Making The Band
Title: Making The Band
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters/Pairings: Gen - Sakurai Sho; Kuroki Meisa; Becky; Ninomiya Kazunari; Matsumoto Jun
Summary: They reached the top of the dune, looking down over the ship nobody else seemed to want. Sho could feel his breath catch, and he was pretty damn sure he'd never believed in love at first sight until this very moment.
Notes/Warnings: This is set in the same Firefly crossover universe with Our Mrs. Sakurai - this story takes place 3 years earlier and serves as an origin story of sorts for some of our crew. Once I get a few more stories done in this universe, I'll make a master post so they can all be listed in chronological order. But for now I'm lazy LOL.
3006 CE
Susanoo (the sixth planet)
Port of Maryan Dunes
If Sho had learned anything in the last nine months, he'd learned that most of the settlements on Susanoo had 'dunes' or 'sand' in their names. And for good reason. The planet was massive, but the population was not. It was a hot, arid waste of a planetary body. The history programs on the Net he'd watched as a kid had always said that Susanoo's terraforming hadn't been very effective. The planet's core elements hadn't had the perfect conditions necessary, leaving the planet full of sand dunes and not much else.
But humans were determined to survive there and had been surviving there for centuries now. Fresh water had to be imported, and even with the short rainy season that flooded the planet for maybe a month each year, the water that fell was never enough to support its inhabitants long term. And so Susanoo's people had become specialists. They marketed themselves as the best at what they did, be it fighting or fixing or flying, earning the money they needed to keep Susanoo going. They invested in their planet, in the resources that they did have, and they carried on.
Many of the people he'd fought along with in the rebellion had come from Susanoo, and he supposed that was the only reason he was still breathing. It had been hard to readjust after all the years fighting, to settle down and try for a normal life. What was normal now, anyhow?
Normal before had been a large, clean house with the most modern appliances and technologies. Normal now was the hot mud brick room over Shiina-san's garage that he and Meisa had been sharing ever since they'd gotten to Maryan Dunes. Normal before had been a whirlpool tub with steaming hot water. Normal now was the ice cold water that had gone through the recycler about 30 times - at one point it had been piss, but the people of Susanoo were good at putting everything to some sort of use.
But Sho could tell that he and Meisa were starting to wear out their welcome. Shiina-san's son had been in their unit during the rebellion, and the grieving father had welcomed them at first. But neither Sho nor Meisa had much aptitude for repairing sand skimmers or desert trawlers. They weren't earning much to repay Shiina-san for his kindness, and their skill sets weren't comparable with those of the native Susanoo dwellers.
It was time to go it alone, Sho decided. He came home after a long day's work at a hydroponic farm, spending hours staring at a screen monitoring onion roots, ensuring that water was flowing properly to hydrate the plants. It was dreadfully dull work. Sho didn't want to sit and stare at a monitor all day. He wanted to move, wanted to see the galaxy. Well, what parts of the galaxy had work for him to keep going. Wasn't it what they'd fought so hard for in the first place, for that sort of freedom?
Meisa had thrown together some rice and limp greens. They usually switched off on the cooking, and her skills weren't that much better than his own. He'd never had much reason to learn back then, and she'd never been assigned to the kitchens. She spooned out some food onto one of the cheap plastic plates they'd managed to scrounge up some coin for. Most of the money they earned went to Shiina-san as rent, though it was never much to begin with.
"Rice again?" he asked, seeing her eyes narrow at him as she slammed the lid down on their crappy cooker.
"Rice again," she declared, nearly whipping some chopsticks across the table at him. For all that Sho was restless, he could tell that Meisa had it worse. She'd only just turned 18, but all the other people her age on Susanoo were on the move. They were heading to specialty trade schools off-world, were off to university, or starting their training for a pilot's license in places other than Maryan Dunes.
Off-world people like Meisa and Sho who hadn't been raised from birth to be mechanical geniuses were too far behind to catch up. It was his fault, really, that they were stuck here. He didn't have any skills to offer, nothing that could bring them any real money. And she was too young to do anything more than bus tables at the cafe down the block or help haul things to the recycling plant on the ancient, sputtering motorcycle Shiina-san occasionally let her borrow.
Susanoo was a big planet, but Meisa and Sho's places on it were rather limited.
They ate dinner in silence. He sometimes wondered what went on in Meisa's head. She kept to herself most of the time, it was just part of her personality. Maybe she hated him, he didn't really know for sure, but she hadn't left him yet.
"We should get a ship," Sho announced as soon as his plate was empty.
"What do you mean a ship?" she asked him. "To do what?"
"Anything," he said, trying to sound hopeful. "Go wherever we want, work wherever people are hiring. Earn money that goes to us and only us. We won't be a burden on anyone."
She considered it with a wrinkle of her nose. "Don't have money for a ship. Don't even have money for passage on a work freighter, and you want to buy a ship just for us?"
He sighed. "What about at Sakura Sands Depot? We could save, get a fixer upper. You know that place is a ship graveyard."
"And who's going to fix it, huh?"
"We could hire someone to get it flying, then we're off. You and me. Got the whole system."
She got angry, he could always tell when she was angry. She'd just clam up again. "I'm turning in early," she told him, leaving the dishes to him as she moved to her bedroll behind the stained purple curtain that offered her a bit of privacy. The discussion was over.
She was probably right, Sho thought. She had no reason to believe in him. He was a 24 year old fuck-up who couldn't handle much more than watching onions grow in sand. And he wanted to captain a ship? What a joke.
But like most ideas that lodged themselves in Sho's brain, he couldn't make it go away. He'd gotten this far being a stubborn idiot, and he didn't intend to stop now.
--
So he took harder jobs. Even the crappiest broken down ship at the Depot was going to cost money. Meisa didn't ask a lot of questions when Sho disappeared for days and weeks at a time. Instead of the mindless computer staring at the hydroponics farms, he took up manual labor. Nobody on Susanoo wanted to do stuff like that when they could be flying or tinkering with fancy machines. He dug irrigation ditches for a month. It paid well, even if it left him biting back sobs at night from the ache in his back.
After the ditches was construction. The scattered nature of Susanoo settlements necessitated way stations for people not traveling in space-going vessels. The suns burnt his skin to a crispy, leathery brown for another month as he helped pour concrete and put up walls. His boss on the job was 19, some cocky whiz kid architect and contractor. After the Susanoo job, the kid had a position waiting for him on Omoikane, designing a mansion for some rich old man. A 19 year old kid.
Meisa barely recognized him when he came back after a month gone. He'd gotten his final payout from the construction job, collapsing into his chair in the room they shared. The coins and paper bills went scattering across the table as he rested his head on his arms, aching over every inch of his body.
"Honey, I'm home," he joked in exhaustion.
He felt Meisa's hand on his head, as reassuring as it had been during those long days in the Belt where each might have been their last.
"When you want something, you really want something, huh?" she asked him quietly.
He nodded and mumbled something unintelligible.
"Okay. Let's find a way to the stars."
--
They'd looked at about thirty potential candidates, all in various states of disrepair. Some had even seen their origins in the military shipyards orbiting Hachiman. Not that Sho really wanted a ship that had been born on the same planet as him. He wanted a ship with some heart after all.
Since Sho didn't know much about ships and Meisa didn't either, he decided it was best left in the hands of someone who did. Their contact at the Depot, Okada, wasn't the most sociable sort. But he knew his ships, had even built a few of his own - and since he was from Susanoo, he'd been building them since he could hold tools in his hands.
He led Sho and Meisa towards the end of his property. "This one's been sitting here about five years. I've pretty much given up on finding her a home," Okada explained, leading them up one of the dunes. "But given your...budgetary requirements, I think she's as good a ship as you can get for your money."
They reached the top of the dune, looking down over the ship nobody else seemed to want. Sho could feel his breath catch, and he was pretty damn sure he'd never believed in love at first sight until this very moment.
Okada went rambling on in his quiet, mumbling way about the gravity drive being in good shape despite her age, just in need of some new parts. The ship wasn't huge, but she wasn't small. Cargo hold, crew quarters for ten, passenger accommodations for another ten. Two shuttles for emergencies or smaller jobs, though they each needed a complete overhaul with wiring. An older system that would cost more to repair than it would to just replace entirely. She'd been abandoned in Okada's shipyard by some aristocrat who'd upgraded to a faster model, leaving the old timer behind.
"It's a Hotaru model, and they haven't seen regular service in a century. She's old, but she won't fall out of the sky if you find someone who can treat her like a queen. Runs a little hot if you're trying to race someone, but she'll planet hop just as good as a freighter half her size," Okada continued as Sho started to scramble down the dune, sand sinking under his boots.
They'd seen thirty ships, none of which needed as much work as this one. Which was probably why she'd been sitting out here alone, burning under the suns for five years. Meisa tried grabbing hold of his arm as he stumbled his way over to the ship.
"Would you slow down, it can't even fly," Meisa protested.
"She surely won't," Okada agreed. "Not the way she is now. Again, if you're just looking for simple transport from point A to point B, the Tora model I showed you was faster, more fuel efficient, fifty years younger..."
"But this one..." Sho mumbled, looking straight up into her sandblasted front glass, the cockpit where Sho would be able to look out and see neverending starlight.
Okada continued. "And if smuggling's your game, not that I'm saying it is or it isn't, no judgment here, this one doesn't have the compartment space you'd get in the Osaka-class, the one with the bum gravity drive. You'd just have to swap out for a new one and..."
Sho turned around and grinned, seeing Meisa's face fall. "No, this is the one. This is the one I want."
"It's a hundred years old!" Meisa cried. "We'll never get her running! We'll be living over Shiina-san's garage for a decade trying to get it off the ground!"
It wasn't a pretty ship. It wasn't a new ship. But when something felt right, Sho had trouble saying no. The possibilities were endless - they could hire crew to work for them, could transport passengers to make money. Hell, they didn't need two shuttles, why not rent one out? It wasn't so bulky that they couldn't maneuver it, and it wasn't so small that they'd need to stop every few days to take on supplies. They could be self-sufficient in a way they'd never been since they'd gotten to Susanoo.
Even with Meisa's reservations, he shook Okada's hand. He stared up at his purchase with a smile. "Okay, so what's your name?"
--
It took another two months of hard, unforgiving labor on Sho's part for money so the interior of the ship could be livable. It couldn't leave the ground, not with all the problems it had, but he and Meisa had been able to move right in and have a place to call their own. With quarters for each of them, a luxury they were both happy for. Shiina-san hadn't been too sad to see them go, though he did seem like he'd miss the rent. Okada didn't have a problem with them staying on board the ship on his property until things got fixed up. It only made his depot the first stop for any supplies they needed.
What they could fix within their power was extremely limited. Between him and Meisa, they got the water recyclers going, which allowed them to stay aboard at night without having to go dig a latrine in the sand. Okada was busy with his depot, but he pitched in and helped with rewiring the shuttles and getting the flight computers up to date. If they'd picked any other ship in the graveyard, they might not have been so lucky. Okada's attachment to his long unsold ship made him eager to help them out.
But after two months, they were exhausted. The only successes they'd had in the engine room were cleaning up cobwebs and getting rid of all the sand that had lodged itself inside the complicated parts and wires. If they wanted to move forward on their project, they were going to have to contract out. And hiring crew was a huge undertaking.
