The first thing one notices when embarking a new vessel, be that an old imperial yacht, shaky jalopy, or great habitat, was the smell. Closed ecosystems always took on a particularly characteristic odour, and the battleship Future One was no different. The smell hit Marcia the moment the spiral airlock door of the shuttle cracked open. It was the smell of work. Of sweat, machine oil, and freeze-dried coffee. The two were welcomed aboard by a trio of rough looking men who, while not knowing personally, Rhix was instantly friendly with. The men kept their feet grounded through the use of footholds and guidewires dotted across the areas of the hull without gravity, such as in the docking deck, a spacious area festooned with unsorted cargo strapped down in all directions. Gliding down dark circular corridors, the men led Marcia and Rhix to the spine of the battleship. Though the men, including her father, floated and glided with effortless dexterity, Marcia found the whole thing upsetting and disorientating. She hated microgravity. Even when she went on balloon rides towards the centre axis of Ludd’s Garden she found it nauseating. Now, gripping one handrail after another, she reluctantly pulled herself through the battleship, the thought of reaching the gravity of the centrifuge sustaining her. Putting hand over hand along the rails, she heard a voice from behind.

  “Takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it? Here.” He said, offering a dermal patch.

  Marcia said nothing, focusing more on the sensation of the fluid sloshing around her inner ear as she turned her head. The man gestured again.

  “Take it, in the spirit of xenia. It’ll help you acclimate.” He said. He spoke Galactic, the trade language Rhix had viciously drilled into Marcia since she was old enough to speak. His was different though, he spoke in an intonation that seemed unconsciously familiar to her, yet somehow not.

  Marcia, na?ve but not excessively so, politely declined the offer. She looked at the man. He seemed older than her, but younger than her father. He had a tight sandy beard that clung to bronze skin, with flowing long hair tied in a bun that bobbed and whipped in the freefall. She remained fixated on his speech though, her nausea dulling her capacity to locate why she found his accent familiar considering her sheltered life on Ludd. She smiled awkwardly and made her excuses to catch up with her father. Taking a right angle from the spine, she felt the welcome sensation of force acting on her as she descended into the curved living quarters. Rhix had gone ahead of her, and so by the time she arrived was already talking with a man and woman with an obvious familiarity.

  “Rhixmond, it is good to see you.” The man said.

  “And you too, you old caveman. It’s been too long, yet you’ve barely aged a year.”

  “Relativity keeps us all young.” The woman cut in. “Yet how you’ve changed. Got rid of all your metalwork?”

  “The rules of our accommodation. I’m all natural now.” Rhix said smiling and showing off the unmarked skin on his arms.

  The woman weakly smirked, as she often did, and took her gaze over to Marcia approaching them.

  “I see you brought her with you. You think that’s wise, considering? Couldn’t have brought a son instead?” She asked.

  “Any son of mine would be just as young and just as pretty. Watch, she’ll surprise you.”

  Rhix locked eyes with the woman as Marcia approached, his old demeanour seeping out, reminding both her and himself that he was still to be respected, and feared.

  “Mars, meet your uncle Les and aunty Aude. They’re your godparents.”

  Marcia gave a welcoming nod and smile to the two unfamiliar adults.

  “It’s nice to meet you, I didn’t know I had godparents.” She said.

  “Well, you were such a young thing then. Oh, you grow up fast, feels like it was almost yesterday you were only crawling.” Les said, putting on a disarming warmth.

  “Welcome to Future One.” Aude said. “It’s not a cruise, but it is comfortable enough. You and your dad even have your own cabin. Him and us go back a long way.”

  Marcia smiled awkwardly, bringing her eyes back to her father.

  “That we do Mars. Now, where’s the rest of the team? That posh boy of yours?”

  The man Rhix was referring to, as if he had been waiting, slid down the ladder and into the open space of the habitat deck. It was the bronze man Marcia had left in the spine of the ship. He approached the group, now huddled around the low and wide table.

  “This is it. The command team.” The bronze man said, again in a tone and inflection of voice that Marcia could not place.

  “Can’t be. Where’s your engineer? Can’t be doing a job without her.” Rhix said.

