but gestured at him.

They were flipping him double middle fingers.

“Oh, shit,” Rake said, turning and looking around quickly. The other two cords of the mag-grapnels were still floating slack, but now they were cut and slowly pulling towards the hulls of either ship. The tool the other being had hitched to their belt was a powercutter that would have made quick work of the braided durasteel using its plasma jaws.

“What is it?” Emerald asked over the comms, sounding like she was moving quickly.

“It’s the RepoHounds,” Rake said as he clicked off his mag-boots and started scampering along the hull towards the airlock. “She’s here.”

Chapter 3

System: ZR702.3 ‘Serin’s Pearl’
Planet: BAJ450.6655D ‘Opalescent’
Far Orbit

Rake watched through the external viewport as his airlock pressurized while the floating spacewalker got snagged by an energy tether and pulled towards the other ship that had appeared in space. He hadn’t heard it because there wasn’t any sound in space, and the sensors on the SolaRepo had already been triggered by the proximity of the Meatwagon so no one had heard an alarm when another ship came so close.

The other ship was also a tug, but it was small and even more compact than the SolaRepo. he could tell it was a newer model even through the viewport just by the glow of the engine exhausts, let alone the fact that it was even equipped with an energy tether. That equipment wasn’t functional for moving big things around without an immense amount of power, but snagging scrap or moving debris around with it was a cinch. Or, in this case, a floating spacewalker.

“Widget, is engine two operational yet?” Rake asked into the comms as he impatiently tapped against the inner airlock door, waiting for it to open. “What about the powerturbine? We need to get moving before-”

The airlock opened and Rake tumbled forward, already pulling his suit helmet off, but came face to face with the big display screen mounted to the wall of the main room.

“Oh, heeeey, scrappers! It’s your favourite Repo-gal. Suns, Rake and Emmie, why don’t you two just get it over with and make out?”

“What?” Rake blustered. “That’s not- Damn it, Booster!”

The girl on the screen, hacked into the feed no doubt, was slight and still wearing her helmetless space suit much like Rake was. She’d dyed her hair a vibrant blue colour and wore it shorter than she had a year ago, but she was still pretty with those big eyes of hers that Rake had used to feel like he was falling into. Those eyes held the wild look that she’d always had when she was daring him to do something particularly stupid or dangerous though.

“What are you doing out here messing with our job?” Rake demanded.

“See, that’s just the thing, Rakey-poo,” Booster laughed. “It’s not your job, it’s ours.”

“Is that Booster?” Widget asked over the internal comms. “Can I talk to her?”

“No!” Rake shouted. “I mean yes, it’s her, but you can’t talk to-”

“Booster, is that you? Are you really here?”  Widget demanded.

“Widget?” Booster giggled. “Yeah, it’s me. What’s up, cutie?”

“Booster you stupid spacecow, how could you be such a buttlicking turdface and-” Widget comm cut out, but Rake could still hear her from down in the engine bay as she yelled at Brick for turning it off.

“Wow, tell me how you really feel, kid,” Booster said on the display.

“Booster, take your ship and get the hell out of here,” Emerald said over the comms.

“Oooh, Emerald finally speaks!” Booster crowed. “Sorry, doll, but you’re currently sitting on top of our next payday.”

Rake had managed to extricate himself from his space suit and rushed past the display towards the ladder up to the cockpit. “You can’t just steal our job, Booster. Not that you’ve had a problem with theft any other time.”

“Actually, it’s not stealing if it ain’t yours, Rakeybakey. It looks like you guys are having plenty of issues right now and I guess you forgot to register your pickup with the big boys at the bank. So I went ahead and did that for, well, me!”

“You did what?” Rake growled loudly as he got into the cockpit. Emmie was strapping herself into the pilot chair and had a grimace on her face.

“Sorry, baby!” Booster laughed. “It’s just business. Kay have fun with repairs byyyyeeee.”

Rake got himself into the copilot chair and brought up the controls for the defensive turret. It wasn’t big enough to do any real damage to anything bigger than a shieldless one-being craft, and considering the laws around repo crews and weapons it was only allowed because all ships needed a way to deal with the occasional spacebat or hull-leech. Unfortunately, the turret was powered by the same powerturbines that the engines were, and as he tried to bring up the targeting matrix it was dulled out.

The RepoDog’s ship came about, and Rake had no doubt that Booster was having their pilot do it on purpose.

“Shit,” he groaned.