He and Meisa had never run a ship before, didn't know how to really vet candidates. And besides, would they even find candidates willing to work for the prices they could offer? Meisa had always been the money handler, and she'd determined that they could hire on a mechanic and a pilot to start, and in that order. The mechanic would have to fix it up good before they could worry about someone to fly her. But the pay would be lousy - any crew would have quarters free of charge to decorate and live in as they saw fit, but food expenses would have to be shared. They wouldn't see much return on the investment until they started doing jobs - anyone who hired on would just have to trust in Sho or Meisa's ability to find work that paid a living wage.
While Sho worked jobs that near killed him every other day, Meisa stayed in Okada's depot, using that way she had to evaluate people without talking to them. Meisa could judge a man or woman's worth by the way they treated others, by the way they addressed Okada when they did business with him. Sho talked too much and thought too little, Meisa always told him. Reticence, on the other hand, made one smarter. She'd always acted a lot older than she actually was, Sho thought.
The ship seemed huge with just the two of them, cleaning out the sand from every nook and cranny, putting some money into readily solved problems like furniture, upholstery, getting the cargo hold in order. But they eventually ran out of things they didn't need an expert to fix. It was finally time to look for someone.
"Ship needs a name first," Meisa told him over dinner in their massive on-board kitchen and dining hall. Well, any part of the ship seemed rather massive after living nearly a year together in one cramped room. "I wouldn't want to work on a ship that didn't even have a name."
"We could call her The Bank. Because we've sunk so much money into her?"
Meisa shook her head. "Hundred year old ship's not going to give any impression of wealth. And that's stupid, too."
"The Grand Old Lady."
"Sounds like an elderly woman who smells like moth balls."
"Spitfire."
"We're not a warship."
Sho smiled. "Okay, well how about The Queen Meisa?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Are you even trying?"
He scowled at her. "Alright, smartass. You think you can do a better job? Fine. Wow me."
She looked down at her plate. "Well, what about Arashi?"
He didn't say anything for a few moments. He had enough bad memories about Arashi Valley, but try as he did, he couldn't shake that last futile battle from his mind. And Meisa wanted to name their ship after it? The ship they'd worked so hard to buy and restore? "Arashi was an end," he reminded her.
"Well, this can be our beginning. I don't know," she said quietly. "Rising from the ashes of defeat. Taking that name and making it into something good."
"Arashi," he said again. They'd been outmatched from day one, but he didn't regret it. He'd never regret trying.
"Just think about it?" she asked.
Within a week, the name 'Arashi' stuck, and they never thought of changing the name again.
--
A month went by and nobody had bitten at the opportunity to get in with the crew of the work freighter Arashi. Okada had posted their ad on his job board, and they'd even managed to hook the cockpit computers up to the Net to post on various message boards. Plenty of spam replies about penile enhancement, but no legitimate interest.
Nobody at the Depot was impressed with the ship nor the low wage offer. But it would have been dishonest to offer a higher pay that they couldn't deliver on. Okada heavily implied that what they were offering would insult most mechanics worth their stuff.
"So maybe you ought to try and find mechanics who aren't really mechanics," he said cryptically one day when Sho came in to buy some paint to touch up the passenger dorms.
"The hell does that mean?" he asked.
Okada only shrugged, happily accepting Sho's money without another word.
"Mechanic who isn't a mechanic?" Meisa grumbled when he got back. "But a mechanic's what we need!"
He puzzled over it for a few minutes as they prepped the dorm walls for the paint. "Well, what if we advertised elsewhere? Not on the usual job boards, but on the general ones? Not the techie ones."
She dipped her roller in the paint. "And get what, a bunch of people who will just destroy the engine, take our money, and run?"
That was exactly the type they attracted as they interviewed potential candidates over the next two weeks. At least somebody was replying, though. They got a 12 year old who'd run away from home, an elderly woman who had to use a magnifying glass to look at the gravity drive close-up, and a washed-up actor from Raijin who'd once played a mechanic in a stage play.
They were just about to lose hope in the entire operation when a candidate sent a message late one night (well, it wasn't late on her side of Susanoo). Meisa rolled her eyes at it, and Sho did too. For one, she typed her message in neon pink text, and if Sho had to judge, half the message was actually made up of heart and smily face emoticons. She introduced herself as Becky from Sandy Creek, a good eight thousand miles from Maryan Dunes.
Becky claimed to not really be a mechanic by trade, but she and her sister had parents who were, and she was positive she'd be quite an asset. Having said nothing else, she signed off on her message by saying she'd be in Maryan Dunes in a few days.
Where Sho and Meisa prepared to let this Becky person take a brief glimpse at the gravity drive before turning her down, they didn't expect the young woman to arrive with her entire life in tow the following week. She'd come via desert trawler, the least expensive but most time-consuming means of travel across Susanoo. She was a little worse for wear as she hauled about a dozen pink and white polka-dotted suitcases out of the trawler's luggage storage, waving wildly to Meisa and Sho who were the only people waiting in the arrival terminal.
"You must be the Arashi people!" she said, her voice full of life and energy. "I'm Becky, nice to meet you. Oh, could you give me a hand with these?"
They walked up. She was a brunette, a few years younger than Sho but older than Meisa, her hair bundled up on top of her head in a mess mostly to keep it out of her face, Sho guessed. Her clothes were bright and colorful and exceptionally mismatched, and she had an ancient-looking pair of goggles around her neck.
Sho didn't know how to bring it up, but Meisa, as always, showed her ability to cut through the crap. "I'm sorry, we haven't actually offered you the job yet. I hope you didn't come here with that expectation," Meisa said, gesturing to Becky's array of luggage.
Becky just shrugged, shoving one of her suitcases into Sho's outstretched arms as if it weighed nothing. It weighed a hell of a lot more than nothing, and Sho groaned. "Ah, but you will. I'm sure you will. And hey, this place seems pretty cool, so it's as good a place as any to relocate." She smiled warmly. "You two aren't from Susanoo, are ya?"
"How can you tell?" Meisa asked.
"Well, you sure don't know how to write a job ad that anyone from Susanoo would take seriously. Anyhow, where's your ship?"
They had to borrow a sand skimmer from Shiina-san's garage and had to make two trips back and forth from the terminal in order to get all of Becky's things to Arashi. Where most of their applicants had looked at the old ship with some measure of disgust or disappointment, Becky only kept smiling. Sho had to choke down a laugh when Meisa suggested that maybe Becky had been dropped on her head as a kid.
They left her stuff in the cargo hold, and they escorted her up the stairs and into the engine room. "Oh oh oh, this is great!" Becky declared. "Oh, would you look at you! You're gorgeous, girl!"
Meisa elbowed Sho. The interview had to start. "Ah, oh, haha. Okay, so uh, Becky..."
"Just Becky," she said, eyes still drawn to the gravity drive in the center of the engine room. "Just Becky is a-ok by me, I don't stand on ceremony or anything."
"Right," Sho continued, "so you said in your message that you'd picked up any mechanical know-how from your parents. So what have you been doing lately? Job-wise? Fixed anything?"
"Oh gosh, no," she replied, "I'm a hedger."
"A what?" Meisa asked.
"Hedger. A desert hedgehog breeder."
"People need hedgehogs for something?" Sho inquired. Susanoo really was a planet full of weirdos.
"Nope," Becky replied quickly, moving over to examine some of the tool boxes that Sho and Meisa had left untouched, seeing as how they didn't know what most of them were for. "That's the problem. They're the cutest little things ever, but I guess the spines were a turnoff. I mean, I'd tell people that they make for great pets. They eat all the pesky bugs and snakes in your garden, they're loyal, they're tiny and super cute, but it didn't do any good."
"I see," Meisa said. "You didn't...bring any of them with you, did you?"
Becky looked a little forlorn then. "Ah, no, I didn't. I sold my breeding farm to someone. They'll be well looked after, but they wouldn't have done so well on the ride out here. I guess you could say I was looking for a new challenge."
"But can you actually fix this ship? I mean, the gravity drive's not the only thing wrong with her," Sho said.
Becky popped open one of the tool boxes, yanking out a wrench. She held it up and even as Sho and Meisa started screaming, the woman's arm came down and she started banging on the inner hull that housed the gravity drive.
"What are you doing?" Sho cried, about to fall to his knees in horror as she kept smacking it.
Meisa held up her hands. "Sho, you let a crazy person onto our ship!"
"Becky, Becky, what are you doing?" Sho begged her.
Finally, some odd shaped part came flying off the drive, hitting the bulkhead and landing on the metal grating of the floor with a thud. Becky only kept smiling. "There, that's step one."
Meisa walked forward and yanked the wrench out of Becky's grasp. "That's it, you're going back to your hedgehogs."
Becky frowned. "But you didn't need that."
"And what does some crazy hedgehog girl know about what the gravity drive needs or doesn't need?" Meisa shouted back. It was rare to see her get so worked up.
But Becky wasn't deterred. "I think I know more than the both of you put together. Times infinity." She bent down and picked up the part she'd knocked off. "You see this? This is a crank pin. You only need four of these for a drive this size. Believe me, she can handle it with four. This one has seven, and I intend to knock off the other two you don't need. You fire this thing up with seven crank pins, it just throws it off balance. Drive has to work harder. Which is why it'll just give up on you. It's a very unhappy girl." Becky patted the hull once more. "You've really been treated poorly, haven't you?"
"Crank...pin," Sho mumbled.
Becky yanked the wrench back from Meisa. "And you need four. I can see that this isn't the original drive either. Someone got in here, messed around to try and give it more power. But Hotaru's not a ship for power, it's just a ship that does its best to fly you around." She eyed Sho suspiciously. "You're not looking for power, are you? Because then you got ripped off."
"We're not looking for power," Sho admitted.
"Good," Becky said. "Now give me thirty minutes and the strongest coffee in Maryan Dunes, and I will get this baby turning. She just needs a little love."
"We haven't hired you," Meisa said, crossing her arms. "Not officially."
"No, you haven't," Becky replied, "but you will."
By the end of the week, Becky and all her suitcases had officially moved in to the crew quarters. For the first time in five years, the Arashi's gravity drive was working perfectly (as far as Sho could tell), and despite the noisier, carefree nature of their new mechanic, Sho was pretty happy that they had someone new in their lives. To share meals with, to talk with. To plan adventures with.
Now they just needed a pilot.
--
"I'm telling you," Becky said, sitting in the cockpit next to Sho and staring out at the endless dunes beyond Okada's property line, "my cousin Jeremy is not a washout."
"But you said he flunked out of flight school. Twice."
"So?" she asked, taking a bite of an apple and not seeming to care that the juice was dribbling down her chin. She had the manners of most Susanoo types anyway - more interested in fixing inanimate objects than tending to her appearance.
"Well, flunking out of flight school is kind of the definition of washout."
Becky smiled. She did that a lot, and Sho liked that. Mostly because Meisa didn't smile much at all. Or laugh at his jokes. Becky at least humored him - Meisa had gotten too used to him. "Fine fine, I can read between the lines, Sakurai Sho. You couldn't handle another member of my family on your boat."
Sho laughed. "No comment."
