A Time for Goodbyes
Two days after the death of Karalius Ledas, Mariem buttoned up the cargo bay on the Fénix for departure. She tossed the now-empty crates from Carlos’s fidget venture into the hold; they landed with a thud, skidding and rolling.
“Cuidado, chica!” Boomed Carlos from inside the ship. “Those things cost money!”
She shook her head and stretched her back, yawning.
A man approached—tall, dark—cutting a cool figure in a black dress uniform with silver and blue piping and embroidered side-cap.
She crossed her arms and nodded. “You here to arrest me officer?”
Tim grinned, teeth flashing. “It’s captain now, actually.” He pulled off his side-cap and nestled it in the crook of his arm. “Things are changing quickly under new management. Being in the right place at the right time… had its perks. I’m just here to see you off, check on Simonee, see if you anything from the hospital—”
“And you’re here to collect payment,” Mariem interrupted.
Tim shook his head. “Oh… No, that would be a breach of protocol. I’m a career lawman now. That would be a breach of protocol, accepting remuneration for services rendered in the line of duty, or… something like that. But I did release the hold on Simonee’s accounts, seeing as she’s no longer a person of interest in the recent… scandal.”
Mariem’s cheek pulled in. “That was mighty kind of you. I’ll let her know.”
Tim nodded and leaned in. “So… she’s okay then?”
“Yeah, she’s a quick healer. Lost a lot of blood, but we’ve got plasma, only thing compatible since... She’ll be fine.”
Tim grinned. “Awesome.” Then he cleared his throat. “But… do you think you might make at least one small request from the hospital? Replenish your supplies? Dalia put in a credit for you that could stock the infirmary on a heavy cruiser.”
“We’re well stocked,” Mariem snapped. “You think we’d leave with an empty first-aid kit? I already told your quartermaster we don’t need anything!”
He put out his hands. “No.. no. Of course not. But... Dalia ordered me to ask, and I think I’ll be in trouble if you don’t actually take anything. She’s… desperate.”
She clicked her tongue. “Fine, I’ll stock up.. for your sake.”
Tim’s shoulders sagged. “Hoo, you’re a lifesaver. And hey, I also need to thank you, for the last few days… minus the broken nose.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be sitting in my apartment zoned out in VR land… alone. Instead, look at me,” he said, throwing his arms wide and nearly dropping his side-cap. “I’ve got responsibility!”
Her lips parted and her teeth came out. She nodded. “Don’t sell yourself short. You had our back, even after...” She waved at his face. “We won’t forget that... I won’t.”
He grinned back, amber eyes sparkling. A moment passed, and his eyes bugged. “Oh!” He reached into his pocket.
Pulled out a small card. “Here, Carlos mentioned something about needing a relativity engineer, for some big thing you guys are doing soon.”
A dark skinned kid with a raised eyebrow stared at her from a holographic resume that listed more degrees than half a circle.
“D’Andre Brown?” She asked.
“Yeah, my cousin, he’s looking for work. Had a bad run with the unions so he’ll be cheap. He’s probably the best outside the corp labs though. Just mention his cousin Timmy. I watched out for him growing up.”
She waggled her head, and pocketed the card.
Tim rocked on his heels. Another moment passed.
“So...” Tim said, sticking out his hand. “It was a pleasure working with you, Mariem.”
She stared at his outstretched hand, took it lightly, one eyebrow lifted. “Yeah.”
“And,” He said, eyes locked to hers. “Next time you’re in town, look me up… I’ll cook you dinner. Maybe change your mind about booger squash?”
She shifted her grip on Tim’s hand and yanked him to her, grabbing his backside with her other hand and lifting him to meet her lips. His side-cap flew, as she kissed him, tongues lashing wildly. She pressed him tightly against her thighs.
Eventually, she let him go and he landed, stumbled, gasping.
“How about tonight?” She soft-punched his shoulder. “After your shift.”
Tim’s brow flattened, eyes drifting. “Tonight... wha?”
Mariem clasped her hands in front of her, shoulders lifting with her cheeks. “Dinner. You are hereby challenged to impress me with the worst vegetable in the universe… next to kale.”
Tim looked at the Fénix. “Um… aren’t you about to ship off?”
Mariem chuckled, and hooked a thumb behind her. “This thing ain’t going anywhere without me. Besides, I’ve got a huge order to place with the quartermaster.”
Tim nodded. “Dinner then… yeah…um… eighteen-hundred?”
“It’s a date,” Mariem said, turning to the cargo bay. “Hold here a sec.”
She returned with a small crate overflowing with leafy greens, okra pods and colorful peppers. She handed it to Tim.
“A gift from the crew of the Fénix… for reasons,” She said. “See it’s not even a bribe anymore.”
Tim picked through the crate, eyes wide. “Oh, wow, this is... amazing. I’ll hit the market ay-ess-ay-pee, find a good wine… unless you prefer beer?”
Mariem winked. “Oh-no, this is a wine thing. And I’ll bring the dessert.” Winking, she tapped his shoulder.
Tim’s jaw fell. He picked it back up. “Oh… okay. I’d better go then if I want to get off in time... for my shift, I mean, not... yeah I have some paperwork.”
He straightened; tipped his cap. “I will see you later Ms. El Ouaer.”
She watched him walk off, awkwardly, shaking his leg once with the crate of produce resting on his chest.
“Lookin’ good in that uniform, captain,” she called after him. Under her breath, “especially in the pants.”
She jogged back into the bay.
At seventeen-thirty, she ran into Carlos on her way out.
“Where are you going looking like that?” he asked.
Her brow pinched, eyebrow up. “Looking like what?”
He looked her up, and down, “Looking like… like…”
She jabbed a finger at his nose. “Watch it.”
He curtsied. “Tan bonita! Like a flower.”
“It’s none of your business, but I am having dinner with Tim.”
“Ohhh… so we aren’t leaving then untillll...”
Mariem looked a the ceiling, and grunted, “Morning… probably.”
A sparkle entered Carlos’s eye and he grinned wide. “Bueno! