No Easy Way Out (2/9)
Title: No Easy Way Out
Author: Moraya
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Rating: NC17
Genre/Warnings: sci-fi AU
Summary: After crash landing on Malgn’a, a small outpost in the back of the Sjöstedt star system, trade pilot Viggo Mortensen has no other choice but to accept the price of a scavenger called Orlando to lead him out of the forsaken wasteland he finds himself in. But handing over a part of his load is only the beginning of it.
Disclaimer: If you think this is the truth, please hand over some of the drugs you’re taking.
Feedback: is loved very much so!
Beta: liriel1810 *hugs*
Notes: Thanks to jeyhawk for being an immense help with the plot. This is somewhat more sci-fi than what I've written before. Don't let that deter you; ultimately it's still about the characters.
Dedicated to nurseowens.
Previously: Part I
Part II
There was the sound of metal scraping on metal, then a loud thump before everything went silent again. Viggo groaned quietly. There wasn’t a single bone in his body that didn’t ache or just plain fucking hurt, but it looked like, against all odds, he had come down in a single piece, as intact as he could have hoped for.
Dragging his eyes open, he was met by destruction. Seemingly no part of the bridge was still in the place where it belonged, the pilot’s seat to which he was still strapped now lay on the floor, and the levers had been ripped out of his fingers. Viggo brought his hands down, fumbling to unclasp the harness, crying out at the sharp throbbing pain that spread through one of his wrists when he bent it. The belts came lose, and he scrambled out of the seat, relieved to find that nothing but his wrist appeared to be injured, no matter how much his entire body hurt.
He’d gotten as far as to drag his knees beneath himself when there was a noise to his right side. His head whirled around, and there was someone standing in the shadow of the doorframe to the corridor leading down into the ship, partly hidden to his view by some of Xeen’e’s parts that had fallen down on impact.
“Over here,” Viggo called out, lifting himself up on his knees.
The stranger’s head flung towards him, and as he stepped forwards, coming out of the shadows, Viggo got a good look at him. He was younger than Viggo, but looked weary, with skin roughed by a harsh life. A mixture of disbelief and irritation marred the stranger’s face, half-obscured by long tangled strands of brown hair that fell forward as he moved. The clothes he wore were civilian, rough and worn, and definitely not a uniform of any kind, so he mustn’t be part of a rescue team sent out when Xeen’e tumbled from the sky.
Hauling himself up by using the pilot’s seat as a prop, Viggo staggered a bit as he put his weight back on his legs. Gods, how long had he lain here?
“You okay?” the stranger asked, and Viggo nodded, taking a deep breath as the blood flowed back into his legs, the prickling pain so strong it momentarily took away his voice.
“Didn’t think anyone’d survive this,” the man went on. “There’re chunks of the ship all over the area.”
“She’s tough,” Viggo answered. Was tough, he then thought, and really, he hadn’t thought he would make it either if he was being honest. “I didn’t have any coordinates, had to blind land her. Where did I come down?”
“At the freezing arse of the world, mate,” the stranger said, leaning against a part of wall panels still standing upright.
The blood flow in Viggo’s legs was back to normal, and a hesitant step away from the pilot’s seat confirmed he had all control about them, no sprained ankles or dislocated joints there. Just bruises from the feel of it, and scraps, and Viggo thought he’d never gotten so lucky ever before; Xeen’e had taken the brunt of the crash.
There wasn’t even the slightest hum to hear, no sign that there was still any life in the old girl, just the sounds of his breathing and that of the stranger, who was looking at him intently. Arse of the world, he had called it, and Viggo wasn’t sure if the term was meant to apply to the moon as a whole or the specific part on which he had gone down.
“My name’s Viggo,” he said, turning his attention to the Malgn’a colonist.
The other man pushed himself away from the wall and took two steps over to the data screens, crouching down next to them and turning his back on Viggo. “Were you meaning to land on Malgn’a?” he asked after a bit.
Viggo frowned at him, then said, “yeah.” He crossed the room, placing his steps carefully so as to not tread on the clutter of space ship parts, and came to stand next to the other man. “Mind telling me what you’re doing there?”
“What’s it look like?” the man replied without looking up, opening the casing of the screens.
It looked like he was pillaging Xeen’e was what Viggo thought. He kept his mouth shut though, not wanting to possibly piss off the only other human being around. No matter where he’d come down on the moon, if it was anywhere near to a colony, there ought to be hordes of people around already, swarming through Xeen’e, dismantling what was left of her or what they thought they could still find use for. Planets and moons this far away from everything else were notorious for being more or less lawless territories. If you can’t defend it, it’s not yours was the only rule that counted there.