He'd learned more about Becky's life in a month than he'd learned about Meisa in the three years he'd known her. Besides her immediate family in Sandy Creek, there were cousins and second cousins and third cousins and aunts and uncles scattered all over Susanoo. The first thing Becky had gotten fixed up in the crew quarters were the comm links, enabling the crew to communicate with anyone out there who had a Net hookup. So Sho could sometimes hear Becky late into the night chatting with various relatives and asking after her hedgehogs (since it was daytime where most of her family was).
Becky brought a great deal of sunshine to Arashi, something that had definitely been lacking. After feeling trapped for so long and working jobs he didn't enjoy, Becky's arrival signaled a great change. The ship was ready to leave whenever they found a pilot. Despite Becky's skills in the engine room, she'd never actually learned to fly. Her family seemed poor, at least from Sho's estimations, so space travel hadn't been achievable until now. Becky was just as eager to get off of Susanoo to explore the planets beyond as they were.
The comms panel in the cockpit dinged with the arrival of some message. Did they actually have an applicant or was it more junk mail? Meisa was off at the cafe working, so it left him and Becky to check the incoming message.
"Go ahead, Captain," Becky said with a little salute. "You're in charge." He moved over to the panel and hit the button. To his surprise it wasn't junk, but a very short application and reference list. Becky got out of her seat and moved behind him, reading over his shoulder. "Ninomiya Kazunari, best pilot in the galaxy."
Sho's eyes narrowed. Maybe it was junk mail after all. He moved the cursor over to the delete button, but Becky gave him a smack.
"Oh come on, we haven't had anyone reply. You can at least interview this guy. I mean, if he's the best pilot in the galaxy, surely he'd be a good help around here."
Sho didn't know how Becky could find a silver lining in everything, but she managed to. Where Meisa was realistic, Becky was just on another planet altogether. He scrolled through the reference list. "Okay, you know ships and things, help me out here." He read over Ninomiya's list. "Pilot, The Gantz, Tora-class."
Becky smiled. "Smugglers."
Sho sighed. "Pilot, The Blue Light, Belt hopper."
Becky's smile widened. "Really good smugglers."
"I don't need to hire a criminal."
"How do you know he's a criminal? He was just the pilot," Becky said. "Maybe he was helping a friend."
He batted her away from him. "Helping a smuggler friend is still smuggling. Look, Becky, I don't need someone who might be wanted on three planets to fly my ship."
She yanked him out of the chair and sat down at the panel herself and started typing.
"What are you doing?" he asked as her fingers started flying over the keys.
"Something you as a potential employer should have done with me, you know," she said, gesturing to the screen. She'd somehow managed to hack into the Yamato Empire criminal database, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. Now who were the criminals around here? He watched her type in Ninomiya Kazunari's name - no results.
"So he's not in there," Sho muttered.
"I mean, he could still be a criminal, sure," Becky said, "but there's no warrants out for him on here, the Empire's not looking for him. He's clean as can be."
But Sho became even more irritated by the thought of this Ninomiya Kazunari when he got in touch with the captains of the Gantz and the Blue Light. The first captain had replied with "a good pilot but..." and then a laundry list of Ninomiya's offenses, ranging from not chipping in his fair share for food ("because he said he had a sensitive stomach") to baking the captain a chocolate cake to occupy him while he went and bedded half the female crew in some "crazy orgy." The Blue Light's captain claimed that Ninomiya had run off with his only daughter three years back, but he'd been the finest pilot he'd ever seen. Too bad he was morally bankrupt, the captain replied. An obvious smuggler thought Ninomiya Kazunari was morally bankrupt.
Sho relayed all this information to Meisa, who would have the final say on the hiring of the pilot since she held the purse strings. Sho was already horrified at the thought of some lecherous creep flying his ship around the system and was counting on Meisa to suggest they keep looking. But to his surprise, his first mate grinned.
"Let's bring Ninomiya for an interview."
--
They met Ninomiya in Arashi's kitchen. He, Meisa, and Becky sat on one side of their table, Ninomiya on the other. He was a year younger than Sho according to the pilot's license he'd pulled out of his pocket, but he looked closer to Meisa's age. The guy didn't actually look like some lothario, dressed as he was in a noisily colorful t-shirt and torn jeans. He seemed to have the Susanoo attitude toward his physical appearance - he was on the short and scrawny side, sitting hunched over at the table with his messy black hair mostly shoved underneath a bright yellow knitted beanie with an obnoxious pom-pom. Little wisps of hair stuck out from under the hat in greasy clumps.
Though his appearance was sloppy, his mind was not. Sho knew an intelligent man when he saw one, and Ninomiya's eyes were sharp, taking in the ship's interior with quick darting looks. Maybe this explained his ability to have seduced so many women on his previous ships - he really looked at people, he must have known exactly what to say to get his way.
And he did know what to say. Before even addressing Meisa or Sho, his potential employers, he turned on the charm for Becky. He leaned his elbow on the table, chin on his palm and stared at her for a solid minute while Becky brought him up to speed on the state of the ship and its current capabilities. He watched her so carefully that Sho found it rather unnerving.
When he did speak, he spoke in Becky's language - the unintelligible language of spaceships. He complimented Becky on getting such an old Hotaru model into shape again, saying that he'd never have been capable of it himself, going on and on about the complexity of this part or that part. And it was obvious that Becky appreciated the sentiments, spoken in the Susanoo native techie speak she couldn't really use with Sho and Meisa.
The mechanic was already sold on Ninomiya as pilot before the man turned to finally acknowledge him and Meisa. "Ninomiya-san," Meisa said calmly once their eyes met. "Question for you."
"You can call me Nino, everyone else does."
"Ninomiya-san," Meisa continued pointedly, ignoring him. "Have you flown a ship like this before?"
"Larger ones and smaller ones and plenty this size," he replied with a cocky smile. "I could fly this girl with my eyes shut."
Meisa got up, her chair scraping back against the floor. "Would you care to demonstrate then?"
"Whoa!" Sho protested, already way behind as Meisa led Nino out of the kitchen and then past the crew quarters to the cockpit at the front of the ship. "Hey wait!"
Becky tugged him along with a laugh. Wasn't anyone going to ask this guy about all the negatives against him? Were they going to let him test drive Arashi before making absolutely sure he wasn't a psychopath? Considering how Becky had just started smacking at the gravity drive with a wrench, they hadn't had the best crew interview experiences so far.
Meisa was standing beside the pilot's seat, and Nino was already flipping switches and looking at the various gauges on the control panel. Sho pulled his first mate aside. "What the hell are you doing?"
She smiled. "I'm not hiring a pilot unless I know he can fly."
"But we haven't asked him about..."
"Ah, Becky, we're all good to go, yes?" Nino asked.
"We are beautiful," Becky replied, and that's when the ship started to rumble.
Sho held on to one of the other seats in the cockpit. "Stop...stop what you're doing. I'm the captain here, and I didn't say you could fly my ship!"
Nino shook his head, flipping another set of switches. "But listen to her. Your ship loves me already."
Sho went to physically remove the snarky, skinny little bastard from the pilot's seat, but Meisa blocked his way. "What is wrong with you today, Kuroki?" he asked her.
"Ah," Nino was saying to himself as Sho felt the ship start to lift out of its safe, grounded place in the Depot dunes, "a hundred years old, but nobody would know it. Amazing. Really amazing!"
Sho and Meisa had a stare down while Becky ran back to the engine room to do one last double check. "Ninomiya, land the ship," Sho demanded.
"Ninomiya, fly the ship," Meisa countered before dropping her voice so Sho could barely hear it over the sound of the ship coming back to life. "You're the one who wanted to get the hell off this planet so badly."
"But he might...he might," Sho stammered. "He might..."
"Run away with her?" Nino called from the pilot's seat, holding the steering mechanism between his rather small hands. "Is that what you're thinking? That I'm going to steal your women and your ship, in that order?"
"They're not my women!" Sho cried.
Becky came running back in. "Who's your women?"
Meisa cocked her head. "Our dear captain is more concerned with Ninomiya-san's reputation than with his ability to fly the ship."
"I am not!" Sho said. "I just...I just...are we moving?!"
They were, and Nino let out a joyous whoop as they cleared the edge of the Sakura Sands Depot. After five years, the Hotaru-class castaway, re-christened 'Arashi,' was in flight.
Sho threw himself forward to the front of the cockpit glass. Already they were zooming over the desert sands, the twin suns shining overhead as Nino did a little showing off. With Becky cheering him on and Meisa looking downright smug, Nino took her down low through a canyon, maneuvering between the narrow walls of it with ease. Then they were up, higher and higher and higher until Sho had to stumble back and force himself into a seat as the dunes turned into nothing but a blur of yellow brown beneath them.
"Hey Becky," Nino cried out, "how's our grav situation? We clear to break atmo in this thing?"
She squeezed the back of the pilot's seat with her hands, green and purple-painted fingernails digging into the fabric in her glee. "We can break atmo so hard it'll be crying to its mama!"
Meisa chuckled. "That doesn't make any sense!"
Arashi soared higher and higher, up through the clouds without anything starting to shake or buckle or break away from her. And within a minute, Sho felt wetness on his cheeks. Tears, not that he wanted anyone to see. He wiped them away quickly as he got back to his feet, whole body shaking. The brown and the sand that characterized the last year on Susanoo were gone.
Before him, out the solid glass that Okada himself had inspected, was nothing but twinkling black. A hum arose all around him, the hum of the ship's gravity stabilizer, soon joined by the quieter whoosh of the air systems kicking in, keeping them breathing in the emptiness of space. Sho had only been in transport vessels before or the moon hopper his parents had owned. But now he was in his own ship, the ship he'd worked so hard for. And she was flying like a dream.
Nino turned Arashi around so they could take a glance down at Susanoo below them, massive enough to take up everything as far as the eye could see. Sho could see dots all over, other ships en route down to the planet or heading up to space just like them. He could see the swirls of cloud cover, the sparse dots of each random desert oasis in the seas of sand. Mountains jutting up so high when on the ground were nothing but hills from up here.
"Can we run some diagnostics?" Becky asked. "I mean, as long as we're up here?"
"Not a problem," Nino said, and the two mechanical geniuses got to work testing all of Arashi's systems, making sure their Net connection was up and running since they'd only been able to test it on the ground so far. Sho left the cockpit, Meisa behind him. He pulled her into his quarters and threw his arms around her.
"Whoa, I didn't think space got you so affectionate," she mumbled, completely freezing up at the sudden attention, and he let her go. Sho didn't think he'd actually ever hugged her before. No wonder she was so confused.
They'd made it. After all that work they'd made it. He and Meisa, back in space, ready to take on the damn galaxy. Together. "Sorry," he apologized, crossing his arms to keep from wanting to grab the pillow off his bed and hug that too. "Sorry, I'm just..."
"Happy?"
"Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, we're in space! And it looks like we have a pilot, if he'll accept our crappy salary." He laughed. "I can't believe you just let him fly the ship, no questions asked. When those captains said he was..."
Meisa gave him a playful shove. "You honestly think I'd fall for someone like that? You're kidding. Besides, Becky and I can look out for ourselves. If he comes within five feet of me with a twinkle in his eye, he'll soon be missing some teeth."
Sho nodded. "I know, I just...I just..."