  “Rhixmond. Morgan, is the job.” Les interjected.

  Rhix felt a shift in his mood. This was now more complicated than he was led to believe.

  “Well then, it’s about time we get to it.” He said curtly.

  “Agreed.” Aude said. “Marcia, why don’t you go drop off your things in the cabin? It’s down-“

  “She’s crew. She’s staying.” Rhix said.

  “Of course she is. Marcia, come around the table, we’ll show you the work.” Les said, stepping in before anyone’s ego consumed all the oxygen aboard.

  Aude retreated, crossing her arms and directing her eyes to the table. She and Les began to outline their plan, though not before introducing Kit, the bronze man, to Marcia. Rhix scowled under his beard. He was told this was a simple gig. A cargo snatch from a big old whale of a starship. No need to fire a shot, perfect work experience for Mars. Easy peasy. Instead, the cargo was human, and a very particular one. Morgan was the engineer of Future One. The starship was built under her direction, and it was her expertise in nuclear physics that ensured the Hunter drive of the battleship worked both as propulsion and as a weapon. An unassuming woman with a very assuming reputation. She didn’t strike him as someone that could be taken hostage, yet she apparently had been. Bundled onto a slave ship due to pass through the system and set to make a stop at Liberty Habitat at the edge of the solar gravity well. Unlike Ludd, which accrued wealth from maintaining a lush world and charging rent on its residents, Liberty drew it from a different source. Due to the distance from the local star, it manufactured nuclear material. Fusion engines, plutonium, reactors, and other accessories for exploiting the atom. Unfortunately for Liberty, it had no autos or cognitive engines, and relied on ‘acquiring’ especially valuable human resources to maintain its manufacturing base. Human resources such as Morgan. Though slavery was uncomfortable for the bourgeoisie on Ludd, they managed this by simply not thinking about it. Rhix had even seen the smaller slave ships make port at Ludd. They were ugly, cigar shaped objects, running on low thrust thermal fusion drives. Though heavily armed, it wouldn’t be insurmountable for Future One, provided they could use their assets to their maximum potential. Thankfully it seemed to be the case, as Les outlined a fast burn to intercept the slave ship before it docked at Liberty. A torch burn, making no fuss of orbital mechanics. Impossible if the primary drive was out of commission. Still, fast as a Hunter was, space was still vast, and Aude calculated that they would catch the slave ship within spitting distance of Liberty. It was their only chance, as once in the black hole of the habitat, Morgan would likely never be seen again.

  “Trust the cavemen to come up with such a simple plan.” Rhix said. “Still, good to know the drive is operational.”

  “For now. After this burn we’re out of fuel, and without the means to make more.” Aude said.

  “And so this is why you want my help?”

  “You still owe us a favour.” Kit said.

  “We were even last time we parted.”

  “Not quite.”

  “This, is why we need you.” Aude said, bony finger pointing to an outline drawn on an LCD screen set into the table.

  Their burn would bring them only slightly outside the reach of the habitat’s defences, right as the slave ship would manoeuvre to dock. Liberty, in the position of being morally unpopular, alongside having a great deal of material wealth, meant it was armed to the teeth. The outer cylinder was peppered with x-ray cannons, microwave arrays, and other energy weapons. They would need to board the ship, find Morgan, and be back on Future in time to escape before inertia drifted them into range of Liberty’s guns.

  “How does my ship help this at all?” Rhix asked.

  “At the end of this burn we have no delta V. If we’re outside the window we cant make it back to Future, Hedgehog can come in and pick us off the slaver.”

  “Aude, this is quite a gamble.”

  She looked down back at the map. She had aged. Even if her skin didn’t show it, there was something in the eyes that showed the tiredness of many lifetimes.

  “We don’t have a choice Rhix. Future is dead without her.”

  Les looked over to Marcia, who was studying the crude diagrams drawn on the LCD. She was fiddling with her cube.

  “Now that’s an old toy. Did your dad give that to you?” The old man said.

  “For my birthday. He won it from a senator.”

  “Yes, I guess he would say that. You can only do one side?”

