The Defiant
Chapter Fourteen

The eight of us met up back aboard the Defiant at the scheduled time. Four had installed the new power cell, and the lights and heat were back up.

Seven and I were not the only ones who had bought things at the station. Three had gotten some clothes before she’d been arrested. Six was turning a small metal sculpture over and over in his hands. I couldn’t see what it was, but the light glinted off its surface, and I could see that it was golden, and highly reflective, like glass.

“I trust you all had an uneventful trip?” Four asked from where she stood at the head of the table in the galley.

“Three and Six didn’t. They got arrested,” Two tattled.

“Yeah—Wait, how’d you know that?” I said.

“I was at a booth by the bar and I saw the whole fight.”

“You guys got in a bar fight?” Five said incredulously. “Bitchin’.”

“No! You guys were supposed to stay below the radar! Bar fights and getting arrested are the opposite of that!” Four said, glaring at Five, who grinned.

“Yeah, yeah. We’ve already gotten the lecture from One,” Three said, rolling her eyes.

“Clearly that wasn’t enough. You two are going to be spending the rest of the time we’re docked at the station helping me fix the engines.”

“What? No way! This is the only time away from you people I’ll get for a whole month!” Three cried. Six looked mutinous.

“You should have thought of that before you got yourself arrested.”

“That guy totally disrespected me. What was I supposed to do?”

“I’m sure there was more than one way to handle the situation. Besides, with two assistants, I can probably get the repairs done in half the time!” Four said, almost gleefully.

“Listen, girly, you cannot ground me like a child!” Three growled.

“If you don’t want to be treated like a child, don’t act like one!” Four growled, joyful verve dissipating. Spots of bright red burned high on her cheeks.

“I’m sure you know a lot about acting like a child, don’t you?” Three raised an eyebrow and stood up.

“Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I won’t fight you.” Four cracked her knuckles, which probably would have looked menacing if she’d come up to any higher than Three’s shoulder.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Seven said nervously, placing a calming hand on Four’s shoulder.

“Three, I realize you think you were justified in your actions, and I don’t know exactly what happened, but you did call attention to yourself and Six when we were supposed to be keeping a low profile. I think you working on the engines with Six is a decent punishment, and it also gets us out of here quicker,” I said in my most reasonable voice.

“Whatever, Captain.” Rolling her eyes again, Three flounced out of the galley.

“What are we going to do about her?” Four asked grumpily into the silence that followed Three’s exit.

“Nothing. The Aerzhu obviously included her on the ship for some reason, so we have to deal with her,” Eight said.

“The who?” Five asked.

“The Aerzhu. The organization Imelda said she worked for. The one who kidnapped us and forced us to go through this entire mission? Am I the only one who pays attention?”

“No. Some of us have had other important things to worry about. You know, like making sure we don’t drift helplessly in space until the end of time,” Four retorted, still incensed from her argument with Three.

“Sit down, Four,” Seven told her, not unkindly.

Four glared, but I looked at her beseechingly until she finally sat down, skinny arms crossed over her chest.

“Maybe we should try to gather some information about the Aerzhu while we’re on base,” Five suggested.

“Good idea. We should get an idea of what we’re up against,” I said. Five beamed proudly. “Speaking of the station, with Six and Three working with you, how long will it take to finish the repairs?”

“A day or two. I was probably going to have to have Six help me anyway. There’s often heavy lifting involved with these engines, and I doubt I’m strong enough to do most of it,” she said, surveying her thin limbs.

“Great. We’ll at least save a day. I’m not sure about you guys, but I’m betting we’ll get into some more trouble later on, and we’ll be glad we saved this time,” I said.

“What makes you say that? We’ve had simply fantastic luck so far,” Four said. “I’m going to go work on the engines. The faster I get done, the faster we get out of here. C’mon, Six.”

“Are you going to get Three?” I asked.

“No way. You talk to her.” At my glare, she added, “What? If I went to go talk to her, someone would leave with broken bones.”

I couldn’t argue with that, and she and Six left.

“You want me to go talk to Three?” Five asked, standing up and wincing, raising a hand to his bandaged chest.

“No, you go lay down and rest. I’ll talk to her. I’m captain, after all,” I said, grimacing at both my undeserved title and the prospect of talking to Three alone. Again.

I was going to have to have a serious chat with Four about offending people.

The remainder of the crew dispersed, and I took the lift down to Deck Three, where I buzzed Three’s door, the one right next to my own quarters.

“What do you want?” Three’s annoyed voice came through the speaker.

“Can we talk?”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

She sighed loud enough for me to hear from outside, then unlocked the door.

“Why do you always come and clean up everyone else’s messes?” She asked from the bed, where she sat, brushing her hair.

“I’m the captain.”

“Sure, but why do you—Nevermind. What are you here for?”