"I appreciate your misguided but well-meaning attempts at shielding me from less than desirables, but really, you've got nothing to worry about." She headed back for the corridor. "He's definitely not my type!"
--
The first few months went without a hitch. Despite the things his former employers had said about him, Nino was actually a rather normal guy. He'd moved in to Arashi with far less than Becky had - only a guitar and a backpack to his name, and he'd settled into the crew cabin next to Sho's on the port side rather than on the starboard side of the ship where the girls were staying.
He was quiet when he wasn't teasing everyone, mostly spending time in his quarters when they weren't on jobs. He was apparently an active gamer on the Net, and he kept late hours but never made a lot of noise, not like Becky and her hundreds of Becky relatives.
Arashi had already started earning some money. They didn't have too many contacts yet, but Okada and Shiina-san had looked after them well. Thus far Arashi hadn't made too many off-world jumps, instead mostly ferrying goods back and forth across Susanoo. But jobs were jobs, and they busted their asses, all four of them, and Okada was talking around with his circle of friends, looking for longer jobs that might take them to other ports of call.
When things had finally settled, and they'd gotten into a good rhythm, Sho decided it was time to open Arashi up for passenger transport. It wasn't a luxury liner by any means, but lots of people on Susanoo couldn't afford luxury liners. They started out on some of the popular routes, made a few planet hops between Susanoo and Raijin.
With everyone's input, they listed one of the shuttles for long-term rental. Becky and Nino wrote out the technical specs while Sho and Meisa tried to determine an ideal full-time passenger. Arashi's shuttles couldn't go too far in space since the planets themselves were spread out, but they could easily make the trip between a single planet and its moons or anywhere on the planets themselves. The condition for the renter was that they could do business while the Arashi crew was working a job, and they could either stay docked for some time at their destination and await Arashi's eventual return or they could do business that coincided with Arashi's own timetable.
Where they expected to receive interest from traveling salesmen or religious missionary types who maintained such jumpy schedules, Sho hadn't expected the request that arrived from Omoikane. The writing was extremely formal, in sharp contrast to Becky and Nino's applications, and the person gave next to no information.
Arashi was requested to dock at R-Alpha, the largest station orbiting the planet Raijin, and the captain was to show the interested party the shuttle and Arashi's facilities. No mention of the person's occupation or status, not even a name was offered. But Nino smirked knowingly when he saw it.
"Omoikane," the pilot said. "Someone from Omoikane looking for constant transport, huh? I wonder..."
Omoikane, the fourth planet, was one of the wealthiest in the Yamato Empire, second only to Hachiman at the center of Imperial control. The planet was a paradise of green forests, lush valleys, and snow-capped mountains. It was renowned for its beauty and tranquility, and its most famous citizens were equally beautiful. The temple complexes that dotted the planet trained Companions.
"A Companion? Do you think it could really be a Companion?" Becky asked, reading through the message over and over again. "Oh how wonderful!"
Meisa seemed indifferent - a renter was a renter, and so long as their money was good, their job didn't matter. Nino was amused - maybe he was already imagining a few nights in the arms of the system's best trained bed mates. Sho...well, Sho wasn't sure what to think.
They arrived at R-Alpha, docking where the stationmaster directed them, and as much as the others wanted to meet their mysterious wannabe renter, Sho ordered the other three off Arashi to wander the station and pick up supplies as needed. The person had only requested the captain be present, after all, and Sho didn't need to go around offending him or her.
He'd dressed in his neatest clothes, a far cry from the luxuries he'd had when he was younger, but he was clean-shaven and decently put-together. At least Meisa had said so. After so long on Susanoo, it was almost odd to be wearing a jacket and slacks instead of denim or khaki. The appointed time came and went as Sho lingered outside of the ship in the docking bay. He paced, looking all around for any sign of the potential renter.
It was only when he turned to walk back inside Arashi after a solid twenty minutes of waiting that he heard a throat clear behind him. He turned, and that was when he saw his future renter for the very first time.
"That was the first test," the man told Sho as he approached, quiet as a mouse. Where the hell had he been hiding? "A test of your patience. Sorry for the trickery, but sometimes I run into a bit of...overtime. I wanted to ensure that you were someone who would be willing to wait for me."
Overtime, huh. The man was definitely a Companion. Of the people that Sho had met over the course of his life, nobody carried themselves like a Companion did, male or female. There was a confidence in their steps, as if every movement was calculated to lure someone's attention. He seemed close to Sho in age and had dark hair that perfectly complemented his navy blue kimono and the haori coat he wore over it. He had rather sharp features for someone in such a delicate profession, but his eyes were shrewd and his steps light as he approached and bowed. He was handsome in a way Sho had never really seen in another man before.
Sho inclined his head. "Sakurai Sho. This is Arashi."
"Matsumoto Jun."
Matsumoto eyed the ship first, and then Sho. It was almost like being stripped naked to be looked at so closely by someone in such a profession. Someone who was trained to bring his clients nothing but a happy, pleasurable experience. Sho looked away first, turning around to hit the button for the airlock. "If you'll follow me, please?"
Sho was conscious of his bumbling footsteps and Matsumoto's near silent ones as he led him first on a tour of the ship's interior. First the cockpit and a mention of Ninomiya, past the crew quarters and a mention of Meisa, the kitchen facilities that Matsumoto would share with them if he signed on. "Of course, you'd have your own washroom on the shuttle, so you wouldn't have to, ya know, take a bath with us."
Matsumoto raised his eyebrows at that but said nothing as Sho turned back around, immediately red in the face and nervous as hell. "I mean, what I...what I meant to say was you wouldn't have to share facilities with us is all."
"I see," Matsumoto replied.
Could this Companion tell what Sho was like? Could he read his mind? Well, of course Companions weren't mind readers, but they learned a lot about people and what made them tick. And the thought of Matsumoto reading him was unnerving. He briefly gestured at the engine room and mentioned Becky before heading down to the catwalks over the cargo bay.
The shuttles were docked to Arashi on either side of the cargo hold. He showed Matsumoto over to the port side shuttle, the one they'd cleaned up better for rental purposes. He scratched the back of his head. "So uh, this is it really. Washroom there, shower, toilet, sink. All running, recyclers fixed just a few months back." It was woefully empty, nothing but the same kind of steel flooring that ran throughout the ship and stark overhead lighting. He led Matsumoto to the small cockpit.
"I imagine you checked out all the specs in our advertisement," Sho said, gesturing at the switches that confused him to this day even though Nino had offered to teach him the basics. "So that probably means...you can fly her?"
Matsumoto nodded. "I can."
"So you uh..." Sho mumbled, "so as part of the arrangement you can uh, well, you can do whatever you want in here. If you've got a...if you're visiting with..."
"If I'm hosting a client? Is that what you mean to say, Captain Sakurai?" Matsumoto asked.
Sho was blushing again. Maybe he should have had the man meet with Meisa. She'd have kept a straight face at least. "Yeah. I mean, yes. So if you're hosting a client," he said, the words lingering on his tongue uncomfortably, "we can go do our job, you do yours, and then you can re-dock with Arashi and we're on to the next planet, next job, what have you."
"And your ship is just starting out? Do you work system-wide?"
"Not as of yet," Sho said. "Is that a problem for you?"
Matsumoto's eyes betrayed nothing. "A majority of my clients live on the inner planets. If you have any difficulties with passage through the Awaji Belt, I have contacts there. I can get you any clearance you need."
Sho wasn't terribly keen on visiting the heart of the Empire any time soon. Nor was he particularly interested in just how Matsumoto had gone about acquiring his contacts. "That's negotiable in future, but for now we've been focusing on the outer planets as we get started. Of course, Empire's always out here, right? No shortage there. Higher ups, diplomats, lonely lieutenants with shore leave here at the station..."
Matsumoto was staring at him now, looking slightly offended. Whether it was typical Omoikane snobbery or irritation because Sho had just implied that he was fond of sucking off the military brass for free passes, Sho was close to losing the only person who'd shown interest in Arashi thus far.
"I'm sorry, Matsumoto-san..."
The Companion approached, closer than he probably had to be, so close Sho could smell incense or some sort of woodsy cologne. He was maybe an inch or two taller than Sho, but he seemed much bigger. Maybe it was more Companion trickery. Or Sho was just hunched over a bit in his nervousness. "Some ground rules, if we do enter into this arrangement. The first, that you respect my privacy. This shuttle will be my home, and nobody can enter without my permission."
"Well, of course..."
"The second," Matsumoto continued on, ignoring Sho completely. Sho noticed two tiny moles on the man's face, one above his upper lip and one right on it. He wondered if his clients ever noticed them. "Whatever you may think of my profession, I am not here in an entertainment capacity for you or your crew. Don't presume that you can waltz in here and expect me to perform any of my services just because I rent from you."
Sho felt like he was turning purple. "I...I, I wouldn't..."
"And third. If I make an appointment with someone, I need assurances that I will be there for those appointments. I understand that you're taking what jobs you can right now, but I will not tolerate tardiness. I'll give you advanced notice of course, but with your promise that I won't have to cancel on a client or renege on my own promises."
Sho crossed his arms. Matsumoto didn't want to socialize with them, he assumed that the crew was going to pester him for freebies, and he didn't want Sho to make him late for any of his work. His precious work where he fucked or got fucked by the person who'd pay the right price. And Matsumoto was the one with the moral high ground here?
He held out his hand. "You're very correct. We are just starting out. And we take jobs where we can. Again, if that's a problem for you, then you're free to look elsewhere. Otherwise, you're welcome to rent from me."
Matsumoto nodded, and where Sho thought he'd have some sort of weak, limp handshake, it was strong. He kept their hands clasped, too. "Very well. All of my things are here at the station. Please have the shuttle thoroughly cleaned before I have my movers bring my furniture inside. I can be ready to depart within a day or two provided it all goes smoothly."
Sho was the first to pull his hand back and step away. Was Matsumoto trying to study him? Learn what made him tick in order to manipulate him later? People hired Companions to steal secrets from their enemies all the time - had someone sent Matsumoto to him for such a purpose?
"Ah, just one thing," Sho said, looking back at the man in his expensive clothes. "If you're a Companion from Omoikane, can't you just book passage on a luxury liner to go from job to job? Can't the clients just keep you on one of their estates? Why would you ship out with people like us?"
Matsumoto looked almost angry. "And that's the last time you get to ask me questions like that."
"Fine," Sho said, growing angry himself. "I'll go round up the crew, and we'll get things presentable for you and your movers."
Matsumoto bowed once again, and Sho headed out of the shuttle, unsure just what it was about Matsumoto Jun that bothered him so damn much.
--
Arashi left R-Alpha two days later, and Sho looked out at the stars as Nino piloted the ship away from the docking bay. Meisa was at his side, Becky fiddling away with things in the engine room. And Matsumoto Jun, Companion, was in the port side shuttle settling in.
It would be a new year soon, 3007. To think, 3006 had begun with him and Meisa still stuck on Susanoo in one room, going nowhere. They'd had no money, no friends, nothing but the bad memories of Arashi Valley reminding them that they'd chosen the losing side.
But now they had a different Arashi, a new Arashi. The ship was old, but she worked. She got them off Susanoo and into the stars.