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  Marcia nodded, and relinquished the toy to the man’s beckoning hands. He began to dextrously manipulate the cube, undoing Marcia’s hard work. She frowned.

  “You see, the way you make progress is not linear. The tick isn’t to do one side at a time, but set it up to fit all of them at once. To the untrained eye it looks like a mess.” He said, sliding the blocks around in a seemingly random pattern until all sides became solid with their individual colours. He showed it off to Marcia, who had never seen it properly arranged, before undoing it and leaving only a single yellow side filled to hand back to her.

  *

  Their plan of action agreed, more reluctantly by Rhix than anyone else aboard, the crew had a few hours of downtime before their torch burn. Despite the pace of which Future could bring herself up to speed, the slave ship had a significant lead, and so needed to be underway as soon as it was physically possible to do so. Rhix and Marcia sat together on a polyester mattress in their modest cabin. He was fixing up her hair, braiding as much of it to her scalp and leaving the rest in a tight bun.

  “Dad, are we going to shoot people?” She asked.

  “We might.”

  “Will they shoot back?”

  Rhix paused, confronted by his own daughter’s fear of death.

  “If we shoot, they shoot. If they shoot, we shoot. If no one shoots, well...” he said, losing what reassuring point he wished to make.

  Marcia held her cube, the yellow side undone in an attempt to follow Les’ advice. It wasn’t the reassurance she was looking for, but she nonetheless appreciated her father’s attempt to put her at ease.

  “Dad, why do you keep calling Les a caveman?”

  “They’re all cavemen on this ship sweetheart. Well, except Kit.”

  “But what is a caveman?” She asked.

  “Cavemen are born on a ‘planet’, not up here or in a habitat.”

  Marcia turned around to face her father, excited at such a revelation.

  “A real planet?”

  “Yes, a real one. Horizons and sunsets and everything.”

  “I didn’t know there were any left.”

  Rhix paused, wondering how true that actually was.

  “Mars, you should ask him about it. He used to love talking about his planet.”

  He had finished her hair. She had his thick red locks, which he knew from experience were a nightmare in freefall.

  “You’re done Mars. You should go to the spine to try it out.”

  Marcia, reluctant, ignored the soft demand from her father, and instead turned around to face him on the bed.

  “Dad, how did you win this?” She asked, gesturing with the cube in her hands.

  “I told you.”

  “Les said I should ask you how you really won it. I’m old enough.”

  Rhix looked at his daughter. She couldn’t look more like her mother in that moment if she tried. She was no longer his little girl. She deserved to know the truth, even if it would strip any vestige of innocence from her. And if not here, it would be stripped by the end of the job. At least now, he had a semblance of control over it.

  “Mars, those stories, they’re not nice stories. I know you’re here now, but I don’t know how real this all is for you.”

  “I want to know. I need to.” She protested.

  Rhix sighed, knowing that the wheels of change had already started their spin. There was no turning back. He started, describing his pirate starship, the crew that served under him. The prizes they would take, and the battles they fought to take them. They had found an old yacht, not far from here, relatively speaking. It was battered, bleached from cosmic rays, the reflective chrome now a matte grey and white. It saw them coming, they always did, but it had no probes, no kinetics. Their lasers were weak. They boarded, her father with sabre and gun in hand. The yacht was full of treasure. Stuffed, as if the proprietor wanted to take an entire world with him. Paper books, organic alcohols, plastics, and garments. Rhix removed his helmet, he wanted to breathe in the smell of dust, of the hardwood desks and old tapestries. He picked up a strange object on a table. A cube. It was a light plastic object, a toy really. He held it in his hands. He cried. It wasn’t imperial, it was older. An item of prehistory. Of the First World. As ancient to the time of empire as the time of empire was to now. Treasures of a bounty that could not be replicated. Then came the gunfire. A crewman killed by the invisible stream of a particle beam. The crews fought, both unconsciously taking care not to damage the priceless works around them. The pirates prevailed, their x-ray weapons driving either death or surrender in the yacht’s crew. Then the captain, still in his senator’s clothes. How long had they been here, turning themselves to mould and dust just like the works around them. He came at Rhix with a titanium rapier. The two duelled, crew stepping back as the men went at each other, captain to captain. He cut Rhix’s arm, globes of blood diffusing in freefall alongside the kicked-up dust. He lost his arm, but won the yacht, and threw the captain out the very airlock they forcefully embarked through.

