Wings of Retribution (23 page)

“Uh,” Dune said, going purple, “Pretty sure she was stoned.”

“Funny, she must’ve been digging around in your quarters, too,” Athenais said.  “She came out front wearing a pair of your overalls.  Got
those
all greasy, too.  Busy little girl, our Squirrel, eh?”

“Uh…” Dune looked like his head was going to explode from the pressure.

Athenais dropped the boa.  “You do it again, I’ll get Fairy to take pictures.”  Turning on Pete, she said, “You get your ribs fixed?”

Beaming, Pete thumped his side.  “Yep.  Good as new.”

“Good.  I’ll need you to pick a schedule and get on it.  Half the crew’s on nights, half’s on days.  There’s a period on the wide end of things where everybody’s awake.  That’s when we sit down and have a meal together, minus whoever’s running the cockpit.  There’s a spare room—”

“Capt’in?” 

Athenais turned. 

Dune ran a grease-stained hand through his hair and sighed.  “You ain’t really gonna leave Fairy on T-9, are you?  She’s the best pilot I ever saw, ‘side from you.  One little mistake shouln’t—”

Oh
gods
, another one?  “That ‘one little mistake’ almost cost you all your lives,” Athenais snapped.  “Doesn’t that matter to any of you?”

Dune glanced at
Wild Betty.
 “S’pose it doesn’t.  Gotta learn somehow.”

Athenais narrowed her eyes.  “I get it.  You all had a little powwow over your dope last night and she convinced you fools to take up her side.”

“Naw, I just think you should give her another chance.”

“Well, I’m not giving her another chance.  She’s gonna learn on someone else’s neck.”  She turned on Pete.  “You got clothes?  Belongings?  Any diseases I should know about?”

Pete was still frowning at the ruined blue gown.  He glanced from Dune to the dress and back.  “Did he…?”  He hesitated, pointing at the waif-thin dress.  He frowned at Dune, whose muscle-strapped upper body forced him to go through doorways sideways, then back at the dress.  Athenais watched the cogs catch in his brain as he tried to comprehend that.

“Hard to picture, ain’t it?” Athenais said, loving the way her engineer was squirming.  “You been down here talking fashion with Dune all this time?”

“He’s a racer,” Dune said quickly.  “Told him about
Wild Betty
and come find out he’s entered a few races himself.”  The greasy old mechanic was obviously all-too-happy to change the subject.  “Won him some cash money.”

Pete blushed.  “Never nothin’ as sweet as the Moondust Marathon.  Just a few country races on liberty.”

Athenais rolled her eyes.  “You want me to rescue you?  Dune’ll talk your ear off for the next three days if you let him.”  She gave Dune a sideways look.  “…maybe try to get you into some heels.”

“Oh
come on,
Captain!” Dune cried, throwing a greasy rag into the trash receptacle.

Athenais chuckled.

“I’m fine here,” Pete replied quickly.  “I actually saw pictures of
Wild Betty
on a newsreel once.  Never thought I’d actually get to
touch
her.”  He slid his hand along the smooth metal of the dunebuggy with a reverential caress.

Athenais sighed.  “I guess I’ll leave you boys to it, then.  Dune, I’ll send someone to come get you if we need a third set of eyes.” 

“Eyes, Captain?” Dune said, concerned.  “What’s going on?”

She paused, giving the hallway a solemn look.  She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly between her teeth.  She glanced back at him reluctantly.  “Well, see, Squirrel ‘n I’ve been just
dying
to go to the opera, but we can’t decide which color shoes would match the seating.”

Dune turned purple and choked on a line of old-time brogue that Athenais hadn’t heard in a few millennia.  Grinning, she bowed and started towards the hallway.  Behind her, she heard a bone-deep growl and the metallic scrape of a hefty tool.

Just as she was stepping through the door, Athenais paused at the exit, her face lined with grave seriousness.  “It’s red, you know,” she said.  “
Nothing
goes well with red.”

“
Get out of my shop
!” Dune roared, hurling the wrench.

She cackled and jogged up the stairs, just as something heavy clanged against the wall behind her.

Athenais was as good as her word.  As soon as they landed on T-9, she made Dallas pack her bags.  Dallas thought it was all a scare tactic right up until the point where Athenais gave her what little money she owed her—something the old pirate always balked at—and dumped her in port.  Standing in the hub, watching
Beetle
scuttle off through the viewport, Dallas’s gut finally got that cold lumpy knot of understanding that Athenais was utterly serious.

She was done. 
Beetle
didn’t want her anymore.