Viggo watched the man carefully pry the circuits from the broken screens, getting up again and putting them into one of the pockets of his coarse, dark cloak. There was faint clicking, something rattling inside his pockets, and Viggo was sure the man was carrying more of Xeen’e’s parts in there than just the circuits.
“You’re lucky I was out here,” the stranger said. “Not much around for days.”
Days, gods. “Can you take me to a colony?”
The other man shrugged. “What’s in it for me?” he asked.
Viggo narrowed his eyes, and thought carefully. There was no use in appealing to someone’s kindness, not when there wasn’t any other option to fall back onto. Without maps or transportation, Viggo would possibly be helplessly screwed on the unfamiliar moon. Viggo had sold Xeen’e’s dinghy shuttle years ago, never having any real need for it in the years he had her.
“What do you want?” he asked cautiously.
“You were carrying cargo,” the other man said, sounding casually.
It was anything but, and they both knew it. The cargo also didn’t belong to Viggo, he was only the carrier. On the other hand, Xeen’e had crashed, and chances were he was believed dead anyway. Taking the chance, he said, “I did. It’s worth more than a trip out of here.”
The stranger’s lips curled, a corner of his mouth lifting, and he let out a short laugh. “Worth more than your life?” he asked pointedly.
Viggo didn’t rise to the bait, keeping his face blank. “What’s your name?” he asked instead.
The man tilted his head, looking at Viggo for a minute before replying, “Orlando. And I’m your only prospect to get out of here, so try not to screw around with me.” He walked around the bridge, nudging at scraps littering the floor, coming to a halt in front of Viggo. “Your load for your life. I’d say it’s a fair deal.”
“It’s not mine to dispose of,” Viggo stated calmly. “If I give it to you, it’ll be my head at stake should the real owners find out about it.” That was the worst case scenario, Viggo hoped, but he wouldn’t dare to assume he would be let off easily should the people who had purchased the cargo he’d transported ever find out. At hearing the payment offered for the trip from Dyl Four to Malgn’a, Viggo had made sure to only get as much information as possible about everything and as little as he could get away it. Everything about the guy who had approached him in Dyl Four’s huge, bustling capital just screamed fishy.
Orlando’s face twisted into a small grin, looking eerily like a carnivore that just spotted its prey. “It’s illegal, yeah?” he said. “Great. Lead the way then, unless you think you’d rather walk to Darsaq?”
Viggo’s eyes involuntarily turned to where the big space screen was now a broken mess in the wall, not showing a hint of the outside, only dousing the bridge in weak non-artificially light. That was the backup computer systems, that gave out last, and Viggo was kind of glad that they had survived, or he would be traipsing around in pitch black darkness instead, but it still bugged him that he had no way of knowing if Orlando spoke the truth or not. Even if he’d crashed Xeen’e in a remote location, a week’s walk was something he could handle under most circumstances, as long as he had an idea of what direction to head in.
“Well,” he started hesitantly, dragging his hand through his hair as he thought.
Orlando regarded him for a moment, then abruptly turned. “You better decide soon,” he said, walking towards the door to the hallway. “I’ll find the payload bay with or without your help, and once I got what I want, I’ll be out of here.”
Viggo cursed under his breath, watching the other man disappear in the darkness of Xeen’e’s belly. The young man was right; he didn’t need Viggo to show him the way, sooner or later he would find the cargo on his own just as well. A space ship wasn’t exactly a labyrinth, especially not one the size of Xeen’e.
He quickly made his way over to the compartment that held the first aid kit. God knew when he’d be able to see someone qualified to take a look at his wrist, but for now, he’d be fine with just the pain blocked. There were three vials left, so he injected one, and then bandaged his wrist up tightly. By the time he was done and had the sleeve of his jacket pulled down to cover the bandage, the pain had faded completely.
Pocketing the two remaining vials and the bandages, Viggo looked around himself. Impact had left the bridge in a chaos, and most things were broken and in pieces on the floor. There wasn’t anything of value here anymore; everything that had been saleable, like the circuits, the scavenger had already taken.
Leaving the bridge behind, Viggo turned towards his quarters. There wasn’t much of value in there either, but unless Orlando had already pillaged there, the rest of the money he’d been paid in advance for bringing his cargo to Malgn’a should still be stashed away. He would need that and a couple of changes of clothes as well.