  “We took a few prizes after for fun, but I cashed the crew out not long after. Had you. Now the loot is gone, except you, and that.” He said, pointing at the cube.

  Marcia sat, trying to picture her father all at once this ruthless stranger and the man she had known all her life.

  “Who was the one who died, your crewman?”

  “That’s a story for another time.” He said.

  Marcia looked down. She felt tense in her chest. A heat was in her, rising. The feeling of her father close by became overbearing. She wanted nothing more but to push herself away. Off and out the bed, right through the hull of the ship before the walls closed in on her.

  “Dad, take me home. I don’t like this. I don’t want you to be like this.”

  “I can’t Mars.”

  “Why not!? Fine, I’ll take the shuttle myself. They’ll let me in, it’s only a few hours late.”

  “Mars, there’s no going back.”

  “What do you mean? Dad, you said it would only be a few days.”

  “Our lease on Ludd, it’s as good as over. They wouldn’t let us in if we tried. If you went past their wall, the guns would cut you down. It’s gone, all we have left is sitting in your hands.”

  She went numb. The world had ended. Reduced to dust as much as the debris field around Future. Her friends, her home, all of it had been traded for this. For pirates, vagabonds, and the filthy, smelly ships they called home. She got up, fumbling on the mattress as she staggered to the door.

  “Mars. Before you go.” The man said.

  He handed her something. Made of a white clunky plastic, it differed in texture and temperature from her cube. It was synthesized plastic, from waste gases. The grip of it contoured well to the fingers, and it had a short snout pointing adjacent to the grip. It was a gun. An x-ray thrower. She took it without word, her mind caught in the uncanny space of wanting to scream and wanting to curl into a ball. Rhix was left alone in the dim blue light of the cabin. His hands sunk into his face. He had made the only decision he could, and he knew it was the wrong one.

  There way an hour of ship time to go before the burn, and Marcia wondered the quiet spaces of Future. She saw little crew, unsure if they were severely understaffed for the mission, or if they had already hunkered down in preparation for the burn. Her hair itched. It had never been so tightly braided to her scalp. Walking in her grey polyesters, she came back to the table her godparents were huddled around earlier. It was silent now, save for the hum of the lighting. The LCD screen still held the digitally etched diagrams. She studied them again, now finally having the chance to do so. They wrote in a funny language, all curved and meandering. She focused on the crude doodles of the ships. She recognised the slave ship, and Future herself, leaving one unfamiliar. Her father’s ship, rendered as something spiky and boxy and altogether unwelcoming. She pondered it, squinting, as if looking at it hard enough would reveal more of itself to her.

  “Can’t sleep?” Came a voice, echoing off the metallic walls. It was Kit. “I never can before a burn. Despite all this time I can never get used to Future’s rhythm.”

  He walked to Marcia as he spoke, each word bringing her closer to locating the origin of his particular form of speech.

  “Looking over the plan again? I wouldn’t worry, Rhix, your dad even, won’t let anything happen to you. Won’t even need to leave the ship. You get to stay with Aude in the exec.”

  Marcia kept her eyes down, fixated on the diagram. She had the gun awkwardly tucked into her waistband.

  “You’ll irradiate yourself if you keep it held like that.”

  She looked down, the ‘barrel’ of the gun pointed directly into her lower abdomen. She pulled it out, always surprised at the weight of the thing in her hands.

  “A true sundog keeps it at the back, barrel pointing out and down. Hey, you want to try it out? We still have time. We have a range in the aft deck.”

  Marcia then knew the origin of his voice, unlocked by a single phrase. Sundog. Not a common term, and even less to describe a pirate. She had only heard it once before. Antique vids of daring privateers that she watched as a child. So antique in fact, to have been produced in the Empire. He spoke like they did. The answer brought no comfort as she hoped, instead only more apprehension, more confusion.