“Uh—About the argument you had with Four?” I said, surprised.

“You call that an argument?” she laughed. “That’s just how Four and I communicate.”

“Four looked like she was about to hit you.”

“Have you met Four? She looks like that all the time.”

“Yeah, she’s a bit hostile.”

“A bit. I was just kind of mad that I got in trouble in the first place, anyway. The bar fight was hardly my fault. Some asshole invaded my personal space, so I punched him. Then his buddies got all riled up, and Six stepped in to protect me. Totally self-defense.”

“And what were you doing in a bar in the first place? I doubt you’re eighteen, let alone twenty-one.”

Three turned pink.

“Thought so. Listen, I’m just trying to make sure this trip goes as smoothly as possible, and that means making sure none of you kill each other en route.”

“With Four and I on board, that may be harder than you’d expected.”

“I’m starting to realize that.”

“But why do you care so much?”

“I don’t really know. I guess I’ve just already started to think of you all as my crew. As my friends. It’s normal to want your friends to get along, right?”

“Probably. You think of us as your friends?”

I nodded earnestly.

Three’s mouth twisted. “All right, you’ve got to get out of here. Way too much sappy girl time today.”

I stood up and left, but I was sure I caught a quick smile on Three’s face before the door closed.

The day after Three and Six’s grounding, the eight of us met up again in the galley after being commed by Five.

“So I was talking to some chick in the bar,” Five said. Eight winced. I didn’t blame her. Five could be a bit crude. “And I asked her about the Aerzhu. Guess what? She knew all about them.” He paused, looking around at us dramatically.

“Get on with it,” Three grumbled.

“You guys all know the Sedha, right?”

“Like that juggler on the station?” Two asked.

“Yeah. Anyway, the Aerzhu are a rebel organization. Some of the Sedha feel the humans treat them unfairly. The Aerzhu’s goal is to grant equal rights to the Sedha.”

“So, the Aerzhu are… the good guys?” I said disbelievingly.

“Depends on who you ask. And I bet the passenger we’re being sent to transport back to Earth is their leader, something Halliday. Forget his first name. He’s been MIA for several months, which is suspicious, since the Human-Sedha Century Celebration is at the end of this year, and the Aerzhu are expected to make a demonstration.”

“The what?”

“Human-Sedha Century Celebration. The one-hundredth anniversary of our first contact with them. We’re throwing a huge party on Earth,” Five explained.

“So we’re rescuing the leader of an organization sworn to bring equality to a downtrodden people?” Eight summarised.

“But if the Aerzhu are so good, why did they kidnap us to do their mission? Surely they have plenty of allies willing to help them out with the Halliday situation,” Seven pointed out.

“I’m sure they have their reasons,” Eight said sanctimoniously, and because there was nothing more to say, we left the galley.

The next two days passed peacefully enough, mostly because the crew was never in the same place at the same time.

We all went back to the market several times. I bought enough books to keep myself busy for the trip, and some comfortable clothes to use as pajamas. Four released Three and Six from their forced repairs halfway through the second day, after they’d finished fixing the engines. We’d decided to stay a few more hours after the repairs were done so Four could run diagnostics and make sure the D17s were in working order again.

Three and Seven spent the second half of the last day shopping, returning just ten minutes before our departure time with their arms full of parcels and bags of clothes. Seven had expressed displeasure with the wardrobe the Aerzhu had provided us, which mainly consisted of utilitarian clothing in shades of dark blue and black. I didn’t mind, but Seven and Three were outraged, even going so far as to drag Eight and I along to try things on, which neither of us enjoyed.

I couldn’t figure Eight out. She was certainly intelligent, and full of surprises, as her unexpected piloting ability had proved, but she spent most of her time alone and rarely spoke even when the crew was all together. She was generally cordial, if not quite warm, but had an occasional biting sense of humor. I guessed she was just the type of person who kept mostly to herself. Besides, our physical similarity no doubt unnerved her, not knowing anything about our clearly shared past, so I left her alone, hoping that once she found some sort of mental calm, she would seek me out. It baffled me, though. She didn’t even seem curious as to how our pasts were connected.

I couldn’t have been more different. A writhing mass of questions seethed around me, and the most frustrating thing was that I had no information to answer them. Or if I did know the answers, I had been coerced into forgetting them.

Why us eight? Out of everyone in the world, why had they chosen us? And what was the true purpose of this mission? Surely if the only thing they really needed was for a person to be transported, they could just break in and do it themselves. Why me? And who was I before all this?

I had no means of answering these questions, and after a few days of wild speculation and extreme frustration, I did my best to cast them from my mind.

Unfortunately, my other woes could not be gotten rid of by simply distracting myself.

A few days after we’d made it through Kryllian space, we departed the station and continued on our way forward.