Walking through dark, silent hallways down to where his quarters were situated, Viggo’s heart constricted painfully at the sense of death that lay over the ship. The absence of any noise but his footsteps on the floor was oppressing. He’d felt lonely before, was pretty used to the feeling after years in deep space, but Viggo had never before felt this alone. He couldn’t even hear the other man moving around somewhere on his ship, the bulk of Xeen’e selfishly consuming every sound.
The door to his quarters was stuck, jammed probably by the crash, and Viggo had to lean with his shoulder against it to get it to open. It finally slid open with a creaking sigh, and the back up reluctantly flickered the lights on. There was chaos here too; everything that hadn’t been fixed to the walls or floor having been jolted around during impact, so Viggo sidestepped the disarray of his belongings on the floor. He bent down to pick up the PortaLib from the floor, switching it on absentmindedly as he made his way over to his wall closet.
As Viggo expected, the inside of the closet was in disorder as well. He knelt on the floor, putting the PortaLib next to himself to rummage one-handed on the lowest shelf for his duffel bag. Dragging it out, he started to pull shirts, trousers and sweaters from the shelves, stuffing a collection of the most needed clothes into the bag while his mind returned to Orlando.
He wasn’t sure what to think of the young man. Viggo couldn’t fault him for searching Xeen’e for anything that still could have some value in one form or the other, but the way he had reacted at finding Viggo alive, and not killed at impact, irked him. The outward indifference to another being’s life wasn’t something Viggo was used to. While he didn’t expect a scavenger to be overjoyed at stumbling over the very much still living owner of the crashed space ship, the coldness Orlando had shown was odd too. The raiders who made a living on it would have had no qualms at doing the job the impact had neglected to, so Viggo should probably be glad that Orlando wasn’t that ruthless.
If that meant that Orlando wasn’t a raider, his behaviour still left a lot of questions. Back on Earth, Viggo’s home, the supposed cradle of humanity, human values such as compassion and moral had long since lost their meanings, so hoping for those traits on a remote moon was probably doomed to failure, but in Viggo’s experience, some measure of sympathy could be found in all races and in most of its members. Orlando had as much as told him outright that Viggo wouldn’t make it to a settlement on his own, and if the man hadn’t been lying, Viggo was forced to trust in someone who hadn’t given him the slightest hint of showing any concern over his existence.
Getting up from his crouching position, Viggo looked around the room for anything else he didn’t want to leave behind. Even though Xeen’e had been his home, his only companion, for years, there weren’t many personal belongings in his quarters. Pictures covered the wall behind the bed, the prints taped on it to cover the brazen coloured metal of the wall completely, and on some places spilling over to the adjoining walls. They were the reminders of another life, one before deep space, where he still had unmoving ground beneath his feet day in and day out, but they were memories only, not necessities. A collage of landscapes and fragments of planetary life, they had grounded Viggo in deep space, reminded him that there was something other than the deep black vacuum of interplanetary space. Long ago, it had been a photographic collection of his own life, displaying the stations of it, images of people he held dear, but the farther away he got from Earth, the more the pictures started to change, to feel like restraints that sought to draw him back.
Just as he had then taken down those keepsakes and exchanged them for new pictures, Viggo knew that he wouldn’t take the new ones along. They had done what they were supposed to, and as a new chapter of his life started, there was no use for them any more. If he managed to get himself a new ship, there would be new pictures.
Placing the packed bag on the bed, Viggo got the casket that held all of his monetary assets and identification documents from its place in a locked niche of the wall, putting it into the suitcase. He took the PortaLib from the floor, finding it booted up and working, despite the scratches that marred the screen. Shutting it down, he added it to his belongings, and stood to cast a last glance around the room that had been his home for too long.
Finding nothing more he needed to take, Viggo shouldered the bag and left his quarters, turning towards the emergency staircase. The payload bay was one deck below, between the main deck and the engines, and the nearest entrance to the emergency access two hallways down from the quarters. He hadn’t taken long, but Viggo had little doubt that the time had been enough for Orlando to find his way down. Long, sure steps carried him forwards, along the galley and the lounge, and then turn-off to the corridor leading to the main entry/exit.
There was light sneaking over the floor of the corridor and a cold draught breezing in from there, making Viggo stop and change his course. Xeen’e had two entries, there was a hatchway on the payload bay too, but Orlando must have come in through here. The sliding doors all were open, not hermetically sealed as they should have been.
Rounding the last corner, Viggo found the entry/exit door standing ajar. The air was even colder here, and he stepped closer, pushing the door open fully. A world of snow lay in front of his eyes, stretching out to the horizon where white topped mountains soared up from the snow desert. He shivered at the icy wind that streamed around Xeen’e, tumbling around her with determination. Within seconds, his hands and face were numb from the cold.
