If it’s your first time here, check out the Table of Contents. You’ll probably want to start with the Prologue.
20: Exit Strategy
Elena wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, floating. There’s no pain. Shouldn’t she be in pain? She feels far away. People are looking at her. As the world comes into focus, she recognizes the crew of the Charon. They’re all watching her.
“Where am I?”
Her voice sounds weak to her own ears, raspy.
“You’re on the Charon,” says Jaxon.
She turns to look at the medic. Terek is watching her with appraising eyes, absentmindedly stroking his thick beard.
“How bad am I, Doc?” she asks him.
“You’ll live,” replies the older man. “I took the bullet out of you, patched things up in there.”
Her insides still feel strange, but there’s no pain to speak of. She realizes she’s likely drugged up.
“You were in bad shape. Almost lost you.”
She got shot. Once in the stomach, with a kinetic. Twice with energy weapons. Her eye, her hand. She tries wiggling her right hand’s fingers under the covers. She can’t.
“What about … the rest?”
“Right hand is gone, I’m sorry. We’ll get you a synthetic one when we make it to Horizon Station.”
Why are they going to Horizon Station? Doesn’t matter right now.
“And my eye?”
“No eye left to speak of. And that one is going to be trickier. You have NSRS, can’t interface with a standard prosthetic. You’ll need a custom made one. Maybe on Nova Prime, most likely out of the sector. And you probably can’t afford it.”
She probably can’t afford it. She takes her left hand from under the covers, touches her face. She’s wearing an eye patch. She feels around, outlining its shape.
“And you’ll need a new graft, but that we can do as soon as we reach the station.”
Graft gone too. She’s locked out of the digital. But she is alive.
“Thanks, Doc! I guess I owe you my life.”
He waves this away. She looks at the rest of them.
“Thanks to all of you! How did you get me out of there?”
Last thing she remembers is stumbling on a walkway. Going inside an empty unit. Aurelia. Darius. She is fuzzy, can’t quite tell which of the memories are real.
“You sent us an urgent message. Pickup details. Heads-up that you’re hurt.” This from Kaela, the talkative digital specialist.
“We came down as fast as we could,” continues Jaxon. “Had to navigate through a whole maze.”
“But,” adds Kaela, “the path you plotted was spot-on. No idea how you did it. We went around all security, never had anyone ask us anything.”
“Clean in and out,” adds Jaxon.
She’s trying to remember how she did that but draws a blank. She only recalls being lost. Utterly lost. And isn’t her graft damaged?
“Let her rest,” the doctor tells the others. “We’ll talk more later.”
She drinks some water. It’s awkward to do it with her left hand. She rests.
Some time later, Jaxon is by her side.
“What mess did you get yourself into down there, Vice President?” he asks, putting an emphasis on “Vice President” while raising an eyebrow. It’s obvious she’s not corporate.
She tells him her story in broad strokes. Her cover didn’t do her any good, and she owes him this much. The crew of the Charon saved her life. She tells him about Spark, about Doctor Linton, about her impossible, failed mission.
“So, you’re ex-military too. What branch were you in?” asks Jaxon.
“Does it matter?”
He ignores her question, continues: “I was a terminal lance. Got shipped around the sector a bunch, even outside a couple of times. Seen combat just once, during the Forge kerfuffle back in the day.”
“Oh,” Elena says. What are the odds? she wonders. Another Forge veteran. It makes sense though, back then Forge was the only hot zone, and if Jaxon was serving in-sector, chances were he got sent there.
“‘Oh’ what?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.
“I was there too.”
“Small world. I was with 2nd Platoon, Foxtrot Company, 1/4. The Mudlarks. You?”
“Door Knockers,” she volunteers.
Jaxon whistles. “Vanguard, wow. I knew you were one tough lady, after surviving the beating on Forge, but that’s next level.” He grins. She shrugs, smiles—his attitude is truly infectious.
They spend some time talking about Forge. Then move on to talk about other things. Jaxon asks questions. They have enough time to talk. She answers them.
“Why are we going to Horizon Station?” Elena asks eventually.
“We’re fleeing to Horizon Station.” He smiles at that. “Elena, your stunt down there was costly. We came back up with you fine, but they tagged our ship right away.”
