The Sky Full of Ghosts 10/? "Mail order omega in space" AU
(trying to keep a normal writing and posting schedule for the sake of my mental health)
The strawberry plant isn’t much to look at--four little leaves sticking out of a container of root-supporting fibers. It seems even smaller in Tyler’s big hands, cupped protectively around it as they walk back to the ship after their meal. It had been ridiculously expensive, five times the price of the same weight’s worth of actual, no-risk, for-sure berries. Tyler had pulled his cred stick and bought it right away, as soon as Roussel said it might live in the tube with the algae farm.
Jamie just wishes he’d had a clue Tyler would want it so he could have been the one to buy it. He knows he doesn’t have to make token gifts to show he can provide for Tyler’s needs. He owns a damn starship (him and the bank). Still, it would be nice to make a gesture. To show Tyler that Jamie isn’t taking him for granted, even now that they’re bonded, now that it would take effort for them to separate if they had some cause to.
So they walk back to the ship, the food they bought at an open-front stall warm in Jamie’s stomach, the smell of it still on his fingers. Hilary has the strawberries and a bag of tomatoes. Enough for a few days if they pace themselves.
“So do we have plans for the rest of the day?” Tyler asks, and Jamie looks to Roussel.
Rouss shrugs. “I ran the checks earlier. She’s fueled, supplied and waiting on your order, Captain.”
Jamie shifts the bundle of sheets to his other arm.
“Then let’s get back and plan to leave within the next hour, unless anybody has further business?”
Nobody does. Tyler takes his little plant with him as he heads to the cockpit to send a com before they leave. Jamie settles up with the stationmaster and gets them a departure slot. Leaving a repair-dock with a giant airlock all around the ship is more of a process than leaving Ligos had been, but they get it planned.
=======
Austin may be the station where Jamie and Tyler formally, finally bonded, but Jamie can’t help being relieved when it’s behind them, the Star running strong, no threats of upcoming system failure looming on their horizon.
They break out of jump the usual distance from the ring, and Jamie watches Tyler smile. He doesn’t know if it’s the beauty of it, glittering like jewels, or pride in his skills as he banks them close enough to get a visual on the individual pieces of large debris.
Jamie watches the river of ships and stone below them, the glitter of an ocean, frozen and deadly.
“Watch that,” Jamie warns, but Tyler is already banking away, calm and sure on the controls.
They need a good haul. Something to make up for the weeks in dry dock, for the money the repair itself took.
“There,” Jamie says, points to a bulbous ship. It isn’t huge, but the shape is different, the hull glinting red when the sun’s light hits it at the right angle. He hasn’t seen that configuration before, and new things are always the most valuable.
It’s an awkward size-too big to tow off, too small to technically land on it. Tyler waits as it drifts around, lazily spinning. Jamie watches for an entry point, for a breach in the hull they can use.
The hole is small, a perfectly round punch that goes in one side of the ship and out the other, hidden in a shadow of the curves. Tyler sees it too and harpoons the alien vessel just above the hole with a magnet-line. The Star shudders as the cable pulls taut, slowing the spin.
“Yeah?” Tyler asks, and Jamie nods.
“Looks good.”
Tyler deploys the second and third lines, drawing them in, settling so light against the skin of the other ship that the leaves of Tyler’s plant don’t even flutter.
Jamie takes a breath. “Okay. Keep an eye out. Hilary and I will go out and see if it’s been picked over.”
Tyler’s hand catches Jamie’s sleeve before he can go.
“Hey.” He says. A smile plays at his lips. He draws Jamie down and tags a kiss at the corner of his mouth.
“Be safe.”
“I’ll do my best,” Jamie promises, and Tyler turns back to the screens that show him the outside, watching out for Fed ships.
Jamie goes down to the cargo hold where Hilary is already in everything but her helmet. “How’s it look?” she asks and he smiles.
“Like it might be good money,” Jamie says. Her last work had been for a mining company, servicing the drills and haulers wherever they were stationed, or he would ask if she’d seen anything like it.
Roussel shakes out Jamie’s suit while Jamie strips down to his light under-clothing and then holds it while Jamie steps in. Despite the cost of having a fourth person on board, the feeling of security knowing there is a pilot actively watching and ready to fly makes it worth the expense.
They get the suits seal and then Jamie and Hilary clomp their way into the airlock, click in their safety lines.
“Com test,” Jamie calls. “Tyler, you hear us?”
Hilary adds a “Test one two three.”
“I’ve got you,” Tyler says. “Life-signals coming in clear, audio is good.”
Jamie hits the button for the airlock and it lights flash warning of the imminent decompression. The rush of outward air lifts him from his feet, but the line could hold ten of him.
They kick off, drift those few yards to the other ship. Flick on the magnets in their gauntlets and boots and clank into the smooth reddish metal. The hole is smaller than Jamie usually likes. Not jagged, but it could be sharp enough to tear a suit. He fishes out one of the cannisters from his belt and sprays on an expanding self-hardening foam, rounding and padding the edges.
“Gonna be tight,” Hilary says. “Want me to go first?”
Jamie takes out a sticky-light and switches it on, then tosses it gently into the opening. It goes through the first room and into another before it finds something to adhere to. The indirect light makes a mess of the shadows, but Jamie thinks it looks safe enough. Nothing visibly dangerous.
“Yeah,” He says, and stands up between the ships. He holds out his hand and she arches around, puts her boot magnets against the one in his palm. Gets herself lined up straight so he can push her through in the most streamlined way possible. She slips into the ship and disengages the magnets. He waits while she gets turned around and then does the same thing she did, posing into a handstand with the hole under his head. She reaches down and grabs his hands and pulls him smooth and straight through the hole, the shoulders of his suit brushing each side of the breach.
He twists around and catches himself in a crouch on what used to be a ceiling-all the equipment of the room attached to the other side.
The uniqueness of this ship continues on the interior. The aliens have always seemed to have a curvaceous aesthetic to their construction, but this is that times ten, every surface covered by curling shapes like vines or veins, glinting with different metallic colors.
“Holy shit,” he murmurs. A lumpy rod drifts by his face, about the length of his arm, blunted prongs on one side. He has no idea what it is, but he bags it. There are loose-floating items everywhere. Nothing is damaged beyond the death-blow the ship took. Nobody’s been here. If they leave, they’ll never find it again in the vastness of the belt.
“So, you think you could bunk with Roussel just long enough that we could pack your room full too?” he teases Hilary.
“Fuck, I’ll sleep in the corridor, and him too,” she says, and Roussel swears but it’s more of a celebration than an objection to the plan.
===========
“Send me a vid of this Jamie guy,” Brownie says in the vid he sent. “I gotta know who I have to come kill if he doesn’t treat you right.” He juts his chin and Tyler smiles, a swell of fondness filling his chest. Asshole. Strong, stubborn asshole.
He sent a reply back while they were on Austin station. A quick snap of Jamie from the ship’s registry, looking dumb and constipated. A note that “He’s nicer in person.” And a warning to Brownie that if he comes, Tyler will be the one kicking his ass for putting himself under a corporate contract to get there when he has a good life on the core.
Tyler lounges in the pilot’s seat, plays the message again. It’s nice, watching out into space for Fed ships, listening to Brownie’s voice in one ear, Jamie’s in the other.
Tyler thinks if he saved his creds, he might be able to eventually have enough to bring Brownie out, but Brownie was happy with things on New Boston when Tyler left. Work and a home and a wide range of prospective life-partners. It would be selfish to ask, but he can send some money for the com messages. Ask Brownie to talk to him more, tell him about things going on in his life. Tyler should probably send Brownie longer messages too. Brownie has certainly told Tyler enough of his sexual adventures with other betas that Tyler could share the wonder of his first time with his best friend. Tell him how good Jamie had been to him. Gentle but intense too. What it was like for heat to be a pleasure instead of a torment.
