Spiraling clouds of fine ice curled around the ship’s landing gear. Lights blared to life, the internal batteries juddering the craft as its doors opened. Landing softly on the blueish surface, the team of three hung onto the many handles and nooks of their aging vessel. An invisible wave emanated from the craft like a bubble, scraping off the top layer of ice. Feet now planted firmly down, the woman with the golden spacesuit held a hand to her helmet, her eyes riveted to the numbers on her wrist.
One hundred percent.
With a hiss and the sliding of armored glass, the helmet flipped into her thick spacesuit. Shaking her long curly hair out, she knelt to get a closer look at what they had landed on. Behind her, a bald man with a wild bushy beard and a scar on his forehead heaved a long cylindrical machine with a tip full of spiraling blades coming to a point. As the man with the machine wandered off, another spoke up. “Just looks like a bunch of ice to me…”
The woman looked back at the short-statured man over her shoulder, his black hair floated in clumps in the low artificial gravity. She turned back to the ice, something in it bothered her. There were always rocks in the ice. Always. But these were different.
The short man lumbered over to the ship and leaned against it as the distant sound of drilling filled the artificial life-sustaining bubble created by the ship. “Say, Zoll, you’ve been awful quiet since we passed the sensors,” said the man as he unwrapped a piece of chocolate, “you alright?”
“Why won’t Kaden tells us why the ice has to be from here?”
“He didn’t say ice,” Ahzec threw the wrapper back toward the ship and grabbed another piece of chocolate before imitating the Sydrinian trader by rolling his R’s and pausing after every fifth word, “My friends, I want you,” pause, “to bring back what you,” pause, “find in this little sector.” Ahzec chuckled and resumed in his normal voice, “He’s just got a buyer lined up.”
Zoll stood up, her shadow growing long over the jagged blue plane, “And when we asked, he didn’t want to give us any information. It was just, ‘anything you find.’”
“No,” Ahzec swallowed before tossing another wrapper back inside the ship, “he said,” he cleared his throat, “water, ice, metal, ores, treasures…” Ahzec shook his head and looked out beyond the icy stellar body they had landed on. “Hey captain, you think we’ll make it this time? To Nablin, I mean.”
“We have to make it,” an old ache gripped her heart, a yearning for unfettered tomorrows. She walked past Ahzec and opened a hatch, pulling out another drilling machine. Ahzec slapped his hands together and rolled his shoulders. “Aye, aye, boss!” He reached out to grab the drill when the ice beneath them cracked. Immediately, their helmets went back over their heads.
Zoll pressed on her wrist, opening up the communication network, “Kana?”
“I think I hit something,” said Kana in his casual drawl.
“Time for take off?” asked Ahzec, arms still reaching out to the drill.
“No,” said Kana, “come see this.”
Zoll shoved the drill back in the hatch and pulled out a rifle for Ahzec before they made their way toward Kana.
Past the collection tubes extending from the ship and in the middle of a crevice, Kana stood with his legs legs wide over a steep drop into a dark pit. Zoll pointed her fist into the chasm and beams of light shot out of her suit’s knuckles. Stone. All three of them sighed in relief. Zoll shone the light across the rock. Little pieces small that could fit in her hand and bigger ones that all three of them would have to lift. As she readied a scan, the movement of her arm made a light shine on one of the rocks.
A face.
Carved in the stone but broken off of something bigger. “Kana, out.”
“Maybe that’s what Kaden wanted?” he asked.
“Kana, out, now!”
Zoll’s eyes bulged with fear. Ahzec extended his left arm out, shooting a grappling claw to Kana. Kana held on and let himself get reeled in, drill hanging from his hip.
“We’re gonna have to scan all of this.” She looked around them, the ship’s lights blinding them to everything beyond their little bubble of air and gravity. “Antlia, illuminate.” The ship’s mounted lights whirred as they shifted upwards, casting light far around them.
“We’ll get spotted!” whisper-shouted Ahzec.
She shushed him and in the darkness of space saw nothing but shimmering icy debris. Kana and Ahzec, lips glued shut, starred at Zoll. She ordered the ship’s lights to come back down, lighting only the little trio. “Scan it,” she tossed at Ahzec before jogging over to the ship. Rummaging through the cargo hold, Zoll flipped over small electronic devices and cables, sticking her hand deep into a crate to fish out a small black rod. Sliding back a panel, she examined the dark red crystal within. Arranged over a complex series of rods to form diamond-shaped spaces, the crystals hummed with a scarlet pulse in tempo with Zoll’s breathing. She let the panel slide back and ran back to Kana and Ahzec, loading the broken stone faces into crates.