He doesn’t seem too upset with this, tells it like a good sport.
“Ghost got us out of there, but you’ve seen the fleet around Forge.”
She did. Countless ships. Warships.
“The only reason we got out is our pilot is a fucking prodigy. Our transponder is useless though. Abyssal made sure of that. It’s on a watch list now.”
She tries to connect the dots. Why Horizon Station? The station wasn’t yet operational during her deployment. Her brief called it out as an outpost from which Ingram was planning to launch further exploration missions. Sector 36 expansion. Exploration was put on hold due to the Tauran War, and the station became a refuge for the most desperate: people who abandoned any hope of translating out, hoping against hope to escape the next conflict by simply being farthest away from it.
She tries to get online, pull up more details, realizes she can’t. Her graft is not working.
“How bad is Horizon Station?”
She asks him since she can’t ask the aether.
“It’s bad. Overcrowded.”
She nods, remembers the Gateway Ring.
“No transponder issues there?”
“It’s the Wild West. Nobody cares who you are there.”
She’s not looking forward to more chaos. She is exhausted.
“That’s where we can get a new transponder. The black market is booming on the station. Once we sort that out, we’re good to go anywhere.”
Elena considers this. Nova Prime. Her ticket out of here.
“A bunch of loonies on Horizon are working on an ark project,” Jaxon continues. “They want to cryofreeze people, launch them out of the sector to escape.”
“Loonies?” All things considered, it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea to her. If the station is overcrowded, if Ingram and Abyssal are monopolizing the jump gate, she could see how someone would attempt a long trip under cryo. Whatever it takes to get out of Sector 36. She can empathize with that.
“A small station like Horizon doesn’t have the capabilities to build a deep space ship,” Jaxon answers her. “It’s a pipe dream. More likely a scam.”
Most likely a scam. There’s always someone profiting.
She’s in a clean bed inside what looks to her like a makeshift med bay. As far as she can tell, flexi-walls were moved around the ship’s cargo hold to define a slightly larger space and Terek produced medical equipment to monitor her. He comes in and checks up on her from time to time. Others spend time with her too. They talk, learn more about each other.
The doctor came from out of sector, as an Abyssal citizen. The company shipped him over to Forge, where he worked on injured miners.
“Imagine that,” he tells her. “I hated the hives. You’ve seen them.”
She did. More than enough to loathe them herself. Terek only knows about her recent misadventures there, doesn’t know about the months she spent dropping with the Door Knockers. Unless Jaxon told him. She nods knowingly. He continues.
“I’ve seen all sorts of gruesome accidents there. The mines are not safe. Not at all, regardless of what Abyssal is advertising.”
He pauses here, the mere mention of Abyssal making him frown profusely.
“When my tour was over, I didn’t want to reenlist. You know what corporate did?”
Elena shakes her head.
“They withheld my medical license. Some lawyer cited the fine print in my employment contract. What was I supposed to do? Who can afford to go to trial against a mega-corp?”
Nobody.
“But I couldn’t spend one more day in the mines—not one more hour. I left. Met Jaxon on the ring. He was kind enough to take my services. A now unlicensed doctor.”
Practicing illegally. Because of the small print in his Abyssal employment contract. She is still on a pretty high dose of the good stuff, otherwise she would get angry at the injustice. The only feeling she can muster is disgust.
“Sorry, Doc.”
He saved her life—license or no license.
“Let me see if there’s anything I can do for you. I have a contact at the Obsidian branch office on Nova Prime. I’ll talk to him.”
He looks at her, hopeful. She instantly regrets saying this, she has no idea what her contact can and cannot do, nor how much he is willing to help an unlicensed doctor-turned-smuggler.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” she adds.
Terek Nassar sighs.
Unlike the others, Rynn the Ghost never visits her alone, they don’t chat. She learns more details about him from Kaela, who is happy to overshare.
“He was always on the wrong side of the law,” Kaela whispers. “He used to run infiltration jobs for a crime syndicate. Got on their bad side and ended up on the Charon.”
Elena sees him exactly twice during the trip. The first time, he comes in accompanying Jaxon. He attempts a vague apology for his absence: “Sorry, pilot duties.”
It very much sounds like a poor excuse to her. Not much piloting to do once at FTL. It’s a long wait for everyone, pilot or not.