He glances at the lifesigns readout on his screen, listens to the background chatter of Jamie and Hilary working together.
He mutes his com link with them and opens up a recording file.
“Hey Brownie, it’s me. I’m uh, killing some time, and thought I’d start a message to send you. So I pilot a ship now, I don’t know if I told you that last time. Jordie had sent me a game, except it was a training program in disguise…”
His life is pretty good too.
===========
Jamie and Hilary work, taking a vid of the first room in case the location of the objects helps the scientists who will try to work out the use of the artifacts. He usually doesn’t bother, but this ship is too unique.
It takes them their whole shift to bag everything that’s loose in this first room and pack it into the airlock, just barely space left for them to squeeze inside as the outer doors close and the inner ones open.
Space has a smell-Jamie isn’t sure what causes it. Particles clinging with static electricity to surfaces and then dropping off once they’re in atmosphere maybe. The smell of metal in friction with rock, or the burnt chemical smell of fuel exhaust. This load though…when he takes his helmet off, it smells different than anything he’s been exposed to yet. A faint odor like spices, a resonance in his sinuses that make him rub his nose on the arm of his suit, which just makes it stronger.
Roussel calls to Tyler that they’re in and safe, doors closed. Then he starts unfastening Jamie’s suit in the back; his day’s work is done. They’ll need to pack up this load and put it away before they should go out again and scavenge some more.
“You smell that?” he asks. Hilary sniffs. Jamie climbs out of the suit, feeling off-balance with gravity after a day’s work without it.
“Smells like space,” Rouss says.
“There’s something else,” Jamie says. “I don’t know what it is.” None of the contamination alarms went off; the airlock wouldn’t have let them in if they were radioactive or off-gassing poison.
He hangs up his suit and then leans for a moment against the wall to get his equilibrium back. Another shift to get this cleared and packed while Hilary and Roussel get their eight hours of sleep, and then Roussel will trade watch with Tyler and Jamie can take him to bed for their down-time before they start all over again.
If the rest of this wreck is filled with more of the same, this might be the haul that gets them more than a little breathing room.
Jamie tries to not jinx it by smiling.
===========
The strawberry plant isn’t much to look at--four little leaves sticking out of a container of root-supporting fibers. It seems even smaller in Tyler’s big hands, cupped protectively around it as they walk back to the ship after their meal. It had been ridiculously expensive, five times the price of the same weight’s worth of actual, no-risk, for-sure berries. Tyler had pulled his cred stick and bought it right away, as soon as Roussel said it might live in the tube with the algae farm.
Jamie just wishes he’d had a clue Tyler would want it so he could have been the one to buy it. He knows he doesn’t have to make token gifts to show he can provide for Tyler’s needs. He owns a damn starship (him and the bank). Still, it would be nice to make a gesture. To show Tyler that Jamie isn’t taking him for granted, even now that they’re bonded, now that it would take effort for them to separate if they had some cause to.
So they walk back to the ship, the food they bought at an open-front stall warm in Jamie’s stomach, the smell of it still on his fingers. Hilary has the strawberries and a bag of tomatoes. Enough for a few days if they pace themselves.
“So do we have plans for the rest of the day?” Tyler asks, and Jamie looks to Roussel.
Rouss shrugs. “I ran the checks earlier. She’s fueled, supplied and waiting on your order, Captain.”
Jamie shifts the bundle of sheets to his other arm.
“Then let’s get back and plan to leave within the next hour, unless anybody has further business?”
Nobody does. Tyler takes his little plant with him as he heads to the cockpit to send a com before they leave. Jamie settles up with the stationmaster and gets them a departure slot. Leaving a repair-dock with a giant airlock all around the ship is more of a process than leaving Ligos had been, but they get it planned.
=======
Austin may be the station where Jamie and Tyler formally, finally bonded, but Jamie can’t help being relieved when it’s behind them, the Star running strong, no threats of upcoming system failure looming on their horizon.
They break out of jump the usual distance from the ring, and Jamie watches Tyler smile. He doesn’t know if it’s the beauty of it, glittering like jewels, or pride in his skills as he banks them close enough to get a visual on the individual pieces of large debris.
Jamie watches the river of ships and stone below them, the glitter of an ocean, frozen and deadly.
“Watch that,” Jamie warns, but Tyler is already banking away, calm and sure on the controls.
They need a good haul. Something to make up for the weeks in dry dock, for the money the repair itself took.
“There,” Jamie says, points to a bulbous ship. It isn’t huge, but the shape is different, the hull glinting red when the sun’s light hits it at the right angle. He hasn’t seen that configuration before, and new things are always the most valuable.
It’s an awkward size-too big to tow off, too small to technically land on it. Tyler waits as it drifts around, lazily spinning. Jamie watches for an entry point, for a breach in the hull they can use.
The hole is small, a perfectly round punch that goes in one side of the ship and out the other, hidden in a shadow of the curves. Tyler sees it too and harpoons the alien vessel just above the hole with a magnet-line. The Star shudders as the cable pulls taut, slowing the spin.
“Yeah?” Tyler asks, and Jamie nods.
“Looks good.”
Tyler deploys the second and third lines, drawing them in, settling so light against the skin of the other ship that the leaves of Tyler’s plant don’t even flutter.
Jamie takes a breath. “Okay. Keep an eye out. Hilary and I will go out and see if it’s been picked over.”
Tyler’s hand catches Jamie’s sleeve before he can go.
“Hey.” He says. A smile plays at his lips. He draws Jamie down and tags a kiss at the corner of his mouth.
“Be safe.”
“I’ll do my best,” Jamie promises, and Tyler turns back to the screens that show him the outside, watching out for Fed ships.
Jamie goes down to the cargo hold where Hilary is already in everything but her helmet. “How’s it look?” she asks and he smiles.
“Like it might be good money,” Jamie says. Her last work had been for a mining company, servicing the drills and haulers wherever they were stationed, or he would ask if she’d seen anything like it.
Roussel shakes out Jamie’s suit while Jamie strips down to his light under-clothing and then holds it while Jamie steps in. Despite the cost of having a fourth person on board, the feeling of security knowing there is a pilot actively watching and ready to fly makes it worth the expense.
They get the suits seal and then Jamie and Hilary clomp their way into the airlock, click in their safety lines.
“Com test,” Jamie calls. “Tyler, you hear us?”
Hilary adds a “Test one two three.”
“I’ve got you,” Tyler says. “Life-signals coming in clear, audio is good.”
Jamie hits the button for the airlock and it lights flash warning of the imminent decompression. The rush of outward air lifts him from his feet, but the line could hold ten of him.
They kick off, drift those few yards to the other ship. Flick on the magnets in their gauntlets and boots and clank into the smooth reddish metal. The hole is smaller than Jamie usually likes. Not jagged, but it could be sharp enough to tear a suit. He fishes out one of the cannisters from his belt and sprays on an expanding self-hardening foam, rounding and padding the edges.
“Gonna be tight,” Hilary says. “Want me to go first?”
Jamie takes out a sticky-light and switches it on, then tosses it gently into the opening. It goes through the first room and into another before it finds something to adhere to. The indirect light makes a mess of the shadows, but Jamie thinks it looks safe enough. Nothing visibly dangerous.
“Yeah,” He says, and stands up between the ships. He holds out his hand and she arches around, puts her boot magnets against the one in his palm. Gets herself lined up straight so he can push her through in the most streamlined way possible. She slips into the ship and disengages the magnets. He waits while she gets turned around and then does the same thing she did, posing into a handstand with the hole under his head. She reaches down and grabs his hands and pulls him smooth and straight through the hole, the shoulders of his suit brushing each side of the breach.
He twists around and catches himself in a crouch on what used to be a ceiling-all the equipment of the room attached to the other side.
The uniqueness of this ship continues on the interior. The aliens have always seemed to have a curvaceous aesthetic to their construction, but this is that times ten, every surface covered by curling shapes like vines or veins, glinting with different metallic colors.