The other ship swooped closer and loosed a pair of shots from their own defensive turrets. They wouldn’t have done much more than gone splat against the hull of the ship, but that’s not what they were aiming for.

“There goes the docking tube,” Emerald groaned.

The other ship pivoted in place and they watched as it launched six mag-grapnels of its own in quick, pair succession and started dragging the Meatwagon away through space, their own mag-grapnels still attached and trailing the detached cords, along with half of their boarding tube.

“I hate her so much,” Rake groaned.

“You should never have told her you loved her,” Emerald grunted.

“You did what!?” Widget yelled from the entrance to the cockpit. She came barreling into the little room and jumped up on the seat behind Rake’s, hitting him over the top and sides of his own chair as he attempted to ward off her small fists. “You’re so gross! How could you like her? You’re so stupid!”

“Gah, Widget,” Rake said, trying to catch her flying hands. “Get off of me. I’m sorry!”

“I’ll make you sorry,” Widget yelled, not letting up on her attack.

“Wendy,” Emerald said levelly, using the girl's proper name to try and get her attention.

She got more than she bargained for as Widget made a lunge at the pilot, though Rake managed to catch her with one arm and hold her back. “Why aren’t you blasting her?!” Widget shouted at Emmie.

“Because we aren’t like them, Widge. Are we?” Emerald said calmly, then quirked her lips as she looked out to space in the direction the Booster had flown off. “And besides, the turret has as much power as the engines right now.”

Widget wriggled out of Rake’s arms and stomped her foot on the floor. “Fine! I’ll fix everything around here!” Then she turned and hit Rake again right in the chest before turning and storming towards the door.

“Ow,” Rake said, grimacing as he rubbed at his chest.

“You knew she never liked Booster,” Emerald said.

“Yeah, well at the time it just seemed like she was jealous.”

“You knew I never really liked her much either,” she pointed out.

“Maybe I thought you were a little jealous too,” Rake grinned at her.

Emerald snorted softly and shook her head. “Of that little blue-haired thief? Never.”

- - - - - - -

The crew was in a dour state sitting around the table in the main living space of the ship again. Last time they’d had problems, sure, but it wall felt fixable. They could make plans.

This time there was only one reason they were there, and that was because they needed to report to the boss.

“So then we got the repairs finished on the engines,” Rake finished up his report. “And we’ve had to cut loose the half of the docking tube that was still attached because we couldn’t get it retracted with the connections severed.”

Seller Solar wasn’t a particularly big man, but he was wide. He had the sort of face that made you wonder if he’d been hit with a sheet of durasteel as a child, or ran into a plexiglass door one too many times, with his scrunched up nose and flat features. Rake was very happy that his and Widget’s looks had taken after their mother.

He also had a fantastically flat glare to go along with his flat face, and the only reason the crew could tell he wasn’t frozen was because of the way his thick mustache shifted as he sucked breaths in and out through his nose.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Rake said, his confidence starting to wane. “This was my fault.”

“Damn right it is,” Seller grunted, a red flush started to creep up from the collar of his shirt. It was a clear sign that Rake was more than used to that his father was about to blow his top. “Whose else's fault would it be? Now not only did you fail, again, for the third job in a row but I’m also out the cost of fuel and repairs on my ship? This job is costing me units instead of making them!”

Seller turned and threw something off camera in his office, and the crash was loud enough that the mic picked it up. “Get your butts back here to the shop. And none of you had better expect your usual pay when you don’t deliver the goods.”

Rake clenched a fist and sucked in a breath. “That’s not- Sir, that’s not fair to the crew. They did everything right, and put in the time and the work. Hell, Brick managed to keep the wreck we were collecting stable enough that it didn’t blow up as we left atmo, and Emerald saved all of our lives with her piloting. Give them their usual pay. Just- Just take it out of my Starship Fund, alright?”

Seller grimaced and grunted, glaring at his son through the comm channel. “Fine.”

The screen went blank and the comm line went dead.

“Rake, kid, you don’t need to do that,” Brick said as he stood up and stretched. “I mean, I’ll take it cause a guy has bills to pay, but still. Thanks.”

Widget, who had made it clear before the call that she was still upset over what she’d learned about Rake and Booster, just narrowed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at her brother. Considering she didn’t actually get paid, and Rake made sure all of the units she should have been making were getting deposited into an account for her for when she was old enough to actually use it, the gesture didn’t mean much to her. Widget slid out from her seat and went back into the engine bay to finish up her tea party with the powerturbine, or whatever it was she did back there.

