Broken Episode One (16 page)

She thumbed the tears from her cheeks and pressed
her lips together. “Sorry. I … I guess I didn’t make the
connection.”

He laughed. It was half frustrated, half
relieved.

In his head, Mimi Chester wasn’t the kind of girl to
apologize like this. In his head, he expected her to use the
opportunity to pry further into his history.

She didn’t. She continued to thumb her cheeks dry.
“I’m sorry,” she said once more.

He opened his mouth to tell her she should be. The
words didn’t come out. “You didn’t kill Lilly Williams,” he said
instead. Though he was surprised by his words, he didn’t stop
speaking them. “I read your file. I know what happened. It was an
accident. They happen.”

She let her hands fall into her lap as she saved all
her attention for him. “What?”

“So here’s a word of advice, Mimi, ignore everyone
else and move on anyway. In fact, you seem to have already done
that. Maybe I’m the one who needs that advice,” he realized as he
sighed. He let his knees fall out from underneath him, and he
sighed again.

She watched him attentively. “It would be tougher
for you,” she acknowledged.

He massaged his brow, but looked at her from
underneath his hand. “I guess you’re right. You had a hand in an
accident, whereas me,” he shrugged his shoulders, “I was a
criminal. I quite enjoyed smuggling. There’s a certain kind of
skill involved in picking the right kind of transport. It’s a bit
like cat and mouse. Kind of exhilarating, I guess.” He let his
hands fall into his lap too. “It took me a long time to realize … I
was hurting people. No, scratch that, I knew that from the
beginning. It just took me a long time to care. All I saw was a
universe that had given me nothing and taken everything. I’d lost
my family, I’d lost my friends, and there was no one to look after
me. So I grew up in a world where looking after yourself meant
taking from other people. I can sit here and try to justify that to
you, but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is I’m a different
person now. I got an opportunity, I took it. I want to say that I
never looked back, but I look back every single damned day. Not
because I want to be a smuggler again, because I worry I haven’t
really changed. No, I worry I’m not allowed to.”

“Josh, it’s okay. I understand,” she said in a soft
voice. “I know what it feels like to be constantly beset by the
fear that you are not permitted to move on. That if you get over
what you’ve done, you’re somehow pretending it wasn’t significant.
I waited around for a long time for people to give me permission to
forgive myself. But they were never going to do it,” she bit her
lip, “it was my father who told me I couldn’t wait for permission.
My guilt is not their responsibility; it’s mine.”

“Yeah, but Mimi, you said yourself, and I read it in
your file, it was an accident. You have no reason for guilt.” In
many ways, he couldn’t believe what he was saying. He’d held onto
the fact Mimi was responsible for Lilly William’s death ever since
he’d learnt about it. Why? Because he’d used it as a weapon against
Mimi. He’d ignored the truth of the Academy’s report because it was
easier. Because he wanted to. Because it gave him ammunition.

Now he realized how cruel that had been.

His stomach kicked with something suspiciously close
to empathy, empathy wrapped up in guilt.

“I could have done more,” she suddenly conceded as
she hunched her shoulders together, “when I realized it was a bad
idea to go ahead with the simulation, I could have fought harder to
prevent it. I could have gone to a superior, could have pulled the
plug on it. I didn’t.”

“Maybe,” he conceded.

She looked crestfallen.

“Or maybe that wouldn’t have done a thing. That’s
the problem with hindsight, Mimi, it tricks you into believing you
know how things could have turned out differently. If you fought
the E Club, if you pulled the plug on the simulation, they might
have done it without you. It could have been a bigger accident, for
all you know. You did all you could at the time. Maybe you could
have shouted louder, maybe you could have fought harder, but it
doesn’t matter. You learn and you move on.”

“But
Lilly Williams is dead. I could have
—”

“Died in her place? Would that have made it
okay?”

“What? I ….”