“Clean and ready to ship,” said Ahzec as he eyed a small square on the crate’s corner turned from green to orange.
“Good, let’s get going,” Kana and Ahzec both starred at the black rod in her hand but said nothing, “Kaden has some explaining to do and I want to meet that buyer of his…” A band of light shimmered ahead, Zoll turned back just as the floodlights from a massive ship blinded them. The team’s suits were bombarded with message requests. Beeps and flashing lights all tuned to a crisp silence when Zoll accepted the request.
A cool, almost disinterested voice came through their suits’ speakers. “Please surrender the artifacts you found to the Investigative Task Force, you may know us as the ITF,” the woman sighed, her chair audibly squeaking as she leaned into the microphone, “you have disturbed an archaeological site under the… Where’d they go?”
Zoll flipped a switch on Antlia’s dashboard. Ahzec slammed the hatch shut and fastened Kana’s seatbelt as the latter’s fingers danced over a holographic keyboard. “Disabler ready.”
“Hit it!” barked Zoll as she pulled a lever. With three dramatic keystrokes, Kana’s keyboard disappeared replaced by a image of a smiling face lighting one of his rare smiles.
The massive spaceship’s lights went out, red alarm pulses beating against the windows. Antlia took off, its bat-like wings pivoting forward above the box-like body of the ship. Ahzec held on tight to his seat as it zoomed away, “A ship like that definitely has a BSD,” he knocked the rattling door next to him, “our boy can’t handle going this fast for long.”
Zoll, glanced over her shoulder then at the small radar screen. She pulled out one of her hands from the block of red piloting gel and leaned over to the co-pilot seat to tweak a dial. “Get ready for blinks.”
Ahzec gripped the harness keeping him from jostling out of his seat, “That’s not repaired yet, boss.” Zoll didn’t turn back. “Okay, we could just eject the cargo, it’s not worth risking our lives, even for what Kaden off—”
“What lives?” said Kana somberly, his deep-set brown eyes staring at the scars on his palms. “How long do we have to wait to live free?”
“He’s right,” replied Zoll, she winced when a high-pitched ringing spread through the ship. “I’m not letting them catch us, and I’m not leaving behind our one ticket to freedom.”
With a deafening crack, the ship vanished. The Investigative Task Force vessel slowed down, the massive hull parting the small cloud of ice left in the space where Antlia had disappeared.
Antlia reappeared behind an uninhabited moon, spinning wildly, it’s back left reactor hanging by a mess of cables from the rest of the ship. Kana, eyes closed, took deep breaths only shaken by the ship’s juddering. Zoll pushed against the red gel as hard as she could to right the ship. Ahzec held it in as long as he could before bursting into a scream unburdened by shame. With a sudden jolt counterclockwise Antlia stabilized. Kana undid his harness and ran to the back of the ship. Zoll, soaked in sweat leaned over the cube of red gel. Droplets ran down her curls in spirals and fell on the cockpit’s metal floor. Ahzec walked up to the narrow threshold, holding his stomach, “I know I said I’d follow you until…” a loud grumble made its way past his suit and he sprinted off to the ship’s bathroom.
A relieved sigh and a quick wipe of her face later, Zoll made her way to the back with Kana. The damage was severe, Antlia’s days were numbered without extensive repairs and that meant a lot of rai. More than what they had on hand. “Can we still land in Soto’s Red Docks?” she asked and Kana nodded. Licking her lips, tasting the salt of her sweat still, she turned back to the small bay where Ahzec sat on the floor, the top half of his spacewalk suit off. The short man looked up at both Kana and Zoll with his mouth agape. “I really shouldn’t eat so much fried eshire…” Zoll smiled and planted her hands on her hips, “Shame, we’re heading to the Red Docks.”
Ahzec, voice strained, crawled back to the bathroom, “oh goddess no,” he croaked.
Hours later, Zoll walked over to the crate full of broken stone faces. The blinks hadn’t damaged them too badly, then again they were broken stone faces after all. The metal lid slid back securely as she walked to the cockpit where Ahzec finalized their approach in the co-pilot seat. “This job better pay well,” said Ahzec, his usual lilt lost in the thick fog of anxiety permeating the ship. “Why’s the clergy getting involved?”
Zoll’s thoughts tossed and turned. “Doesn’t matter. We get paid. Get Antlia a BSD and jump to Nablin.”
Ahzec gave her a soft smile, “You could’ve just joined that merc company, not have to deal with any of this.”
She leaned on his backrest, “Please, like I could get anywhere without you two.”
Antlia rocked gently as Ahzec adjusted its trajectory toward the two asteroids linked by a hanging city made of steel, glass, and red crystal.