“Yeah, thanks sis,” Rake mumbled. “Love you too.”

“Brick’s right you know,” Emerald said, the last crew member with Rake in the space as Brick was closing her sleeping pod door. She was leaning against the table with her arms crossed over her chest. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“You really did save our lives today, Emmie. You deserve to get paid.”

Emerald sighed and walked around the table, wrapping one arm around him and pulling him into a hug as she kissed the side of his head lightly. “Still,” she said quietly to him. “It was sweet. And I do get how much that fund means to you. Dreams are important.” Rake hadn’t hugged her back so much as just put a hand on her waist for a moment, but she slipped away from him and headed towards the ladder for the cockpit. “And don’t let Booster get in your head. She’ll live in there for free and then eat you for lunch.”

Emerald quickly climbed up the ladder and disappeared into the cockpit without looking back, and Rake sighed. “I’d let you eat me for lunch,” he mumbled quietly to himself. Then paused and shook his head. “Nope, that’s bad. Definitely happy I didn’t say that.”

Instead of dwelling like he sort of wanted to do, Rake decided to do a quick inventory of the galley in case there was something there that he could eat his feelings with. He’d just found a box of individually packaged cereal bars in the back of one high cupboard, likely Brick’s stash that he was keeping away from Widget, when Emerald shouted from up in the cockpit. “Rake! Get up here!”

Rake almost whacked his head as he pulled himself out of the deep cupboard. He knew something was really wrong because Emerald hadn’t even keyed her comm unit.

Chapter 4

System: ZR702.3 ‘Serin’s Pearl’
Planet: BAJ450.6655D ‘Opalescent’
Far Orbit

Emerald groaned to herself as she strapped herself into the pilot’s seat.

“Suns, why did I do that?” Rake was an attractive guy, though he still leaned more cute than handsome but he was all of twenty and would grow into his looks. Emerald was pushing thirty. She was just plain too old for him. She’d seen more, been more places.

Experienced more pain.

“He already gives me those puppy dog eyes, and now I kiss him?” Even if it had just been on the head - hell, in his hair, not even his forehead or cheek. It didn’t need to mean anything. No, it didn’t mean anything. Right?

Emerald rubbed her forehead and took in a deep breath of the stale, recycled air. Every ship had its own particular stink, and the SolaRepo wasn’t nearly the worst she’d experienced. The fact that it had such a stupid name didn’t help things, but Rake couldn’t help the fact that his father was obsessed enough with branding that he changed the family name to Solar just so he could avoid trademark rights complaints.

Fuck, why did her mind keep coming back to Rake? He needed a girl his own age - someone less spacebatty than Booster - and Emerald needed someone… she didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t need anyone.

To distract herself, Emerald started another diagnostics check. They’d received their orders to head back to base, so as soon as the powerturbines had juiced up the batteries they would need to hit superlight.

It took her moment to notice it, but Emerald frowned when she saw the blinking blue light on the comms unit. She reached over and stabbed the button with her thumb.

As soon as the distress call came up on the call display, despite its staticy connection and wavering feed, Emerald felt her throat clench and her heart skip a beat or two as her chest tightened.

“-is the UEN Vapour-... science vessel-… we have come under fi-... mayday, mayday. We are going dow-... net designation Gulf-Niner-Seve-... Repeat, this is-”

Emerald was staring into a mirror of herself. Not of her now, but back then. Back before the SolaRepo, and before the end of her naval career and all of that chaos. Before the scar, and the blast.

Ruby was beautiful. And she looked good in the UEN naval uniform, just like Emerald had. She even handled herself well under obvious pressure - she looked stoic and determined, not afraid. Her sister was everything she had wanted to be at that age. She had chosen to go with the military undercut instead of keeping her hair long and braided. Emerald had always wondered what she would look like if she’d made that choice. Now she knew.

All of that flashed through her mind in an instant as she saw her sister and listened to the garbled words of the distress call.

“Rake!” she shouted, coming out of her chair as she tried to hone in on the signal. “Get up here!” They didn’t have nearly enough information. A partial ship name would help to send a report, but it could take months for a UEN scout or cruiser to track the course of a science vessel and find where it had gone down. Partial planetary designation was a little better, but could still lead to hundreds of worlds.

Fast clanging on the ladder announced Rake responding to her as he bolted into the cockpit and slid into the copilot chair. “What’s wrong? Did Booster come back, or-?”