Now they could go anywhere.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Characters/Pairings: Gen - Sakurai Sho; Kuroki Meisa; Becky; Ninomiya Kazunari; Matsumoto Jun
Summary: They reached the top of the dune, looking down over the ship nobody else seemed to want. Sho could feel his breath catch, and he was pretty damn sure he'd never believed in love at first sight until this very moment.
Notes/Warnings: This is set in the same Firefly crossover universe with Our Mrs. Sakurai - this story takes place 3 years earlier and serves as an origin story of sorts for some of our crew. Once I get a few more stories done in this universe, I'll make a master post so they can all be listed in chronological order. But for now I'm lazy LOL.
3006 CE
Susanoo (the sixth planet)
Port of Maryan Dunes
If Sho had learned anything in the last nine months, he'd learned that most of the settlements on Susanoo had 'dunes' or 'sand' in their names. And for good reason. The planet was massive, but the population was not. It was a hot, arid waste of a planetary body. The history programs on the Net he'd watched as a kid had always said that Susanoo's terraforming hadn't been very effective. The planet's core elements hadn't had the perfect conditions necessary, leaving the planet full of sand dunes and not much else.
But humans were determined to survive there and had been surviving there for centuries now. Fresh water had to be imported, and even with the short rainy season that flooded the planet for maybe a month each year, the water that fell was never enough to support its inhabitants long term. And so Susanoo's people had become specialists. They marketed themselves as the best at what they did, be it fighting or fixing or flying, earning the money they needed to keep Susanoo going. They invested in their planet, in the resources that they did have, and they carried on.
Many of the people he'd fought along with in the rebellion had come from Susanoo, and he supposed that was the only reason he was still breathing. It had been hard to readjust after all the years fighting, to settle down and try for a normal life. What was normal now, anyhow?
Normal before had been a large, clean house with the most modern appliances and technologies. Normal now was the hot mud brick room over Shiina-san's garage that he and Meisa had been sharing ever since they'd gotten to Maryan Dunes. Normal before had been a whirlpool tub with steaming hot water. Normal now was the ice cold water that had gone through the recycler about 30 times - at one point it had been piss, but the people of Susanoo were good at putting everything to some sort of use.
But Sho could tell that he and Meisa were starting to wear out their welcome. Shiina-san's son had been in their unit during the rebellion, and the grieving father had welcomed them at first. But neither Sho nor Meisa had much aptitude for repairing sand skimmers or desert trawlers. They weren't earning much to repay Shiina-san for his kindness, and their skill sets weren't comparable with those of the native Susanoo dwellers.
It was time to go it alone, Sho decided. He came home after a long day's work at a hydroponic farm, spending hours staring at a screen monitoring onion roots, ensuring that water was flowing properly to hydrate the plants. It was dreadfully dull work. Sho didn't want to sit and stare at a monitor all day. He wanted to move, wanted to see the galaxy. Well, what parts of the galaxy had work for him to keep going. Wasn't it what they'd fought so hard for in the first place, for that sort of freedom?
Meisa had thrown together some rice and limp greens. They usually switched off on the cooking, and her skills weren't that much better than his own. He'd never had much reason to learn back then, and she'd never been assigned to the kitchens. She spooned out some food onto one of the cheap plastic plates they'd managed to scrounge up some coin for. Most of the money they earned went to Shiina-san as rent, though it was never much to begin with.
"Rice again?" he asked, seeing her eyes narrow at him as she slammed the lid down on their crappy cooker.
"Rice again," she declared, nearly whipping some chopsticks across the table at him. For all that Sho was restless, he could tell that Meisa had it worse. She'd only just turned 18, but all the other people her age on Susanoo were on the move. They were heading to specialty trade schools off-world, were off to university, or starting their training for a pilot's license in places other than Maryan Dunes.
Off-world people like Meisa and Sho who hadn't been raised from birth to be mechanical geniuses were too far behind to catch up. It was his fault, really, that they were stuck here. He didn't have any skills to offer, nothing that could bring them any real money. And she was too young to do anything more than bus tables at the cafe down the block or help haul things to the recycling plant on the ancient, sputtering motorcycle Shiina-san occasionally let her borrow.
Susanoo was a big planet, but Meisa and Sho's places on it were rather limited.
They ate dinner in silence. He sometimes wondered what went on in Meisa's head. She kept to herself most of the time, it was just part of her personality. Maybe she hated him, he didn't really know for sure, but she hadn't left him yet.
"We should get a ship," Sho announced as soon as his plate was empty.
"What do you mean a ship?" she asked him. "To do what?"
"Anything," he said, trying to sound hopeful. "Go wherever we want, work wherever people are hiring. Earn money that goes to us and only us. We won't be a burden on anyone."
She considered it with a wrinkle of her nose. "Don't have money for a ship. Don't even have money for passage on a work freighter, and you want to buy a ship just for us?"
He sighed. "What about at Sakura Sands Depot? We could save, get a fixer upper. You know that place is a ship graveyard."
"And who's going to fix it, huh?"
"We could hire someone to get it flying, then we're off. You and me. Got the whole system."
She got angry, he could always tell when she was angry. She'd just clam up again. "I'm turning in early," she told him, leaving the dishes to him as she moved to her bedroll behind the stained purple curtain that offered her a bit of privacy. The discussion was over.
She was probably right, Sho thought. She had no reason to believe in him. He was a 24 year old fuck-up who couldn't handle much more than watching onions grow in sand. And he wanted to captain a ship? What a joke.
But like most ideas that lodged themselves in Sho's brain, he couldn't make it go away. He'd gotten this far being a stubborn idiot, and he didn't intend to stop now.
--
So he took harder jobs. Even the crappiest broken down ship at the Depot was going to cost money. Meisa didn't ask a lot of questions when Sho disappeared for days and weeks at a time. Instead of the mindless computer staring at the hydroponics farms, he took up manual labor. Nobody on Susanoo wanted to do stuff like that when they could be flying or tinkering with fancy machines. He dug irrigation ditches for a month. It paid well, even if it left him biting back sobs at night from the ache in his back.
After the ditches was construction. The scattered nature of Susanoo settlements necessitated way stations for people not traveling in space-going vessels. The suns burnt his skin to a crispy, leathery brown for another month as he helped pour concrete and put up walls. His boss on the job was 19, some cocky whiz kid architect and contractor. After the Susanoo job, the kid had a position waiting for him on Omoikane, designing a mansion for some rich old man. A 19 year old kid.
Meisa barely recognized him when he came back after a month gone. He'd gotten his final payout from the construction job, collapsing into his chair in the room they shared. The coins and paper bills went scattering across the table as he rested his head on his arms, aching over every inch of his body.
"Honey, I'm home," he joked in exhaustion.
He felt Meisa's hand on his head, as reassuring as it had been during those long days in the Belt where each might have been their last.
"When you want something, you really want something, huh?" she asked him quietly.
He nodded and mumbled something unintelligible.
"Okay. Let's find a way to the stars."
--
They'd looked at about thirty potential candidates, all in various states of disrepair. Some had even seen their origins in the military shipyards orbiting Hachiman. Not that Sho really wanted a ship that had been born on the same planet as him. He wanted a ship with some heart after all.
Since Sho didn't know much about ships and Meisa didn't either, he decided it was best left in the hands of someone who did. Their contact at the Depot, Okada, wasn't the most sociable sort. But he knew his ships, had even built a few of his own - and since he was from Susanoo, he'd been building them since he could hold tools in his hands.
He led Sho and Meisa towards the end of his property. "This one's been sitting here about five years. I've pretty much given up on finding her a home," Okada explained, leading them up one of the dunes. "But given your...budgetary requirements, I think she's as good a ship as you can get for your money."
They reached the top of the dune, looking down over the ship nobody else seemed to want. Sho could feel his breath catch, and he was pretty damn sure he'd never believed in love at first sight until this very moment.
Okada went rambling on in his quiet, mumbling way about the gravity drive being in good shape despite her age, just in need of some new parts. The ship wasn't huge, but she wasn't small. Cargo hold, crew quarters for ten, passenger accommodations for another ten. Two shuttles for emergencies or smaller jobs, though they each needed a complete overhaul with wiring. An older system that would cost more to repair than it would to just replace entirely. She'd been abandoned in Okada's shipyard by some aristocrat who'd upgraded to a faster model, leaving the old timer behind.
"It's a Hotaru model, and they haven't seen regular service in a century. She's old, but she won't fall out of the sky if you find someone who can treat her like a queen. Runs a little hot if you're trying to race someone, but she'll planet hop just as good as a freighter half her size," Okada continued as Sho started to scramble down the dune, sand sinking under his boots.
They'd seen thirty ships, none of which needed as much work as this one. Which was probably why she'd been sitting out here alone, burning under the suns for five years. Meisa tried grabbing hold of his arm as he stumbled his way over to the ship.
"Would you slow down, it can't even fly," Meisa protested.
"She surely won't," Okada agreed. "Not the way she is now. Again, if you're just looking for simple transport from point A to point B, the Tora model I showed you was faster, more fuel efficient, fifty years younger..."
"But this one..." Sho mumbled, looking straight up into her sandblasted front glass, the cockpit where Sho would be able to look out and see neverending starlight.
Okada continued. "And if smuggling's your game, not that I'm saying it is or it isn't, no judgment here, this one doesn't have the compartment space you'd get in the Osaka-class, the one with the bum gravity drive. You'd just have to swap out for a new one and..."
Sho turned around and grinned, seeing Meisa's face fall. "No, this is the one. This is the one I want."
"It's a hundred years old!" Meisa cried. "We'll never get her running! We'll be living over Shiina-san's garage for a decade trying to get it off the ground!"
It wasn't a pretty ship. It wasn't a new ship. But when something felt right, Sho had trouble saying no. The possibilities were endless - they could hire crew to work for them, could transport passengers to make money. Hell, they didn't need two shuttles, why not rent one out? It wasn't so bulky that they couldn't maneuver it, and it wasn't so small that they'd need to stop every few days to take on supplies. They could be self-sufficient in a way they'd never been since they'd gotten to Susanoo.
Even with Meisa's reservations, he shook Okada's hand. He stared up at his purchase with a smile. "Okay, so what's your name?"
--
It took another two months of hard, unforgiving labor on Sho's part for money so the interior of the ship could be livable. It couldn't leave the ground, not with all the problems it had, but he and Meisa had been able to move right in and have a place to call their own. With quarters for each of them, a luxury they were both happy for. Shiina-san hadn't been too sad to see them go, though he did seem like he'd miss the rent. Okada didn't have a problem with them staying on board the ship on his property until things got fixed up. It only made his depot the first stop for any supplies they needed.
What they could fix within their power was extremely limited. Between him and Meisa, they got the water recyclers going, which allowed them to stay aboard at night without having to go dig a latrine in the sand. Okada was busy with his depot, but he pitched in and helped with rewiring the shuttles and getting the flight computers up to date. If they'd picked any other ship in the graveyard, they might not have been so lucky. Okada's attachment to his long unsold ship made him eager to help them out.
But after two months, they were exhausted. The only successes they'd had in the engine room were cleaning up cobwebs and getting rid of all the sand that had lodged itself inside the complicated parts and wires. If they wanted to move forward on their project, they were going to have to contract out. And hiring crew was a huge undertaking.
