Chapter Text
Her clothes, her carriage, her accent, all showed Deep South white breeding and money. (...)
I’d never seen anyone I ever spoke before more affected than this little white college girl.
“What can I do?” she exclaimed. I told her, “Nothing.”
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X
JULIE
She was breathing. The cabin came into focus, narrow and rusty. Two doors on opposite walls, must be the exit and the head. She listened to the hum of the drive. Sounded like a big one, must be a serious boat.
Damn, the rescue must have taken a lot of burn.
Something didn’t quite add up though, and she had to close her eyes for a moment to stave off the anxiety. She tried to sit up. Feels like 0.5g. Comfortable, the burn of a ship that can spend a few days reaching cruising speed. There was a bag from her skiff on the floor, with some of her personal belongings. Good sign. No terminal, or any other electronics though. Not even the backup distress beacons, the one hidden in a button, and the one disguised as a toothbrush. Bad sign. Then again, an OPA crew would know what to look for, and it would confirm she was one of them, not just some random Earther somehow sending a distress call with an OPA signature attached. So maybe not a terrible sign.
She had set the wreck to ping its location to Ceres every 24 hours before she took the sedative, so best case scenario these guys left the data cores and the VDRs floating out there and Dawes will send someone to retrieve it. Unfortunately, Ceres was at a far approach from Saturn right now. It would take fucking ages. OK, maybe best case scenario is that they did pick up the data, but don’t know what to do with it and make a deal with Dawes to hand it over.
There was a water pouch stowed over the bed. Julie took a long swig from it. Got up, tried the door. Locked. The head was fine though. No graffiti or markings to indicate what faction this ship belongs to. They sent her an OPA-signed message that they were on the way, and included a flight path with no ship name. She took a leap of faith and let them know she would be taking a sedative to reduce air consumption and sent over the control codes. Not that she would have survived otherwise, so even if this doesn’t go well it’s borrowed time.
Finally, the door buzzed and a grey-haired tattooed Belter walked through with a bowl of food. He unfolded down a table and a seat from the wall and set the food down. He sat on the seat, the cabin was small enough that she could eat sitting on the bed.
“You eat kibble, kid?” Good sign.
“Soyá, taki.” She smiled and sat up.
He winced. “Word of advice. Don’t try this with the captain.” Bad sign.
“Understood. Thank you. And yes, I do.” She knew it wasn’t because her Belta was bad. It wasn’t bad. He was telling her to stay in her lane.
“What’s your name?”
“Lana. Thanks for the pickup. I was lucky you were there.”
“I’m Cyn. This far out having a ship within rescue range is rare, let alone one that will pick up the phone. Dawes trying to get you killed out there?” When she raised her eyebrows, he continued. “You’re with them, that’s obvious. Skiff is out of Ceres, and a few hours into our route to you, the fool himself popped up on the screen trying to bargain for you. But even if he didn’t, not many factions would take an Earther. Not even one who’s clearly a good pilot.” OK, so they looked at the VDR.
Hope they weren’t dumb enough to brick the data cores.
Dawes was already bargaining. It could mean he thought she needed the extra protection with these guys. She hoped he didn’t let on too much, but she had no way to tell the man to play it cool. “What... faction are you?”
“Answer for answer, kid. What was your mission?”
They saw the nav data already, but maybe only the box from her skiff, and not the one from the shuttle from Phoebe.
“Retrieval. It went wrong.”
“Obviously. That’s not much of an answer.” He picked up the dirty bowl. “Someone other than me will talk to you about that. You need anything else?”
“I... could use a toothbrush.”
That made him chuckle. “I’ll make sure you get one that’s just a toothbrush.”
“So... are you the good cop then?” She meant it as a joke. The look he gave her from the door told her it wasn’t a joke.
***
Cyn had locked the door behind him. She didn’t have much to do, so she tried to occupy herself by enjoying the 0.5g. It was probably her favourite burn. Made for the most satisfying hand stands – not trivial, but not difficult to hold for a long time either. When she finally got dizzy, she flipped upright and braced herself on the wall to let her head stop spinning. That’s when the door clicked open behind her, and a tall Belter shadow flicked on the wall, then moved lower as the visitor sat down on the chair. She steadied herself and turned around to face him.
No. Fuck no.
Breathe. Fucking breathe.
If this had been a Black Sky or Golden Bough ship, they might kill her for being an Inner if they got drunk. But more likely, they would take a ransom from Dawes. She might not enjoy the trip with them, but it was better than a coin toss that she’d survive it, somewhat.
They might even hand over the data cores, if the money was good enough. She could have dug into her backup funds, and the money would, in fact, have been good enough.
But instead, she was staring at Marco Inaros, who was watching her face cycle through realizations. She tried to think through the things she’s heard about him, under the eye rolls and snickers of the Ceres crew.