The other time she sees him, he comes in with Kaela.
“I heard,” Elena says, just to get a reaction, “that you ran afoul of a crime syndicate.”
Kaela turns red. Rynn is nonplussed.
“Long story,” is his reply, and he leaves it at that.
After he leaves, Kaela assures her it’s nothing personal.
“Rynn is Rynn. Always guarded.”
“One heck of a pilot though, or so I heard.”
“Indeed. But don’t tell him you learned about his past from me.”
Kaela lived in Sector 36 as long as she can remember, grew up on Nova Prime. She got kicked out of school. She hacked the school’s system, tweaked her grades (she hated history), and almost got away with it.
“A classmate ratted me out! My parents were so mad!”
She had skills back then and is even better now. After being kicked out, she made a little bit of money pen-testing.
“There’s always a market for digital specialists,” she says, “but doesn’t always pay that well.”
She made a lot more money exfiling corporate secrets.
“But that’s risky business, can easily get you killed. Or worse. I heard many stories of digital specialists getting their hands on hush-hush stuff then promptly disappearing.”
Elena believes her.
“I prefer the steady job here.” Keeping a smuggling ship safe during operations is a full-time job. “It must be hard being locked out of the digital,” Kaela muses.
“Good thing I have you to keep me company,” Elena replies. But it is, indeed, difficult. She is stranded on dry land, next to the ocean of information. With her NSRS and graft she was never able to embed, but being forced offline like this is torturous.
“Sorry I caused you so much trouble,” she tells Jaxon.
“Oh, don’t worry about it.” He looks embarrassed now. “You really overpaid us for giving you that ride.”
“What about the transponder?”
“As I said, we’re getting another one at Horizon. Maybe we’ll all be Obsidian execs when we take off from there.” He winks at her.
She laughs. VP of Acquisitions, Obsidian Holdings.
“Sorry, I was undercover. A lot of good that did me.”
He doesn’t press her for details, she already told her story. They sit in silence for a while.
“Once you get your transponder, can you take me to Nova Prime?”
“What’s on Nova Prime?”
“I have a contact there, supposed to find me and Doctor Linton a quick way to translate out.”
“Friends in high places?”
Jaxon must know the flow of jump gate traffic. Almost nobody is translating out. Just more warships coming in.
“You can say that. A ticket out of here. Want to come with?” She has no idea why she asked him that. She doubts it’s even possible. She shot her mouth off, just like offering to help Terek. She never met her Obisdian contact and has no clue how much leverage he has. Or how willing he is to listen to her.
Jaxon seems to seriously consider it for a moment.
“Might be a smart move,” he says, “but business is finally booming.”
The chaos really helped his small “independent logistics” operation. She smiles at that.
“We’ll take you to Nova Prime, Elena. We’ll take you wherever you need to get to be safe.”
She is deeply grateful. Her relationship with the Charon crew started with her contracting them for a ride, but it grew into something else. They’re good people.
The first time she sees her reflection in a mirror she is appalled. The left side of her face is charred, from forehead to cheek, and she doesn’t want to know what lies underneath the eye patch.
She will have to learn to live with a limited field of vision, she thinks as she is slowly walking around the room, the pain in her stomach flaring up unless she takes slow, small steps. She finds her graft on a tray next to her bed. Terek removed it once he concluded it was beyond repair. It’s sitting there, half-melted, metal drooping. VoidTech Tactical Edition. Melted instantly as soon as the energy weapon touched it.
She is struggling to navigate the world without a right hand. The missing limb is severely limiting what she can do. But, according to the medic, that will get fixed soon. A prosthetic won’t be as good as the real thing but should be close enough.
She sits back on her bed. She is very much done with this whole thing. As soon as she gets a new graft, she’s going to update her contact on Nova Prime, head there to meet him, and have him get her out of this hellhole. They were waiting for her, in Doctor Linton’s room. They got him and almost got her. Sitrep: mission failed.
It takes ten days for the Charon to get from Forge to Horizon Station. After a few days of staying in bed, Elena starts walking around. First, it’s just a few tentative steps around her room. Then she ventures farther out, into the cargo hold, and to the bridge. By the time they reach Horizon Station, she is more or less back on her feet.
Next chapter:
