Bounty

• 3 •

“Jesus, Scarlett, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Are they gone?”

“Yes, they’re gone. They’re out there looking for you. What’re you doing here?”

I take a step toward her, and the blaster stiffens in her hand. She looks me up and down and smirks at my attire. The wounds across my body don’t seem to faze her. She’s seen me in worse condition than this. And in fewer clothes.

“What am I doing here?” she asks. “Don’t be dense. I came to find you.”

“Why? How? And you do realize you brought the badass brigade with you, right?” I nod my head toward the portholes. Scarlett doesn’t glance away from me. Instead, she shrugs.

“I needed a ride,” she says.

That’s when it hits me how she got here. She must’ve stowed away on one of their ships, then probably tipped them off that she was here. I reckon she had to’ve been on one of the first two ships, and got out when we were in Vlad’s cockpit. I’d wager O’Shea brought her here. Vlad’s ship was too neat for hiding.

“Nice blaster,” I say, gesturing with my free hand. “I thought we were friends.”

I should mention here that I really don’t like guns pointed at my head. Not unless I’m the one doing the pointing.

“So you’re working for NASA,” Scarlett says, as if this answers my question. “Why?”

I let out a sigh. Scarlett never could stand any government agency. Doesn’t matter what they do, they aren’t to be trusted.

“I needed a job,” I say.

“Tell me why you’re working for NASA,” Scarlett insists.

“Money,” I say. “Pension. Job. Dinero.”

She raises the blaster. Her voice as well. “Why are you working for NASA?”

I scratch one of the bandages on my arm. They say the itch is a sign of healing. I’ve been healing for a long damn time.

“I needed to be alone,” I whisper.

The blaster wavers. I try to remember the last time I saw Scarlett. In a trench on Gturn, I think. Or one of its moons. A lot of those trenches looked the same.

The blaster lowers a little. She believes me. She should. I told her the truth. I always do, eventually.

“Now please tell me what you’re doing here,” I say. “How’d you find me?”

Scarlett points the blaster toward one of the portholes. I turn to see the sparkle of debris out there like a billion new stars. And it makes sense. Sometimes bad things really do come in clusters, because one leads to the other. I think about the rock, which I wouldn’t have found were it not for the wreck. I think about the wreck I am, which Scarlett wouldn’t have found without the accident.

“NASA has to file a report with the Navy when there’s a wreck like that,” she says. “We’ve been looking for you for a long time. Your name finally popped up.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been looking to not be found.” I turn back to her. “Can you put the blaster away? Please? I’m not a government stooge.”

“If you’re working for their pension, you’re their stooge.”

She says this, but the blaster goes away, back in her holster. In the porthole behind her, I see the flashing lights from one of the ships. “Shit,” I say. “I’ve got to transmit some stuff.”

The blaster comes right back out, but I ignore her. She isn’t here to shoot me. I start a wireless handshake with the three ships and then begin transmitting the scan logs and radio exchanges to the black ship first. I put in a five-minute delay to transmit to O’Shea, and a twenty-minute delay for Vlad. I message Vlad privately and warn him of bandwidth issues. Scarlett watches me the entire time. The procedure takes me longer than usual using one hand. Only now does she show some concern for my physical state.

“Still beating yourself up, huh?”

“Ha,” I say. “Grav panel issues.”

She snorts like she doesn’t believe me. I fish the bounty flyer out of my waistband and hold it out it to her. “Fifty million creds,” I point out.

Scarlett laughs and waves it away. “I got a copy. And I’m worth more than that. You’re worth more than that.”

“I don’t want any part of this.”

“You think you get to choose?” Scarlett laughs. And now I can’t remember if I liked her or hated her back in the day. It was my first tour on the ground. I’ve blocked a lot of that out.

She laughs some more and shakes her head. “You don’t want any part of this. Tell your parents that. The day they screwed in the back seat of some car in Kentucky, they put you here. Right here.” She aims the blaster at the floor, like she’s indicating the beacon.

I watch as one of the ships outside peels away toward the asteroid field.

“Tennessee,” I say, correcting her.

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, well, I think I do have a choice. I came out here to get away from the war—”

“News flash,” Scarlett says, cutting me off. “The war’s coming to you, Bub. You’re on the front lines.”

“This is not the front lines,” I say. She knows this isn’t the front lines. I don’t care what my dreams tell me, what the shakes mean, the things I see and hear when I’m alone. The war isn’t here. It can’t be. This is a different war on my beacon, between just me and my demons.

“Every square inch of this galaxy is a front line,” Scarlett says. “It’s just a matter of when. But it doesn’t have to be like that—”

Not this. I think I remember now that I mostly didn’t like Scarlett. It’s the narrow eyes. The way they think they see something that isn’t there. Conspiratorial eyes. But she stands up and moves like a cat across the module and stands close enough to me that I can smell how clean she is, this little pocket of freshness in the dank and dark, and I want to kiss her. I want to grab something beautiful and hold it and weep and smother it with affection so that maybe it won’t ever leave me. And that’s when I remember that I didn’t like Scarlett Mulhenry at all. And I didn’t hate her either. I think I loved her.

“Why are you here?” I ask, and I feel like I have to shout it, but it comes out a whisper, like my nightmare voice.

“I want you to end this war,” Scarlett says.

Her eyes widen for a moment.

I can see in them.

I can see that she’s dead serious.