“Holy shit,” he murmurs. A lumpy rod drifts by his face, about the length of his arm, blunted prongs on one side. He has no idea what it is, but he bags it. There are loose-floating items everywhere. Nothing is damaged beyond the death-blow the ship took. Nobody’s been here. If they leave, they’ll never find it again in the vastness of the belt.
“So, you think you could bunk with Roussel just long enough that we could pack your room full too?” he teases Hilary.
“Fuck, I’ll sleep in the corridor, and him too,” she says, and Roussel swears but it’s more of a celebration than an objection to the plan.
===========
“Send me a vid of this Jamie guy,” Brownie says in the vid he sent. “I gotta know who I have to come kill if he doesn’t treat you right.” He juts his chin and Tyler smiles, a swell of fondness filling his chest. Asshole. Strong, stubborn asshole.
He sent a reply back while they were on Austin station. A quick snap of Jamie from the ship’s registry, looking dumb and constipated. A note that “He’s nicer in person.” And a warning to Brownie that if he comes, Tyler will be the one kicking his ass for putting himself under a corporate contract to get there when he has a good life on the core.
Tyler lounges in the pilot’s seat, plays the message again. It’s nice, watching out into space for Fed ships, listening to Brownie’s voice in one ear, Jamie’s in the other.
Tyler thinks if he saved his creds, he might be able to eventually have enough to bring Brownie out, but Brownie was happy with things on New Boston when Tyler left. Work and a home and a wide range of prospective life-partners. It would be selfish to ask, but he can send some money for the com messages. Ask Brownie to talk to him more, tell him about things going on in his life. Tyler should probably send Brownie longer messages too. Brownie has certainly told Tyler enough of his sexual adventures with other betas that Tyler could share the wonder of his first time with his best friend. Tell him how good Jamie had been to him. Gentle but intense too. What it was like for heat to be a pleasure instead of a torment.
He glances at the lifesigns readout on his screen, listens to the background chatter of Jamie and Hilary working together.
He mutes his com link with them and opens up a recording file.
“Hey Brownie, it’s me. I’m uh, killing some time, and thought I’d start a message to send you. So I pilot a ship now, I don’t know if I told you that last time. Jordie had sent me a game, except it was a training program in disguise…”
His life is pretty good too.
===========
Jamie and Hilary work, taking a vid of the first room in case the location of the objects helps the scientists who will try to work out the use of the artifacts. He usually doesn’t bother, but this ship is too unique.
It takes them their whole shift to bag everything that’s loose in this first room and pack it into the airlock, just barely space left for them to squeeze inside as the outer doors close and the inner ones open.
Space has a smell-Jamie isn’t sure what causes it. Particles clinging with static electricity to surfaces and then dropping off once they’re in atmosphere maybe. The smell of metal in friction with rock, or the burnt chemical smell of fuel exhaust. This load though…when he takes his helmet off, it smells different than anything he’s been exposed to yet. A faint odor like spices, a resonance in his sinuses that make him rub his nose on the arm of his suit, which just makes it stronger.
Roussel calls to Tyler that they’re in and safe, doors closed. Then he starts unfastening Jamie’s suit in the back; his day’s work is done. They’ll need to pack up this load and put it away before they should go out again and scavenge some more.
“You smell that?” he asks. Hilary sniffs. Jamie climbs out of the suit, feeling off-balance with gravity after a day’s work without it.
“Smells like space,” Rouss says.
“There’s something else,” Jamie says. “I don’t know what it is.” None of the contamination alarms went off; the airlock wouldn’t have let them in if they were radioactive or off-gassing poison.
He hangs up his suit and then leans for a moment against the wall to get his equilibrium back. Another shift to get this cleared and packed while Hilary and Roussel get their eight hours of sleep, and then Roussel will trade watch with Tyler and Jamie can take him to bed for their down-time before they start all over again.
If the rest of this wreck is filled with more of the same, this might be the haul that gets them more than a little breathing room.
Jamie tries to not jinx it by smiling.
===========