He and Meisa had never run a ship before, didn't know how to really vet candidates. And besides, would they even find candidates willing to work for the prices they could offer? Meisa had always been the money handler, and she'd determined that they could hire on a mechanic and a pilot to start, and in that order. The mechanic would have to fix it up good before they could worry about someone to fly her. But the pay would be lousy - any crew would have quarters free of charge to decorate and live in as they saw fit, but food expenses would have to be shared. They wouldn't see much return on the investment until they started doing jobs - anyone who hired on would just have to trust in Sho or Meisa's ability to find work that paid a living wage.
While Sho worked jobs that near killed him every other day, Meisa stayed in Okada's depot, using that way she had to evaluate people without talking to them. Meisa could judge a man or woman's worth by the way they treated others, by the way they addressed Okada when they did business with him. Sho talked too much and thought too little, Meisa always told him. Reticence, on the other hand, made one smarter. She'd always acted a lot older than she actually was, Sho thought.
The ship seemed huge with just the two of them, cleaning out the sand from every nook and cranny, putting some money into readily solved problems like furniture, upholstery, getting the cargo hold in order. But they eventually ran out of things they didn't need an expert to fix. It was finally time to look for someone.
"Ship needs a name first," Meisa told him over dinner in their massive on-board kitchen and dining hall. Well, any part of the ship seemed rather massive after living nearly a year together in one cramped room. "I wouldn't want to work on a ship that didn't even have a name."
"We could call her The Bank. Because we've sunk so much money into her?"
Meisa shook her head. "Hundred year old ship's not going to give any impression of wealth. And that's stupid, too."
"The Grand Old Lady."
"Sounds like an elderly woman who smells like moth balls."
"Spitfire."
"We're not a warship."
Sho smiled. "Okay, well how about The Queen Meisa?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Are you even trying?"
He scowled at her. "Alright, smartass. You think you can do a better job? Fine. Wow me."
She looked down at her plate. "Well, what about Arashi?"
He didn't say anything for a few moments. He had enough bad memories about Arashi Valley, but try as he did, he couldn't shake that last futile battle from his mind. And Meisa wanted to name their ship after it? The ship they'd worked so hard to buy and restore? "Arashi was an end," he reminded her.
"Well, this can be our beginning. I don't know," she said quietly. "Rising from the ashes of defeat. Taking that name and making it into something good."
"Arashi," he said again. They'd been outmatched from day one, but he didn't regret it. He'd never regret trying.
"Just think about it?" she asked.
Within a week, the name 'Arashi' stuck, and they never thought of changing the name again.
--
A month went by and nobody had bitten at the opportunity to get in with the crew of the work freighter Arashi. Okada had posted their ad on his job board, and they'd even managed to hook the cockpit computers up to the Net to post on various message boards. Plenty of spam replies about penile enhancement, but no legitimate interest.
Nobody at the Depot was impressed with the ship nor the low wage offer. But it would have been dishonest to offer a higher pay that they couldn't deliver on. Okada heavily implied that what they were offering would insult most mechanics worth their stuff.
"So maybe you ought to try and find mechanics who aren't really mechanics," he said cryptically one day when Sho came in to buy some paint to touch up the passenger dorms.
"The hell does that mean?" he asked.
Okada only shrugged, happily accepting Sho's money without another word.
"Mechanic who isn't a mechanic?" Meisa grumbled when he got back. "But a mechanic's what we need!"
He puzzled over it for a few minutes as they prepped the dorm walls for the paint. "Well, what if we advertised elsewhere? Not on the usual job boards, but on the general ones? Not the techie ones."
She dipped her roller in the paint. "And get what, a bunch of people who will just destroy the engine, take our money, and run?"
That was exactly the type they attracted as they interviewed potential candidates over the next two weeks. At least somebody was replying, though. They got a 12 year old who'd run away from home, an elderly woman who had to use a magnifying glass to look at the gravity drive close-up, and a washed-up actor from Raijin who'd once played a mechanic in a stage play.
They were just about to lose hope in the entire operation when a candidate sent a message late one night (well, it wasn't late on her side of Susanoo). Meisa rolled her eyes at it, and Sho did too. For one, she typed her message in neon pink text, and if Sho had to judge, half the message was actually made up of heart and smily face emoticons. She introduced herself as Becky from Sandy Creek, a good eight thousand miles from Maryan Dunes.
Becky claimed to not really be a mechanic by trade, but she and her sister had parents who were, and she was positive she'd be quite an asset. Having said nothing else, she signed off on her message by saying she'd be in Maryan Dunes in a few days.
Where Sho and Meisa prepared to let this Becky person take a brief glimpse at the gravity drive before turning her down, they didn't expect the young woman to arrive with her entire life in tow the following week. She'd come via desert trawler, the least expensive but most time-consuming means of travel across Susanoo. She was a little worse for wear as she hauled about a dozen pink and white polka-dotted suitcases out of the trawler's luggage storage, waving wildly to Meisa and Sho who were the only people waiting in the arrival terminal.
"You must be the Arashi people!" she said, her voice full of life and energy. "I'm Becky, nice to meet you. Oh, could you give me a hand with these?"
They walked up. She was a brunette, a few years younger than Sho but older than Meisa, her hair bundled up on top of her head in a mess mostly to keep it out of her face, Sho guessed. Her clothes were bright and colorful and exceptionally mismatched, and she had an ancient-looking pair of goggles around her neck.
Sho didn't know how to bring it up, but Meisa, as always, showed her ability to cut through the crap. "I'm sorry, we haven't actually offered you the job yet. I hope you didn't come here with that expectation," Meisa said, gesturing to Becky's array of luggage.
Becky just shrugged, shoving one of her suitcases into Sho's outstretched arms as if it weighed nothing. It weighed a hell of a lot more than nothing, and Sho groaned. "Ah, but you will. I'm sure you will. And hey, this place seems pretty cool, so it's as good a place as any to relocate." She smiled warmly. "You two aren't from Susanoo, are ya?"
"How can you tell?" Meisa asked.
"Well, you sure don't know how to write a job ad that anyone from Susanoo would take seriously. Anyhow, where's your ship?"
They had to borrow a sand skimmer from Shiina-san's garage and had to make two trips back and forth from the terminal in order to get all of Becky's things to Arashi. Where most of their applicants had looked at the old ship with some measure of disgust or disappointment, Becky only kept smiling. Sho had to choke down a laugh when Meisa suggested that maybe Becky had been dropped on her head as a kid.
They left her stuff in the cargo hold, and they escorted her up the stairs and into the engine room. "Oh oh oh, this is great!" Becky declared. "Oh, would you look at you! You're gorgeous, girl!"
Meisa elbowed Sho. The interview had to start. "Ah, oh, haha. Okay, so uh, Becky..."
"Just Becky," she said, eyes still drawn to the gravity drive in the center of the engine room. "Just Becky is a-ok by me, I don't stand on ceremony or anything."
"Right," Sho continued, "so you said in your message that you'd picked up any mechanical know-how from your parents. So what have you been doing lately? Job-wise? Fixed anything?"
"Oh gosh, no," she replied, "I'm a hedger."
"A what?" Meisa asked.
"Hedger. A desert hedgehog breeder."
"People need hedgehogs for something?" Sho inquired. Susanoo really was a planet full of weirdos.
"Nope," Becky replied quickly, moving over to examine some of the tool boxes that Sho and Meisa had left untouched, seeing as how they didn't know what most of them were for. "That's the problem. They're the cutest little things ever, but I guess the spines were a turnoff. I mean, I'd tell people that they make for great pets. They eat all the pesky bugs and snakes in your garden, they're loyal, they're tiny and super cute, but it didn't do any good."
"I see," Meisa said. "You didn't...bring any of them with you, did you?"
Becky looked a little forlorn then. "Ah, no, I didn't. I sold my breeding farm to someone. They'll be well looked after, but they wouldn't have done so well on the ride out here. I guess you could say I was looking for a new challenge."
"But can you actually fix this ship? I mean, the gravity drive's not the only thing wrong with her," Sho said.
Becky popped open one of the tool boxes, yanking out a wrench. She held it up and even as Sho and Meisa started screaming, the woman's arm came down and she started banging on the inner hull that housed the gravity drive.
"What are you doing?" Sho cried, about to fall to his knees in horror as she kept smacking it.
Meisa held up her hands. "Sho, you let a crazy person onto our ship!"
"Becky, Becky, what are you doing?" Sho begged her.
Finally, some odd shaped part came flying off the drive, hitting the bulkhead and landing on the metal grating of the floor with a thud. Becky only kept smiling. "There, that's step one."
Meisa walked forward and yanked the wrench out of Becky's grasp. "That's it, you're going back to your hedgehogs."
Becky frowned. "But you didn't need that."
"And what does some crazy hedgehog girl know about what the gravity drive needs or doesn't need?" Meisa shouted back. It was rare to see her get so worked up.
But Becky wasn't deterred. "I think I know more than the both of you put together. Times infinity." She bent down and picked up the part she'd knocked off. "You see this? This is a crank pin. You only need four of these for a drive this size. Believe me, she can handle it with four. This one has seven, and I intend to knock off the other two you don't need. You fire this thing up with seven crank pins, it just throws it off balance. Drive has to work harder. Which is why it'll just give up on you. It's a very unhappy girl." Becky patted the hull once more. "You've really been treated poorly, haven't you?"
"Crank...pin," Sho mumbled.
Becky yanked the wrench back from Meisa. "And you need four. I can see that this isn't the original drive either. Someone got in here, messed around to try and give it more power. But Hotaru's not a ship for power, it's just a ship that does its best to fly you around." She eyed Sho suspiciously. "You're not looking for power, are you? Because then you got ripped off."
"We're not looking for power," Sho admitted.
"Good," Becky said. "Now give me thirty minutes and the strongest coffee in Maryan Dunes, and I will get this baby turning. She just needs a little love."
"We haven't hired you," Meisa said, crossing her arms. "Not officially."
"No, you haven't," Becky replied, "but you will."
By the end of the week, Becky and all her suitcases had officially moved in to the crew quarters. For the first time in five years, the Arashi's gravity drive was working perfectly (as far as Sho could tell), and despite the noisier, carefree nature of their new mechanic, Sho was pretty happy that they had someone new in their lives. To share meals with, to talk with. To plan adventures with.
Now they just needed a pilot.
--
"I'm telling you," Becky said, sitting in the cockpit next to Sho and staring out at the endless dunes beyond Okada's property line, "my cousin Jeremy is not a washout."
"But you said he flunked out of flight school. Twice."
"So?" she asked, taking a bite of an apple and not seeming to care that the juice was dribbling down her chin. She had the manners of most Susanoo types anyway - more interested in fixing inanimate objects than tending to her appearance.
"Well, flunking out of flight school is kind of the definition of washout."
Becky smiled. She did that a lot, and Sho liked that. Mostly because Meisa didn't smile much at all. Or laugh at his jokes. Becky at least humored him - Meisa had gotten too used to him. "Fine fine, I can read between the lines, Sakurai Sho. You couldn't handle another member of my family on your boat."
Sho laughed. "No comment."
He'd learned more about Becky's life in a month than he'd learned about Meisa in the three years he'd known her. Besides her immediate family in Sandy Creek, there were cousins and second cousins and third cousins and aunts and uncles scattered all over Susanoo. The first thing Becky had gotten fixed up in the crew quarters were the comm links, enabling the crew to communicate with anyone out there who had a Net hookup. So Sho could sometimes hear Becky late into the night chatting with various relatives and asking after her hedgehogs (since it was daytime where most of her family was).
Becky brought a great deal of sunshine to Arashi, something that had definitely been lacking. After feeling trapped for so long and working jobs he didn't enjoy, Becky's arrival signaled a great change. The ship was ready to leave whenever they found a pilot. Despite Becky's skills in the engine room, she'd never actually learned to fly. Her family seemed poor, at least from Sho's estimations, so space travel hadn't been achievable until now. Becky was just as eager to get off of Susanoo to explore the planets beyond as they were.
The comms panel in the cockpit dinged with the arrival of some message. Did they actually have an applicant or was it more junk mail? Meisa was off at the cafe working, so it left him and Becky to check the incoming message.
"Go ahead, Captain," Becky said with a little salute. "You're in charge." He moved over to the panel and hit the button. To his surprise it wasn't junk, but a very short application and reference list. Becky got out of her seat and moved behind him, reading over his shoulder. "Ninomiya Kazunari, best pilot in the galaxy."
Sho's eyes narrowed. Maybe it was junk mail after all. He moved the cursor over to the delete button, but Becky gave him a smack.
"Oh come on, we haven't had anyone reply. You can at least interview this guy. I mean, if he's the best pilot in the galaxy, surely he'd be a good help around here."
Sho didn't know how Becky could find a silver lining in everything, but she managed to. Where Meisa was realistic, Becky was just on another planet altogether. He scrolled through the reference list. "Okay, you know ships and things, help me out here." He read over Ninomiya's list. "Pilot, The Gantz, Tora-class."
Becky smiled. "Smugglers."
Sho sighed. "Pilot, The Blue Light, Belt hopper."
Becky's smile widened. "Really good smugglers."
"I don't need to hire a criminal."
"How do you know he's a criminal? He was just the pilot," Becky said. "Maybe he was helping a friend."
He batted her away from him. "Helping a smuggler friend is still smuggling. Look, Becky, I don't need someone who might be wanted on three planets to fly my ship."
She yanked him out of the chair and sat down at the panel herself and started typing.
"What are you doing?" he asked as her fingers started flying over the keys.
"Something you as a potential employer should have done with me, you know," she said, gesturing to the screen. She'd somehow managed to hack into the Yamato Empire criminal database, and his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. Now who were the criminals around here? He watched her type in Ninomiya Kazunari's name - no results.
"So he's not in there," Sho muttered.
"I mean, he could still be a criminal, sure," Becky said, "but there's no warrants out for him on here, the Empire's not looking for him. He's clean as can be."
But Sho became even more irritated by the thought of this Ninomiya Kazunari when he got in touch with the captains of the Gantz and the Blue Light. The first captain had replied with "a good pilot but..." and then a laundry list of Ninomiya's offenses, ranging from not chipping in his fair share for food ("because he said he had a sensitive stomach") to baking the captain a chocolate cake to occupy him while he went and bedded half the female crew in some "crazy orgy." The Blue Light's captain claimed that Ninomiya had run off with his only daughter three years back, but he'd been the finest pilot he'd ever seen. Too bad he was morally bankrupt, the captain replied. An obvious smuggler thought Ninomiya Kazunari was morally bankrupt.
Sho relayed all this information to Meisa, who would have the final say on the hiring of the pilot since she held the purse strings. Sho was already horrified at the thought of some lecherous creep flying his ship around the system and was counting on Meisa to suggest they keep looking. But to his surprise, his first mate grinned.
"Let's bring Ninomiya for an interview."
--
They met Ninomiya in Arashi's kitchen. He, Meisa, and Becky sat on one side of their table, Ninomiya on the other. He was a year younger than Sho according to the pilot's license he'd pulled out of his pocket, but he looked closer to Meisa's age. The guy didn't actually look like some lothario, dressed as he was in a noisily colorful t-shirt and torn jeans. He seemed to have the Susanoo attitude toward his physical appearance - he was on the short and scrawny side, sitting hunched over at the table with his messy black hair mostly shoved underneath a bright yellow knitted beanie with an obnoxious pom-pom. Little wisps of hair stuck out from under the hat in greasy clumps.
Though his appearance was sloppy, his mind was not. Sho knew an intelligent man when he saw one, and Ninomiya's eyes were sharp, taking in the ship's interior with quick darting looks. Maybe this explained his ability to have seduced so many women on his previous ships - he really looked at people, he must have known exactly what to say to get his way.
And he did know what to say. Before even addressing Meisa or Sho, his potential employers, he turned on the charm for Becky. He leaned his elbow on the table, chin on his palm and stared at her for a solid minute while Becky brought him up to speed on the state of the ship and its current capabilities. He watched her so carefully that Sho found it rather unnerving.
When he did speak, he spoke in Becky's language - the unintelligible language of spaceships. He complimented Becky on getting such an old Hotaru model into shape again, saying that he'd never have been capable of it himself, going on and on about the complexity of this part or that part. And it was obvious that Becky appreciated the sentiments, spoken in the Susanoo native techie speak she couldn't really use with Sho and Meisa.
The mechanic was already sold on Ninomiya as pilot before the man turned to finally acknowledge him and Meisa. "Ninomiya-san," Meisa said calmly once their eyes met. "Question for you."
"You can call me Nino, everyone else does."
"Ninomiya-san," Meisa continued pointedly, ignoring him. "Have you flown a ship like this before?"
"Larger ones and smaller ones and plenty this size," he replied with a cocky smile. "I could fly this girl with my eyes shut."
Meisa got up, her chair scraping back against the floor. "Would you care to demonstrate then?"
"Whoa!" Sho protested, already way behind as Meisa led Nino out of the kitchen and then past the crew quarters to the cockpit at the front of the ship. "Hey wait!"
Becky tugged him along with a laugh. Wasn't anyone going to ask this guy about all the negatives against him? Were they going to let him test drive Arashi before making absolutely sure he wasn't a psychopath? Considering how Becky had just started smacking at the gravity drive with a wrench, they hadn't had the best crew interview experiences so far.
Meisa was standing beside the pilot's seat, and Nino was already flipping switches and looking at the various gauges on the control panel. Sho pulled his first mate aside. "What the hell are you doing?"
She smiled. "I'm not hiring a pilot unless I know he can fly."
"But we haven't asked him about..."
"Ah, Becky, we're all good to go, yes?" Nino asked.
"We are beautiful," Becky replied, and that's when the ship started to rumble.
Sho held on to one of the other seats in the cockpit. "Stop...stop what you're doing. I'm the captain here, and I didn't say you could fly my ship!"
Nino shook his head, flipping another set of switches. "But listen to her. Your ship loves me already."
Sho went to physically remove the snarky, skinny little bastard from the pilot's seat, but Meisa blocked his way. "What is wrong with you today, Kuroki?" he asked her.
"Ah," Nino was saying to himself as Sho felt the ship start to lift out of its safe, grounded place in the Depot dunes, "a hundred years old, but nobody would know it. Amazing. Really amazing!"
Sho and Meisa had a stare down while Becky ran back to the engine room to do one last double check. "Ninomiya, land the ship," Sho demanded.
"Ninomiya, fly the ship," Meisa countered before dropping her voice so Sho could barely hear it over the sound of the ship coming back to life. "You're the one who wanted to get the hell off this planet so badly."
"But he might...he might," Sho stammered. "He might..."
"Run away with her?" Nino called from the pilot's seat, holding the steering mechanism between his rather small hands. "Is that what you're thinking? That I'm going to steal your women and your ship, in that order?"
"They're not my women!" Sho cried.
Becky came running back in. "Who's your women?"
Meisa cocked her head. "Our dear captain is more concerned with Ninomiya-san's reputation than with his ability to fly the ship."
"I am not!" Sho said. "I just...I just...are we moving?!"
They were, and Nino let out a joyous whoop as they cleared the edge of the Sakura Sands Depot. After five years, the Hotaru-class castaway, re-christened 'Arashi,' was in flight.
Sho threw himself forward to the front of the cockpit glass. Already they were zooming over the desert sands, the twin suns shining overhead as Nino did a little showing off. With Becky cheering him on and Meisa looking downright smug, Nino took her down low through a canyon, maneuvering between the narrow walls of it with ease. Then they were up, higher and higher and higher until Sho had to stumble back and force himself into a seat as the dunes turned into nothing but a blur of yellow brown beneath them.
"Hey Becky," Nino cried out, "how's our grav situation? We clear to break atmo in this thing?"
She squeezed the back of the pilot's seat with her hands, green and purple-painted fingernails digging into the fabric in her glee. "We can break atmo so hard it'll be crying to its mama!"
Meisa chuckled. "That doesn't make any sense!"
Arashi soared higher and higher, up through the clouds without anything starting to shake or buckle or break away from her. And within a minute, Sho felt wetness on his cheeks. Tears, not that he wanted anyone to see. He wiped them away quickly as he got back to his feet, whole body shaking. The brown and the sand that characterized the last year on Susanoo were gone.
Before him, out the solid glass that Okada himself had inspected, was nothing but twinkling black. A hum arose all around him, the hum of the ship's gravity stabilizer, soon joined by the quieter whoosh of the air systems kicking in, keeping them breathing in the emptiness of space. Sho had only been in transport vessels before or the moon hopper his parents had owned. But now he was in his own ship, the ship he'd worked so hard for. And she was flying like a dream.
Nino turned Arashi around so they could take a glance down at Susanoo below them, massive enough to take up everything as far as the eye could see. Sho could see dots all over, other ships en route down to the planet or heading up to space just like them. He could see the swirls of cloud cover, the sparse dots of each random desert oasis in the seas of sand. Mountains jutting up so high when on the ground were nothing but hills from up here.
"Can we run some diagnostics?" Becky asked. "I mean, as long as we're up here?"
"Not a problem," Nino said, and the two mechanical geniuses got to work testing all of Arashi's systems, making sure their Net connection was up and running since they'd only been able to test it on the ground so far. Sho left the cockpit, Meisa behind him. He pulled her into his quarters and threw his arms around her.
"Whoa, I didn't think space got you so affectionate," she mumbled, completely freezing up at the sudden attention, and he let her go. Sho didn't think he'd actually ever hugged her before. No wonder she was so confused.
They'd made it. After all that work they'd made it. He and Meisa, back in space, ready to take on the damn galaxy. Together. "Sorry," he apologized, crossing his arms to keep from wanting to grab the pillow off his bed and hug that too. "Sorry, I'm just..."
"Happy?"
"Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, we're in space! And it looks like we have a pilot, if he'll accept our crappy salary." He laughed. "I can't believe you just let him fly the ship, no questions asked. When those captains said he was..."
Meisa gave him a playful shove. "You honestly think I'd fall for someone like that? You're kidding. Besides, Becky and I can look out for ourselves. If he comes within five feet of me with a twinkle in his eye, he'll soon be missing some teeth."
Sho nodded. "I know, I just...I just..."