  “People don’t say sundog anymore.” She said quietly.

  Kit smirked.

  “I guess they don’t, do they.”

  “You speak, speak like...”

  “Imperial? Maybe once, before I was marooned.”

  “How old are you?” Marcia asked.

  “Old enough. Now, let’s try out that thrower.”

  They climbed up and out of the rotating deck back into the weightlessness of the spine. Despite her irritated scalp, Marcia did actually appreciate her hair being kept in place and out of her eyes. Heading to the aft of the ship, they popped out the spine in another rotating section. Marcia initially questioned why it was kept so separate from the living sections, until she realised the function of the deck. It was filled to the brim with weapons. From particle beams to pikes, mesh doored compartments held a slew of the tools for killing. At one end was a range, of sorts. It was improvised (in fact, a great deal of Future’s layout seemed noticeably post hoc), a short corridor segmented with lanes of steel and a kind of smooth grey ceramic material. Marcia touched the grey wall, Kit noticing it caught her eye.

  “They call it ‘concrete’. You mould rock like its plastic. It needs a lot of water, but it’s good for radiation shielding.” Kit said.

  At the end of the range was a set of targets, and with instruction, Marcia trained her x-ray thrower on them. As she pulled the trigger, it clicked, and a hum emanated from the thing. Looking down range, she saw how the target began to glow, its surroundings unchanged.

  “No leaking, very nice. Your dad took good care of that. Probably took care of him more than once.”

  Satisfied that she could point the invisible beam of aggressive light in a straight line, Marcia lowered the gun. She turned back to face Kit. He must be thousands of years old, at least, yet he lacked any wrinkles. There were no blemishes on his bronze skin, nor a grey in his head of sandy blonde hair. She knew people lived a long time, and that you can pay to live longer, but he was ageless. Les and Aude, old as they could be, had signs of aging enough to know they lived, yet here was someone who had seen more than anyone aboard combined, without a flaw. She thought about flaws.

  “Kit, is my dad a bad man?”

  “I guess pirates aren’t like they are in the vids, eh?” Kit said, considering the rest of his response. “Bad isn’t a fact, it’s an opinion. A judgement. Your father is a thief, that’s a fact. He has killed people in the act of that thievery, that’s a fact too. But he doesn’t trade in human life. He doesn’t traffic in indignity. He survives, in his way, like we all do, while keeping as much humanity intact as he can.”

  “Is that all there is out here, to survive?”

  “You survive so you can live. And right now, your dad is going to help a friend of ours survive, so that we can too.”

  Away and up the spine from Kit and Marcia, nestled in Future’s centre of mass, Aude poured over the flight controls of the executive deck. The sequence to power down the rotation of the habitat decks was already underway, and Aude keyed in the commands for the gyros to orient the ship for the burn. Initially alone, she saw out her eye the shadow of a man.

  “It’s quiet, since I was here last.” Rhix said, hands on the chunky instruments strewn around the circular room.

  “A lot changes.” Aude said, not looking back from the controls.

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if we told you.”

  “Stars, Aude what happened? This place is a mess. This plan is a mess, and you are bringing my daughter, my crew, and myself into this mess. Your mess.”

  “You’ve gone soft, you know. And not just because you lost all your bionics.”

  Rhix slammed his first on the console. Furious, he moved toward her.

  “Don’t you change the subject! I’m owed an explanation. If you don’t give it to me, I’ll take it from you.”

  “You won’t get it from her.” Came a voice from behind. It was Les, brandishing his primitive kinetic thrower. “Rhix, we didn’t want to put you in this situation.”

  “Here we are though, you with a gun in your hand.”

  “Rhixmond, the galaxy has been cruel to us. This is the only home we have left now, and it too is on the verge of falling apart. We need you Rhix, and I know you need us more than you let on. If we fight here, our destruction is mutual, but if we work together, we’ll both benefit.”

  Rhix took a moment to study Les’ face. He had a look to him, not of desperation, but of ambition.

  “Right, I see. What have you really got planned, you old caveman?”