Viggo retreated hastily, leaning with his shoulder against the door to close it again. His skin tingled as it warmed up again, and Viggo stepped back from the door. He hadn’t gotten a long enough look at the outside to look for signs of civilization, but he doubted there were any close by. Who would want to live in such a hostile wasteland?
Orlando must have an aerocraft close by, a B.I.R.D. probably, or maybe a hoverplane, even though Viggo had seen nothing but snow for miles. Viggo could only hope that it was big enough for two persons plus some cargo; he didn’t want Orlando to decide to leave him behind so there was more space for his booty.
Walking back into the belly of the ship, Viggo quickly made his way through the corridors and down the stairs. For a moment, he contemplated using the laser stunner that was always attached to his belt, but he discarded the notion almost right away. What use was it if he took out the scavenger? Without any knowledge of the moon, Viggo’d be just as lost, and whatever method of transportation Orlando had, it would eventually be out of fuel all the same, probably leaving him stranded in the icy desert long before he could find civilization.
The metal staircase leading down to the payload bay rattled as he climbed down, heralding his coming, and Viggo wasn’t surprised to find Orlando with one hand at his hip, half-hidden beneath a large crate of cargo. He stopped in the open doorway, slowly raising both arms, palms open to show he wasn’t armed.
Orlando stepped out from behind the crate then, letting his hand fall to his side, and Viggo watched him as he rounded one of the container boxes that had slid free of the strapping that should have kept it anchored to the ship. Several of the crates had come free, but from the looks of it, none had opened during impact.
Orlando glanced at him before crouching next to one, and Viggo stepped closer, watching him fiddle with the lock. The seal was already broken, and there were scratches all around the lock, testament that the scavenger had not missed any time in attempting to open the crate.
“Made up your mind?” Orlando inquired without looking up from his task.
“Don’t think I’ve got a choice, really,” Viggo answered.
“Smart guy, aren’t you,” Orlando muttered, then spat out what sounded like a curse to Viggo’s ears even though he didn’t recognize the words. Orlando stood up and reached to his side, pulling a gun from his hip and pointing it at the lock.
Viggo winced as the sound of the shot bounced through the room, making his ears ring. He hadn’t expected such an antiquated weapon; most people preferred direct-energy weapons over those that actually still used bullets. Even though, Orlando’s colt, revolver, whatever, still managed to do its job, as was apparent by the lock that now hung broken from the crate.
Orlando was crouching beside it once more, lifting the top of the crate, and Viggo couldn’t keep himself from stepping closer as his eyes caught the glitter on the inside.
“Fuck,” Viggo exhaled, blinking against the glow that seeped from the cargo.
Orlando darted out one hand, almost gently stroking the tiny, irregular shaped crystals as if afraid they’d break under his fingertips. “That’s a hell of a cargo you got, mate,” he said.
Viggo shook his head, still not quite believing his eyes. There were fourteen of those crates he’d been carrying; each on its own worth a small fortune if those stones were what they appeared to be.
Gems didn’t fucking glow. What else could they be?
Orlando raised his face towards Viggo, grinning widely, and there was pure elation in his eyes and in the way his mouth curved, and Viggo blinked again.
A frown wiped the beam off Orlando’s face and it slid back into the hardened mask Viggo had almost become used to. He wanted the grin back, even though its sudden appearance had unsettled him too.
“Right,” Orlando said, and he slammed the lid shut, ridding the cargo deck of the eerie glow of the crystals. “Get one of the boxes,” he ordered Viggo without looking at him as he pushed himself up. “Need to get out of here before the storm sets in.”
The sky hadn’t looked like there was a storm brewing to Viggo when he’d looked, but he figured it was safe to trust the scavenger with his prediction. Orlando looked around the payload bay with longing, before sighing audibly and bending low to lift up the box he’d already opened.
Viggo pushed the bag with his belongings on his back and then bend low to carefully lift up another crate that had tumbled towards the middle of the deck. His hurt wrist protested, despite the drugs, and tears obstructed his vision as Viggo moved the crate to rest its weight fully on his arm, relieved when the sharp pain faded away once more.