"I appreciate your misguided but well-meaning attempts at shielding me from less than desirables, but really, you've got nothing to worry about." She headed back for the corridor. "He's definitely not my type!"
--
The first few months went without a hitch. Despite the things his former employers had said about him, Nino was actually a rather normal guy. He'd moved in to Arashi with far less than Becky had - only a guitar and a backpack to his name, and he'd settled into the crew cabin next to Sho's on the port side rather than on the starboard side of the ship where the girls were staying.
He was quiet when he wasn't teasing everyone, mostly spending time in his quarters when they weren't on jobs. He was apparently an active gamer on the Net, and he kept late hours but never made a lot of noise, not like Becky and her hundreds of Becky relatives.
Arashi had already started earning some money. They didn't have too many contacts yet, but Okada and Shiina-san had looked after them well. Thus far Arashi hadn't made too many off-world jumps, instead mostly ferrying goods back and forth across Susanoo. But jobs were jobs, and they busted their asses, all four of them, and Okada was talking around with his circle of friends, looking for longer jobs that might take them to other ports of call.
When things had finally settled, and they'd gotten into a good rhythm, Sho decided it was time to open Arashi up for passenger transport. It wasn't a luxury liner by any means, but lots of people on Susanoo couldn't afford luxury liners. They started out on some of the popular routes, made a few planet hops between Susanoo and Raijin.
With everyone's input, they listed one of the shuttles for long-term rental. Becky and Nino wrote out the technical specs while Sho and Meisa tried to determine an ideal full-time passenger. Arashi's shuttles couldn't go too far in space since the planets themselves were spread out, but they could easily make the trip between a single planet and its moons or anywhere on the planets themselves. The condition for the renter was that they could do business while the Arashi crew was working a job, and they could either stay docked for some time at their destination and await Arashi's eventual return or they could do business that coincided with Arashi's own timetable.
Where they expected to receive interest from traveling salesmen or religious missionary types who maintained such jumpy schedules, Sho hadn't expected the request that arrived from Omoikane. The writing was extremely formal, in sharp contrast to Becky and Nino's applications, and the person gave next to no information.
Arashi was requested to dock at R-Alpha, the largest station orbiting the planet Raijin, and the captain was to show the interested party the shuttle and Arashi's facilities. No mention of the person's occupation or status, not even a name was offered. But Nino smirked knowingly when he saw it.
"Omoikane," the pilot said. "Someone from Omoikane looking for constant transport, huh? I wonder..."
Omoikane, the fourth planet, was one of the wealthiest in the Yamato Empire, second only to Hachiman at the center of Imperial control. The planet was a paradise of green forests, lush valleys, and snow-capped mountains. It was renowned for its beauty and tranquility, and its most famous citizens were equally beautiful. The temple complexes that dotted the planet trained Companions.
"A Companion? Do you think it could really be a Companion?" Becky asked, reading through the message over and over again. "Oh how wonderful!"
Meisa seemed indifferent - a renter was a renter, and so long as their money was good, their job didn't matter. Nino was amused - maybe he was already imagining a few nights in the arms of the system's best trained bed mates. Sho...well, Sho wasn't sure what to think.
They arrived at R-Alpha, docking where the stationmaster directed them, and as much as the others wanted to meet their mysterious wannabe renter, Sho ordered the other three off Arashi to wander the station and pick up supplies as needed. The person had only requested the captain be present, after all, and Sho didn't need to go around offending him or her.
He'd dressed in his neatest clothes, a far cry from the luxuries he'd had when he was younger, but he was clean-shaven and decently put-together. At least Meisa had said so. After so long on Susanoo, it was almost odd to be wearing a jacket and slacks instead of denim or khaki. The appointed time came and went as Sho lingered outside of the ship in the docking bay. He paced, looking all around for any sign of the potential renter.
It was only when he turned to walk back inside Arashi after a solid twenty minutes of waiting that he heard a throat clear behind him. He turned, and that was when he saw his future renter for the very first time.
"That was the first test," the man told Sho as he approached, quiet as a mouse. Where the hell had he been hiding? "A test of your patience. Sorry for the trickery, but sometimes I run into a bit of...overtime. I wanted to ensure that you were someone who would be willing to wait for me."
Overtime, huh. The man was definitely a Companion. Of the people that Sho had met over the course of his life, nobody carried themselves like a Companion did, male or female. There was a confidence in their steps, as if every movement was calculated to lure someone's attention. He seemed close to Sho in age and had dark hair that perfectly complemented his navy blue kimono and the haori coat he wore over it. He had rather sharp features for someone in such a delicate profession, but his eyes were shrewd and his steps light as he approached and bowed. He was handsome in a way Sho had never really seen in another man before.
Sho inclined his head. "Sakurai Sho. This is Arashi."
"Matsumoto Jun."
Matsumoto eyed the ship first, and then Sho. It was almost like being stripped naked to be looked at so closely by someone in such a profession. Someone who was trained to bring his clients nothing but a happy, pleasurable experience. Sho looked away first, turning around to hit the button for the airlock. "If you'll follow me, please?"
Sho was conscious of his bumbling footsteps and Matsumoto's near silent ones as he led him first on a tour of the ship's interior. First the cockpit and a mention of Ninomiya, past the crew quarters and a mention of Meisa, the kitchen facilities that Matsumoto would share with them if he signed on. "Of course, you'd have your own washroom on the shuttle, so you wouldn't have to, ya know, take a bath with us."
Matsumoto raised his eyebrows at that but said nothing as Sho turned back around, immediately red in the face and nervous as hell. "I mean, what I...what I meant to say was you wouldn't have to share facilities with us is all."
"I see," Matsumoto replied.
Could this Companion tell what Sho was like? Could he read his mind? Well, of course Companions weren't mind readers, but they learned a lot about people and what made them tick. And the thought of Matsumoto reading him was unnerving. He briefly gestured at the engine room and mentioned Becky before heading down to the catwalks over the cargo bay.
The shuttles were docked to Arashi on either side of the cargo hold. He showed Matsumoto over to the port side shuttle, the one they'd cleaned up better for rental purposes. He scratched the back of his head. "So uh, this is it really. Washroom there, shower, toilet, sink. All running, recyclers fixed just a few months back." It was woefully empty, nothing but the same kind of steel flooring that ran throughout the ship and stark overhead lighting. He led Matsumoto to the small cockpit.
"I imagine you checked out all the specs in our advertisement," Sho said, gesturing at the switches that confused him to this day even though Nino had offered to teach him the basics. "So that probably means...you can fly her?"
Matsumoto nodded. "I can."
"So you uh..." Sho mumbled, "so as part of the arrangement you can uh, well, you can do whatever you want in here. If you've got a...if you're visiting with..."
"If I'm hosting a client? Is that what you mean to say, Captain Sakurai?" Matsumoto asked.
Sho was blushing again. Maybe he should have had the man meet with Meisa. She'd have kept a straight face at least. "Yeah. I mean, yes. So if you're hosting a client," he said, the words lingering on his tongue uncomfortably, "we can go do our job, you do yours, and then you can re-dock with Arashi and we're on to the next planet, next job, what have you."
"And your ship is just starting out? Do you work system-wide?"
"Not as of yet," Sho said. "Is that a problem for you?"
Matsumoto's eyes betrayed nothing. "A majority of my clients live on the inner planets. If you have any difficulties with passage through the Awaji Belt, I have contacts there. I can get you any clearance you need."
Sho wasn't terribly keen on visiting the heart of the Empire any time soon. Nor was he particularly interested in just how Matsumoto had gone about acquiring his contacts. "That's negotiable in future, but for now we've been focusing on the outer planets as we get started. Of course, Empire's always out here, right? No shortage there. Higher ups, diplomats, lonely lieutenants with shore leave here at the station..."
Matsumoto was staring at him now, looking slightly offended. Whether it was typical Omoikane snobbery or irritation because Sho had just implied that he was fond of sucking off the military brass for free passes, Sho was close to losing the only person who'd shown interest in Arashi thus far.
"I'm sorry, Matsumoto-san..."
The Companion approached, closer than he probably had to be, so close Sho could smell incense or some sort of woodsy cologne. He was maybe an inch or two taller than Sho, but he seemed much bigger. Maybe it was more Companion trickery. Or Sho was just hunched over a bit in his nervousness. "Some ground rules, if we do enter into this arrangement. The first, that you respect my privacy. This shuttle will be my home, and nobody can enter without my permission."
"Well, of course..."
"The second," Matsumoto continued on, ignoring Sho completely. Sho noticed two tiny moles on the man's face, one above his upper lip and one right on it. He wondered if his clients ever noticed them. "Whatever you may think of my profession, I am not here in an entertainment capacity for you or your crew. Don't presume that you can waltz in here and expect me to perform any of my services just because I rent from you."
Sho felt like he was turning purple. "I...I, I wouldn't..."
"And third. If I make an appointment with someone, I need assurances that I will be there for those appointments. I understand that you're taking what jobs you can right now, but I will not tolerate tardiness. I'll give you advanced notice of course, but with your promise that I won't have to cancel on a client or renege on my own promises."
Sho crossed his arms. Matsumoto didn't want to socialize with them, he assumed that the crew was going to pester him for freebies, and he didn't want Sho to make him late for any of his work. His precious work where he fucked or got fucked by the person who'd pay the right price. And Matsumoto was the one with the moral high ground here?
He held out his hand. "You're very correct. We are just starting out. And we take jobs where we can. Again, if that's a problem for you, then you're free to look elsewhere. Otherwise, you're welcome to rent from me."
Matsumoto nodded, and where Sho thought he'd have some sort of weak, limp handshake, it was strong. He kept their hands clasped, too. "Very well. All of my things are here at the station. Please have the shuttle thoroughly cleaned before I have my movers bring my furniture inside. I can be ready to depart within a day or two provided it all goes smoothly."
Sho was the first to pull his hand back and step away. Was Matsumoto trying to study him? Learn what made him tick in order to manipulate him later? People hired Companions to steal secrets from their enemies all the time - had someone sent Matsumoto to him for such a purpose?
"Ah, just one thing," Sho said, looking back at the man in his expensive clothes. "If you're a Companion from Omoikane, can't you just book passage on a luxury liner to go from job to job? Can't the clients just keep you on one of their estates? Why would you ship out with people like us?"
Matsumoto looked almost angry. "And that's the last time you get to ask me questions like that."
"Fine," Sho said, growing angry himself. "I'll go round up the crew, and we'll get things presentable for you and your movers."
Matsumoto bowed once again, and Sho headed out of the shuttle, unsure just what it was about Matsumoto Jun that bothered him so damn much.
--
Arashi left R-Alpha two days later, and Sho looked out at the stars as Nino piloted the ship away from the docking bay. Meisa was at his side, Becky fiddling away with things in the engine room. And Matsumoto Jun, Companion, was in the port side shuttle settling in.
It would be a new year soon, 3007. To think, 3006 had begun with him and Meisa still stuck on Susanoo in one room, going nowhere. They'd had no money, no friends, nothing but the bad memories of Arashi Valley reminding them that they'd chosen the losing side.
But now they had a different Arashi, a new Arashi. The ship was old, but she worked. She got them off Susanoo and into the stars.
Now they could go anywhere.