“You’re trying to figure out how much penance you
should pay. You’re trying to logically figure out just how
responsible you were, so you can calculate how long you should feel
guilty, right? The problem is, the goalposts keep shifting. Every
time you think you’ve figured out just how responsible you were,
another thought crops up. You could have done this, you could have
done that. Suddenly, the guilt comes flooding back in. Well, in my
years as a bona fide brigand, I’ve learned a lot about guilt. Even
more about pushing it away. It’s the least logical emotion there
is. Reasoning with it only feeds it.”

“So what do I do?”

“I don’t know. When you get the answer, tell me;
I’ll be real interested.”

She pressed her lips together, let her head drop,
and slowly pulled it up as she met his gaze. “I was kind of hoping
you’d tell me exactly how to get over it.”

He chuckled. “Ha, that’s funny; I was hoping you
would tell me the same.” He pushed to his feet. He took two steps
towards her and reached a hand out. “I might be the world’s least
competent psychologist, considering I have all the compassion of a
desert, but I wonder if the key is moving on. You obsess about the
past, you miss the future. Guilt has its place, but if you let it,
it will only force you to make more mistakes. And if we sit here
yammering about our problems too long, we’re not going to get out
of here.”

She considered his hand. For a moment he suspected
she would reject it. Then she gently placed her palm into his and
let him pull her to her feet.

“How’s your head feeling?” He asked through a cough,
trying to distract himself from the feeling of her hand in his.

“Actually, you may not be the universe’s worst
psychologist; I’m feeling a lot better.”

“I meant your actual head; your skull. Any
pain?”

She shook her head and offered him an embarrassed
smile.

It made him chuckle. “Right, it’s now time to a)
find out where we are, then b) get the hell out of here.”

He shifted forward, angling his head up as he
checked the ceiling. It took another five seconds to realize he was
still holding her hand. He dropped it, as if it were covered in
spikes, then coughed casually.

Fortunately she didn’t say anything.

It took a while for his embarrassment to dissipate,
but not as long as it usually would. Because when the lingering
touch of her hand in his started to fade, his attention snapped
back to the situation.

Where exactly were they?

What was this ship?

Josh may have referred to this as a scavenger’s
dream, but as he took several echoing steps through it he realized
it could also be a nightmare.

Scavenging was a dangerous job. Not only did you
have to put up with a whole host of unsavory characters, including
yourself, but sometimes you came across space junk too dangerous to
handle.

He couldn’t count the number of people he knew of
who’d died trying to rip the hull plating from an unstable vessel,
or who’d been foolish and greedy enough to ransack a ship before it
spiraled into a sun.

Those were the usual dangers, though.

Occasionally you were unlucky enough to come across
the unusual ones.

Space was a vast place. And in its vasts were
countless races, some who’d been engaged in interstellar travel for
millennia rather than the few pitiful centuries humans had been
exploring the stars. All of that meant a lot of junk. A lot of old
spaceships. A lot of satellites, a lot of probes.

And most importantly, a lot of damn surprises.

If you wanted to stay alive as a scavenger, the
number one most important rule was to pick your targets wisely.
Never enter a mysterious shielded ship stuck in the desert, not
before doing your homework to ensure it wasn’t a) filled with space
zombies, b) booby-trapped and wired to explode, c) a barbarian
trap, or d) all of the above.

Josh had a problem though. He was already in this
damn ship. Now, if he didn’t find a way to quickly get out of here,
he had no idea what he would face.

Okay, there could be nothing down here but sand and
metal, but somehow he doubted that. Though he wasn’t a
superstitious man, there was something about the dark, creepy,
unsettling feel to this ship that made him want to blast a hole in
the side and get the hell out of here before Hell itself reared its
ugly head.

Rather than share any of these thoughts with Mimi,
he kept his worries to himself. He did, however, reach for his
gun.

That’s when he realized it wasn’t there. The rifle
that was meant to be locked into the magnetic holster on his back
must have fallen free as he tumbled into the ship. With a nervous
twitch of his hands, he checked his hips, but soon enough realized
that those guns were gone too.

He let out a bitter, sharp swearword.