Neither of them spoke as they climbed up the stairs and then walked through the hallway down to the entrance hatch. There were a million questions burning on Viggo’s tongue, but most of them, Orlando wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, and he didn’t want to jinx his luck by asking the ones he could. The weight of the crate in his arms was a substantial reminder for how much his spot on Orlando’s vehicle was worth.
tbc…
Author: Moraya
Pairing: Viggo/Orlando
Rating: NC17
Genre/Warnings: sci-fi AU
Summary: After crash landing on Malgn’a, a small outpost in the back of the Sjöstedt star system, trade pilot Viggo Mortensen has no other choice but to accept the price of a scavenger called Orlando to lead him out of the forsaken wasteland he finds himself in. But handing over a part of his load is only the beginning of it.
Disclaimer: If you think this is the truth, please hand over some of the drugs you’re taking.
Feedback: is loved very much so!
Beta: liriel1810 *hugs*
Notes: Thanks to jeyhawk for being an immense help with the plot. This is somewhat more sci-fi than what I've written before. Don't let that deter you; ultimately it's still about the characters.
Dedicated to nurseowens.
Previously: Part I
Part II
There was the sound of metal scraping on metal, then a loud thump before everything went silent again. Viggo groaned quietly. There wasn’t a single bone in his body that didn’t ache or just plain fucking hurt, but it looked like, against all odds, he had come down in a single piece, as intact as he could have hoped for.
Dragging his eyes open, he was met by destruction. Seemingly no part of the bridge was still in the place where it belonged, the pilot’s seat to which he was still strapped now lay on the floor, and the levers had been ripped out of his fingers. Viggo brought his hands down, fumbling to unclasp the harness, crying out at the sharp throbbing pain that spread through one of his wrists when he bent it. The belts came lose, and he scrambled out of the seat, relieved to find that nothing but his wrist appeared to be injured, no matter how much his entire body hurt.
He’d gotten as far as to drag his knees beneath himself when there was a noise to his right side. His head whirled around, and there was someone standing in the shadow of the doorframe to the corridor leading down into the ship, partly hidden to his view by some of Xeen’e’s parts that had fallen down on impact.
“Over here,” Viggo called out, lifting himself up on his knees.
The stranger’s head flung towards him, and as he stepped forwards, coming out of the shadows, Viggo got a good look at him. He was younger than Viggo, but looked weary, with skin roughed by a harsh life. A mixture of disbelief and irritation marred the stranger’s face, half-obscured by long tangled strands of brown hair that fell forward as he moved. The clothes he wore were civilian, rough and worn, and definitely not a uniform of any kind, so he mustn’t be part of a rescue team sent out when Xeen’e tumbled from the sky.
Hauling himself up by using the pilot’s seat as a prop, Viggo staggered a bit as he put his weight back on his legs. Gods, how long had he lain here?
“You okay?” the stranger asked, and Viggo nodded, taking a deep breath as the blood flowed back into his legs, the prickling pain so strong it momentarily took away his voice.
“Didn’t think anyone’d survive this,” the man went on. “There’re chunks of the ship all over the area.”
“She’s tough,” Viggo answered. Was tough, he then thought, and really, he hadn’t thought he would make it either if he was being honest. “I didn’t have any coordinates, had to blind land her. Where did I come down?”
“At the freezing arse of the world, mate,” the stranger said, leaning against a part of wall panels still standing upright.
The blood flow in Viggo’s legs was back to normal, and a hesitant step away from the pilot’s seat confirmed he had all control about them, no sprained ankles or dislocated joints there. Just bruises from the feel of it, and scraps, and Viggo thought he’d never gotten so lucky ever before; Xeen’e had taken the brunt of the crash.
There wasn’t even the slightest hum to hear, no sign that there was still any life in the old girl, just the sounds of his breathing and that of the stranger, who was looking at him intently. Arse of the world, he had called it, and Viggo wasn’t sure if the term was meant to apply to the moon as a whole or the specific part on which he had gone down.
“My name’s Viggo,” he said, turning his attention to the Malgn’a colonist.
The other man pushed himself away from the wall and took two steps over to the data screens, crouching down next to them and turning his back on Viggo. “Were you meaning to land on Malgn’a?” he asked after a bit.
Viggo frowned at him, then said, “yeah.” He crossed the room, placing his steps carefully so as to not tread on the clutter of space ship parts, and came to stand next to the other man. “Mind telling me what you’re doing there?”
“What’s it look like?” the man replied without looking up, opening the casing of the screens.
It looked like he was pillaging Xeen’e was what Viggo thought. He kept his mouth shut though, not wanting to possibly piss off the only other human being around. No matter where he’d come down on the moon, if it was anywhere near to a colony, there ought to be hordes of people around already, swarming through Xeen’e, dismantling what was left of her or what they thought they could still find use for. Planets and moons this far away from everything else were notorious for being more or less lawless territories. If you can’t defend it, it’s not yours was the only rule that counted there.