“Distress call,” Emerald grunted, tuning the comms array a bit more and then thumbing the message active again.

“Mayday. Mayda-... is the UEN Vapour Rising, we are- science vessel-… we have come under fire from pirates in the-... mayday, mayday. We are going down, all hands aboard. Require immediate assistance. Planet designation Gulf-Niner-Seven-...Eight-Charlie-Peter. Repeat, this is the UEN Vapour Rising-”

“But that’s… who is?” Rake asked in confusion.

“Rake, I’ve been your pilot for almost three years,” Emerald said quickly. “And I’ve never asked you for anything. We need to follow the distress beacon. That’s my sister. Think if you heard Widget calling out for your help; you wouldn’t let anything stand between you and her, right? Well Ruby is my Widget and I need to get to her.”

Emerald could see the wave of different thoughts and emotions pass through Rake as he absorbed everything she said. She realized that she was holding his hand tight enough that it probably hurt and she let go, grabbing the armrest instead as she looked him dead in the eye and pleaded with him silently.

She could just start flying the ship. He wouldn’t stop her, and neither would Brick. But she was the pilot and he was the Captain, and things would go a lot smoother if she had him onboard with this.

Rake reached up and queued the comm on his shoulder. “Widget, we need engines right now.”

“Ten minutes!” Widget called back through the comm. It was her standard answer that might mean two minutes, or an hour, in kid-time.

“Widg, we need it now,” Rake said calmly.

Something went clank, heavy and deep, way back in the ship.

“Try it now,” Widget called back.

“Anything you need, Emerald,” Rake said seriously, reaching over and taking her hand back from the arm rest and squeezing it. “Anything.”

Emerald nodded and sat back fully in her seat, reaching for the engine controls. She flipped the converter switches back to full and cranked the powerturbines over to ignition, then thumbed one Engine 1 and Engine 2 and the ship came to life under them, that familiar vibration setting everything just a little less still.

As she was doing that, Rake had turned to the navicomp and started feeding in the incomplete plant designation. Having two ends actually made it easier than only the front or back half, and she could see he was running filters to search outside of the range where they should have been able to pick up a clear distress call, but inside the maximum possible range that the ancient comm beacons that explorers would drop at the edge of solar systems would relay.

“Nice work,” she said as she glanced over for his results.

“Three possible planets,” Rake mumbled. “First one is a gas giant, so they can’t go to ground there. Second one… it’s a rock, so they could touch down but it doesn’t look like it has an atmosphere. Third one-”

“That’s the one,” Emerald said. “Breathable atmosphere for most species. That’s where they are.”

“It’s flagged as hazardous,” Rake said. “Dangerous local flora and fauna. Resistant to colonization.”

It was also way out in the middle of nothing. If the Serin’s Pearl system was in the ass end of the Cluster, as Rake liked to joke about any system in the operational area of his fathers business, then this planet was a in a system that the Cluster had shit out a billion or so years ago and was halfway to nowhere.

A prime target for a science vessel.

“Give me the vector,” Emerald said.

“Plotting now,” Rake replied, then reached up and cued his comm again. “Brick, Widget, we’re going to superlight here quick. Buckle down.”

“Home sweet home,” Brick replied.

“We’re not going home,” Rake said. “We need to run an errand first. I’ll tell you once we’re away.”

The vector calculation flashed up on the screen next to Emerald and she gunned the engines. The gravity stabilizers kept the inside of the ship from feeling like there was almost any movement at all other than the deeper background thrum of the engine, but she kept the effect toned down in the cockpit to about 0.7 so that she could keep a sense of her ship under her. That meant the quick turn had her and Rake leaning in their seats as she brought them on course for the jump.

“On course,” she said. “Bring the drive online.”

“Got it,” Rake said, reaching up to manipulate the control for the superlight driver. As he hit the ignition it let out a raising tone until it hit a solid pitch and remained constant. “Drive ready.”

“Go for superlight,” Emerald said.

Rake pushed the button, and the ship was surrounded by darkness as the stars winked out.

“It’ll be two short jumps, and then one long ass one to get out there,” Rake said. “First one should take about half an hour; that’s enough time to talk to the others.”

Emerald nodded, then reached over and thumbed the comms array again to replay the message. They watched it the whole way through again.

“Emmie,” Rake said, taking her hand again. “We’ll get there.”

“I know,” she said, and then cleared her throat and nodded. “I know,” she repeated herself. “I just hope we get there in time.”

He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.