Mimi was a step behind him, and he heard her stop,
sand scattering at her feet. “What is it?” Maybe she was trying to
hide the fear from her voice, but he heard it. That light
waver.

He half turned to her, gritting his teeth as he did.
“Nothing. I just remembered I left the oven on,” he lied.

“Oven? What’s a oven?”

“Never mind, it’s an old human saying. Now hurry
up.”

He heard her sigh heavily behind him, and despite
the situation, he smiled. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was
smiling. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been kidnapped after all.
Maybe it was that she was standing after such a nasty head injury.
Or maybe his lips were just twitching and it didn’t mean anything
at all.

“Why are we walking along this corridor?” She
suddenly asked. “Shouldn’t we concentrate on getting out of
here?”

He turned to her fully this time. Furrowing his brow
and hoping she could see it even in the dim light he shook his
head. “I know you just had a head injury, so I’ll say this slowly:
we are looking for a way out.”

“Why don’t we just blast our way out?” She gestured
behind her with her thumb, indicating the massive hole in the
ceiling back the way they’d come.

Josh clenched his teeth. This time it wasn’t in
feigned frustration or sarcasm. He didn’t want to tell her he’d
lost his guns. There was no way to blast a ramp up to that hole.
“Just leave the thinking to me, Princess.”

“Why? I told you not to touch that spike.”

“We don’t even know if touching the spike caused the
cave in. In fact, I doubt it did. It was probably your considerable
weight impacting on an already fragile roof,” he snarled. His heart
wasn’t in it. In fact, his insult was a judicious move, not an
emotional one; he wanted to distract her, and he knew from
experience riling her up was the only way to go.

She slammed her hands on her hips. “Why do you
always have to be so rude?”

“Because it sure as hell beats being polite. Do you
think I want to have a sweet little conversation with you, Mimi?
I’d rather stab myself in the eye. Now hurry up already.” He turned
and waved over his shoulder.

Mimi didn’t move.

He let out an exasperated breath that echoed through
the corridor. For a spaceship, it had an unusually wide hallway.
Most ship design ensured thoroughfares were small, saving space for
the systems that would need it like engineering and life
support.

“Stop trying to fob me off. Seriously, why don’t we
just blast our way out of here?”

He opened his mouth to insult her. Maybe he would
point out he was the Coalition officer while she was nothing more
than a reject. Or perhaps he’d default to the fact she was a
spoiled brat. Instead, he said, “because I dropped my guns.” He
hadn’t meant to say it; it had tumbled out.

She didn’t recede away in fear. Instead she shrugged
her shoulders. “I didn’t even know you were carrying them. But that
doesn’t matter, we can still blast our way out of here.”

He looked at her askance. “Maybe I should check your
head again.”

“Klutzo,” she called, ignoring him as she turned
around.

The orb was still following them, though at a
considerable distance. It also needed constant encouragement. For
an electronic device, somehow it was showing all the signs of
fear.

“Klutzo, let’s get out of here. Can you blast a hole
in the roof back there? Can you calculate how to make us a ramp
back up into the desert?”

Josh snorted. Maybe he honestly ought to scan her
head again, because she was being crazy. Klutzo was nothing more
than a recording device. Granted, Josh had used him to pick up the
med pack and fly it into the ship, but that pack was about the
heaviest thing Klutzo would be able to carry.

Short of continually flying into the sand dune and
causing an avalanche, there was no way it would be able to blast
them a ramp.

“Ah, Mim,” he said distractedly as he rummaged
around and grabbed the medical scanner, “just come here for a
second."

“What did you just call me?”

He blinked. “… Mim?”

“That’s not my name.”

“It’s pretty darn close, plus, it’s easier to say.
Now come here.” He waved her forward as he prepared the
scanner.

“Are you serious? You find Mimi hard to say? Did you
actually have to pass a test to get into the Academy?”

He shot her a stony look. Then he marched up to her.
As he did, it was impossible to ignore how her expression changed.
Though it was subtle, her eyes widened. Her cheeks didn’t pale,
though, and there was no other indication she was frightened.

She simply looked extra attentive as he
approached.