Viggo watched the man carefully pry the circuits from the broken screens, getting up again and putting them into one of the pockets of his coarse, dark cloak. There was faint clicking, something rattling inside his pockets, and Viggo was sure the man was carrying more of Xeen’e’s parts in there than just the circuits.
“You’re lucky I was out here,” the stranger said. “Not much around for days.”
Days, gods. “Can you take me to a colony?”
The other man shrugged. “What’s in it for me?” he asked.
Viggo narrowed his eyes, and thought carefully. There was no use in appealing to someone’s kindness, not when there wasn’t any other option to fall back onto. Without maps or transportation, Viggo would possibly be helplessly screwed on the unfamiliar moon. Viggo had sold Xeen’e’s dinghy shuttle years ago, never having any real need for it in the years he had her.
“What do you want?” he asked cautiously.
“You were carrying cargo,” the other man said, sounding casually.
It was anything but, and they both knew it. The cargo also didn’t belong to Viggo, he was only the carrier. On the other hand, Xeen’e had crashed, and chances were he was believed dead anyway. Taking the chance, he said, “I did. It’s worth more than a trip out of here.”
The stranger’s lips curled, a corner of his mouth lifting, and he let out a short laugh. “Worth more than your life?” he asked pointedly.
Viggo didn’t rise to the bait, keeping his face blank. “What’s your name?” he asked instead.
The man tilted his head, looking at Viggo for a minute before replying, “Orlando. And I’m your only prospect to get out of here, so try not to screw around with me.” He walked around the bridge, nudging at scraps littering the floor, coming to a halt in front of Viggo. “Your load for your life. I’d say it’s a fair deal.”
“It’s not mine to dispose of,” Viggo stated calmly. “If I give it to you, it’ll be my head at stake should the real owners find out about it.” That was the worst case scenario, Viggo hoped, but he wouldn’t dare to assume he would be let off easily should the people who had purchased the cargo he’d transported ever find out. At hearing the payment offered for the trip from Dyl Four to Malgn’a, Viggo had made sure to only get as much information as possible about everything and as little as he could get away it. Everything about the guy who had approached him in Dyl Four’s huge, bustling capital just screamed fishy.
Orlando’s face twisted into a small grin, looking eerily like a carnivore that just spotted its prey. “It’s illegal, yeah?” he said. “Great. Lead the way then, unless you think you’d rather walk to Darsaq?”
Viggo’s eyes involuntarily turned to where the big space screen was now a broken mess in the wall, not showing a hint of the outside, only dousing the bridge in weak non-artificially light. That was the backup computer systems, that gave out last, and Viggo was kind of glad that they had survived, or he would be traipsing around in pitch black darkness instead, but it still bugged him that he had no way of knowing if Orlando spoke the truth or not. Even if he’d crashed Xeen’e in a remote location, a week’s walk was something he could handle under most circumstances, as long as he had an idea of what direction to head in.
“Well,” he started hesitantly, dragging his hand through his hair as he thought.
Orlando regarded him for a moment, then abruptly turned. “You better decide soon,” he said, walking towards the door to the hallway. “I’ll find the payload bay with or without your help, and once I got what I want, I’ll be out of here.”
Viggo cursed under his breath, watching the other man disappear in the darkness of Xeen’e’s belly. The young man was right; he didn’t need Viggo to show him the way, sooner or later he would find the cargo on his own just as well. A space ship wasn’t exactly a labyrinth, especially not one the size of Xeen’e.
He quickly made his way over to the compartment that held the first aid kit. God knew when he’d be able to see someone qualified to take a look at his wrist, but for now, he’d be fine with just the pain blocked. There were three vials left, so he injected one, and then bandaged his wrist up tightly. By the time he was done and had the sleeve of his jacket pulled down to cover the bandage, the pain had faded completely.
Pocketing the two remaining vials and the bandages, Viggo looked around himself. Impact had left the bridge in a chaos, and most things were broken and in pieces on the floor. There wasn’t anything of value here anymore; everything that had been saleable, like the circuits, the scavenger had already taken.
Leaving the bridge behind, Viggo turned towards his quarters. There wasn’t much of value in there either, but unless Orlando had already pillaged there, the rest of the money he’d been paid in advance for bringing his cargo to Malgn’a should still be stashed away. He would need that and a couple of changes of clothes as well.