That his faction idolized him like a fucking cult. That he’s never met a gun he didn’t want to fire at an Inner. That he was responsible for major terrorist attacks on Inner infrastructure, ones that took hundreds of lives, but nothing was ever proven. None of it sounded any good at all, in her current position.
She sat down on the bed. She felt small. Even standing up, her face was almost level with Inaros, who was lounging on the fold-out seat. The height difference between them felt meaningful, like the fact that he didn’t have to even try to look down on her proved a point. Her heart was racing out of her chest, making her use more oxygen, Earther lungs filling up with a greed his own didn’t have. Julie was suddenly very self conscious of everything that set her apart from Belters.
She thought back to Cyn’s advice not to speak creole to the captain. Yeah, no shit. The idea was so absurd now, that she let out a laugh.
“Sorry. Just things clicking into place.”
He nodded. After a while, she broke the silence. “I hear you got a bargain offer for me.”
“A low ball. An insult to you, really. I should demand a ransom from your father instead, could fetch enough to change things around here forever.”
She felt a cold shiver. Is he more or less likely to kill me if he knows that?
Marco’s voice cut through the silence again. “Why didn’t Dawes do that? Is your little redemption journey more important than thousands of Belter lives that kind of money could change?”
No, of course it isn’t. Not until the discovery on Phoebe, and the current mission, certainly. Maybe she should have let herself be ransomed to her father, that’s how she could actually do the most good for the Belt. If she was a better person, she’d suggest it herself. But she wasn’t a better person, apparently. Inaros nodded. Wow, her poker face really wasn’t working.
“Is that what you’re going to do with me?” Her father would set a dozen traps for anyone who tried to exchange her for money, but with her insight into his tactics, maybe... wait, should she be helping Marco fucking Inaros blackmail her family? So he can what, spend the money on warships and missiles? No, definitely not. Well... probably not. Get it together, Julie.
“You tried to intercept a shuttle from Phoebe Station, an R&D facility owned by your father. When it self-destructed and damaged your skiff, you risked your life to retrieve the data cores from it. Shouldn’t have made it out, really, but you were ready to stash it in the skiff wreck and let others come get it off your corpse I we hadn’t picked up the call. So tell me, what research data is worth Juliette Andromeda Mao’s life?”
“The kind that shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands, obviously.”
“You were taking it to an idiot who would hand it back over to the corporate slavers for a pinky promise.” The snicker told her that was supposed to sting but she knew a thing or two about corporate slavers, actually. And maybe he had a point about Dawes, too. “The old fool is a sucker for an Inyalowda redemption story, you’re not an exception. He’s done some unbelievably stupid things for that.”
“You’re not wrong. Fred Johnson should have died a painful death for every life he took on Anderson Station, twice for the children. And instead Dawes gave him a hug and a shipyard.”
That got a reaction. Something shifted in Inaros, like his eyes actually focused on her and his face turned from stone to flesh. Score. You’re paying attention now.
Julie relaxed a little. She was Julie Mao, and she had many cards to play. These stakes were deadly, but the game itself was familiar.
And as she relaxed, she finally let herself take in the man in front of her. Julie, unfortunately, had a type. And right now it seemed like every cocky, rage-filled Belter boy she ever had angry-fuck her had been just a poor imitation of the real thing. The real thing smelled of sweat and ozone, and, fucking hell, he looked like a god. The real thing filled her with dread, and excitement, and somehow... hope?
Hope that maybe the worst people she knows don’t have a monopoly on violence.
Her eyes slid down his body before she caught herself. OK that’s fucking embarrassing. She really needed to get it together.
“I should give you some privacy so you can get that out of your system.” Wow. Really? Was that him not taking the bait to flirt, or taking it but asserting control? Was he telling her to fuck off, or to... do what he implied? Fine, maybe it wasn’t the familiar game, exactly. And she’d fired the opening shot too soon, and without meaning to do it.
Maybe she’s out of her depth here. What if she’s just been handing over the cards, and all she got in return was that maybe, maybe, he saw her as a person now? Which, come to think of it, was important.
He stood up to leave. Bad sign.
“Captain.” She straightened up. He turned in the door. “I’m guessing you’re keeping me confined.”
“Yes.”
“Can I get an offline reader? To have something to do?”
He leaned his back against the door frame and waited. He wants something in return. Alright, he can get something in return.
“The Phoebe data shards brick when you connect them to power, unless you mechanically set the first row of transistors to a specific combination of logic gates. So don’t connect them to power.”
“That costs you nothing, you don’t want those shards bricked.”
“Neither do you.”
“What’s the combination?”
She shook her head. He threw a toothbrush at her. “You can have a reader when you give me the combination.” He stepped out into the corridor. “You’ll just have to find something to think about when you’re alone.”
And just before the door closed, he winked. And Julie closed her eyes in relief.