And, to slam it all home, not one of her former crewmates had stood up for her.  Athenais had marched her right past them on the way to the air-lock, all the while reciting exactly why Dallas wasn’t a suitable candidate for her crew.  None of them had said a word.  Hell, they’d pretended she wasn’t even there.  Only Pete, the new guy that Rabbit had brought with them, had followed her with his eyes as she passed.

That hurt more than anything else.  She’d stumbled around port the entire first day, the whole place blurry through tears.  Lost a good portion of her luggage to some dude who snatched a suitcase when she put it down to wipe her eyes.  After that, Dallas just sat in one place and watched the world go by without her.

It was there that Rabbit somehow found her and offered her a place to stay for a few nights, but Dallas turned him down, too ashamed to think straight.  Rabbit had tried to insist, but eventually forced a credit coin into her hand and melded back into the crowds.  A scruffy kid stole the coin a few minutes later, when Dallas was bending over a water fountain for a drink.

I must look like an easy mark,
Dallas thought, miserable.  Runny-nosed, puffy-eyed, splotchy-faced Dallas.  Terror of the skies.  She curled up with the rest of her belongings in a corner between a liquor store and a pizzeria, and glared at anyone who came within a couple yards of her hidey-hole.  Must have been a good glare, too, because even the most shady-looking guys turned on heel and went the other direction.

She spent several hours beside the pizzeria, enduring the tantalizing smells wafting from inside, trying not to puke at the way her guts were all twisted in knots from losing
Beetle
.  When Dallas simply couldn’t stay awake any longer, she got up and found a hotel a few blocks down the hall, saving herself the expense of taking a shuttle planetside.  Never having done anything but fly, she decided she would offer her services to inbound ships until one of them took her on.

She soon found out, however, that getting a job in aviation was all but impossible if one of the Good Ol’ Boys—who happened in this case to be a girl—had it in for you.  Regardless of how many captains she approached, regardless of how many well-dressed pilot’s uniforms she ran down in the hall, no sooner did they learn her name than they quickly took their leave.

That Athenais had spread word of her misdeeds was bad enough, but that she had so much sway with people Dallas had never even
heard
of was utterly demoralizing.  As each day passed, Dallas felt herself slipping further and further into the role of ‘hub reject.’  Incoming captains, seeing her step forward to offer her services, quickly changed course, treating her with just as much brusque disdain as they did the disheveled hall urchins looking to make a quick pity-cred.

After a couple weeks and a few thousand pitches, Dallas began to feel the heavy weight of reality settling onto her shoulders.  Each time a captain brushed her aside, each time she received that condescending stare, her shame increased, magnifying in intensity until it reached the point she couldn’t even look her target in the eyes when she gave her pitch. 

When Dallas realized she was staring at the floor as she mumbled flight statistics to those disinterested captains who would stand still long enough to hear them, she knew Athenais had won.  A few days later, she got a job bussing tables in one of the hotel’s massive restaurants.  The fact that she had graduated from the Spacer’s Academy and had commanded her own ship meant little to Rob, the manager.  He put her on the lowest flat-rate salary he could legally give her and took half of her tips for her meals.  She paid her room fee with whatever was left over.  The day before payday, she was lucky if she had a credit to her name.  Usually, she ended up owing the hotel for damages.  Rob made sure of that.  He fined her for every broken dish, every walk-out, every complaint.  Once, he had fined her for adding a few inches to the skimpy waitress’s shorts that passed as uniforms.

Taking the job with the restaurant was yet another mistake.  Dallas came to realize that the position of waitress wasn’t exactly what space captains considered to be good experience, especially not for a copilot that had graduated Spacers Academy at the top of her class.  Inevitably, they all dismissed her when they discovered her current occupation. 
Wait, wait.  Back up a sec.  You’re a
waitress
now?  Why didn’t you get another flying job?

One time, after managing to hide her position from her prospective employer, she was offered a temporary spot in the control room for when the ship departed a week later.  Unfortunately, Dallas had the bad luck of working the night before departure, when the captain and all his crew dropped by for a celebratory dinner pre-launch dinner.  Her contract was terminated on the spot, and Rob fined her for ‘agitating the customers.’

As the weeks crawled by, Dallas bitterly wondered what had happened to
Beetle
after dumping her on T-9.  Half of her hoped the old broad found a lead-heavy asteroid and make a new crater.  The other half hoped she had her feet cemented in a bucket to be dropped in the middle of Penoi’s biggest ocean. 

Not that she was bitter.  

She was just busily gaining that ‘worldly experience’ that Athenais valued so highly, and the next time she saw the monster, she was pretty sure she’d shove a coffee-pot squarely up her ass.

Worms in the System