Walking through dark, silent hallways down to where his quarters were situated, Viggo’s heart constricted painfully at the sense of death that lay over the ship. The absence of any noise but his footsteps on the floor was oppressing. He’d felt lonely before, was pretty used to the feeling after years in deep space, but Viggo had never before felt this alone. He couldn’t even hear the other man moving around somewhere on his ship, the bulk of Xeen’e selfishly consuming every sound.
The door to his quarters was stuck, jammed probably by the crash, and Viggo had to lean with his shoulder against it to get it to open. It finally slid open with a creaking sigh, and the back up reluctantly flickered the lights on. There was chaos here too; everything that hadn’t been fixed to the walls or floor having been jolted around during impact, so Viggo sidestepped the disarray of his belongings on the floor. He bent down to pick up the PortaLib from the floor, switching it on absentmindedly as he made his way over to his wall closet.
As Viggo expected, the inside of the closet was in disorder as well. He knelt on the floor, putting the PortaLib next to himself to rummage one-handed on the lowest shelf for his duffel bag. Dragging it out, he started to pull shirts, trousers and sweaters from the shelves, stuffing a collection of the most needed clothes into the bag while his mind returned to Orlando.
He wasn’t sure what to think of the young man. Viggo couldn’t fault him for searching Xeen’e for anything that still could have some value in one form or the other, but the way he had reacted at finding Viggo alive, and not killed at impact, irked him. The outward indifference to another being’s life wasn’t something Viggo was used to. While he didn’t expect a scavenger to be overjoyed at stumbling over the very much still living owner of the crashed space ship, the coldness Orlando had shown was odd too. The raiders who made a living on it would have had no qualms at doing the job the impact had neglected to, so Viggo should probably be glad that Orlando wasn’t that ruthless.
If that meant that Orlando wasn’t a raider, his behaviour still left a lot of questions. Back on Earth, Viggo’s home, the supposed cradle of humanity, human values such as compassion and moral had long since lost their meanings, so hoping for those traits on a remote moon was probably doomed to failure, but in Viggo’s experience, some measure of sympathy could be found in all races and in most of its members. Orlando had as much as told him outright that Viggo wouldn’t make it to a settlement on his own, and if the man hadn’t been lying, Viggo was forced to trust in someone who hadn’t given him the slightest hint of showing any concern over his existence.
Getting up from his crouching position, Viggo looked around the room for anything else he didn’t want to leave behind. Even though Xeen’e had been his home, his only companion, for years, there weren’t many personal belongings in his quarters. Pictures covered the wall behind the bed, the prints taped on it to cover the brazen coloured metal of the wall completely, and on some places spilling over to the adjoining walls. They were the reminders of another life, one before deep space, where he still had unmoving ground beneath his feet day in and day out, but they were memories only, not necessities. A collage of landscapes and fragments of planetary life, they had grounded Viggo in deep space, reminded him that there was something other than the deep black vacuum of interplanetary space. Long ago, it had been a photographic collection of his own life, displaying the stations of it, images of people he held dear, but the farther away he got from Earth, the more the pictures started to change, to feel like restraints that sought to draw him back.
Just as he had then taken down those keepsakes and exchanged them for new pictures, Viggo knew that he wouldn’t take the new ones along. They had done what they were supposed to, and as a new chapter of his life started, there was no use for them any more. If he managed to get himself a new ship, there would be new pictures.
Placing the packed bag on the bed, Viggo got the casket that held all of his monetary assets and identification documents from its place in a locked niche of the wall, putting it into the suitcase. He took the PortaLib from the floor, finding it booted up and working, despite the scratches that marred the screen. Shutting it down, he added it to his belongings, and stood to cast a last glance around the room that had been his home for too long.
Finding nothing more he needed to take, Viggo shouldered the bag and left his quarters, turning towards the emergency staircase. The payload bay was one deck below, between the main deck and the engines, and the nearest entrance to the emergency access two hallways down from the quarters. He hadn’t taken long, but Viggo had little doubt that the time had been enough for Orlando to find his way down. Long, sure steps carried him forwards, along the galley and the lounge, and then turn-off to the corridor leading to the main entry/exit.
There was light sneaking over the floor of the corridor and a cold draught breezing in from there, making Viggo stop and change his course. Xeen’e had two entries, there was a hatchway on the payload bay too, but Orlando must have come in through here. The sliding doors all were open, not hermetically sealed as they should have been.
Rounding the last corner, Viggo found the entry/exit door standing ajar. The air was even colder here, and he stepped closer, pushing the door open fully. A world of snow lay in front of his eyes, stretching out to the horizon where white topped mountains soared up from the snow desert. He shivered at the icy wind that streamed around Xeen’e, tumbling around her with determination. Within seconds, his hands and face were numb from the cold.
Viggo retreated hastily, leaning with his shoulder against the door to close it again. His skin tingled as it warmed up again, and Viggo stepped back from the door. He hadn’t gotten a long enough look at the outside to look for signs of civilization, but he doubted there were any close by. Who would want to live in such a hostile wasteland?
Orlando must have an aerocraft close by, a B.I.R.D. probably, or maybe a hoverplane, even though Viggo had seen nothing but snow for miles. Viggo could only hope that it was big enough for two persons plus some cargo; he didn’t want Orlando to decide to leave him behind so there was more space for his booty.
Walking back into the belly of the ship, Viggo quickly made his way through the corridors and down the stairs. For a moment, he contemplated using the laser stunner that was always attached to his belt, but he discarded the notion almost right away. What use was it if he took out the scavenger? Without any knowledge of the moon, Viggo’d be just as lost, and whatever method of transportation Orlando had, it would eventually be out of fuel all the same, probably leaving him stranded in the icy desert long before he could find civilization.
The metal staircase leading down to the payload bay rattled as he climbed down, heralding his coming, and Viggo wasn’t surprised to find Orlando with one hand at his hip, half-hidden beneath a large crate of cargo. He stopped in the open doorway, slowly raising both arms, palms open to show he wasn’t armed.
Orlando stepped out from behind the crate then, letting his hand fall to his side, and Viggo watched him as he rounded one of the container boxes that had slid free of the strapping that should have kept it anchored to the ship. Several of the crates had come free, but from the looks of it, none had opened during impact.
Orlando glanced at him before crouching next to one, and Viggo stepped closer, watching him fiddle with the lock. The seal was already broken, and there were scratches all around the lock, testament that the scavenger had not missed any time in attempting to open the crate.
“Made up your mind?” Orlando inquired without looking up from his task.
“Don’t think I’ve got a choice, really,” Viggo answered.
“Smart guy, aren’t you,” Orlando muttered, then spat out what sounded like a curse to Viggo’s ears even though he didn’t recognize the words. Orlando stood up and reached to his side, pulling a gun from his hip and pointing it at the lock.
Viggo winced as the sound of the shot bounced through the room, making his ears ring. He hadn’t expected such an antiquated weapon; most people preferred direct-energy weapons over those that actually still used bullets. Even though, Orlando’s colt, revolver, whatever, still managed to do its job, as was apparent by the lock that now hung broken from the crate.
Orlando was crouching beside it once more, lifting the top of the crate, and Viggo couldn’t keep himself from stepping closer as his eyes caught the glitter on the inside.
“Fuck,” Viggo exhaled, blinking against the glow that seeped from the cargo.
Orlando darted out one hand, almost gently stroking the tiny, irregular shaped crystals as if afraid they’d break under his fingertips. “That’s a hell of a cargo you got, mate,” he said.
Viggo shook his head, still not quite believing his eyes. There were fourteen of those crates he’d been carrying; each on its own worth a small fortune if those stones were what they appeared to be.
Gems didn’t fucking glow. What else could they be?
Orlando raised his face towards Viggo, grinning widely, and there was pure elation in his eyes and in the way his mouth curved, and Viggo blinked again.
A frown wiped the beam off Orlando’s face and it slid back into the hardened mask Viggo had almost become used to. He wanted the grin back, even though its sudden appearance had unsettled him too.
“Right,” Orlando said, and he slammed the lid shut, ridding the cargo deck of the eerie glow of the crystals. “Get one of the boxes,” he ordered Viggo without looking at him as he pushed himself up. “Need to get out of here before the storm sets in.”
The sky hadn’t looked like there was a storm brewing to Viggo when he’d looked, but he figured it was safe to trust the scavenger with his prediction. Orlando looked around the payload bay with longing, before sighing audibly and bending low to lift up the box he’d already opened.
Viggo pushed the bag with his belongings on his back and then bend low to carefully lift up another crate that had tumbled towards the middle of the deck. His hurt wrist protested, despite the drugs, and tears obstructed his vision as Viggo moved the crate to rest its weight fully on his arm, relieved when the sharp pain faded away once more.
Neither of them spoke as they climbed up the stairs and then walked through the hallway down to the entrance hatch. There were a million questions burning on Viggo’s tongue, but most of them, Orlando wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, and he didn’t want to jinx his luck by asking the ones he could. The weight of the crate in his arms was a substantial reminder for how much his spot on Orlando’s vehicle was worth.
tbc…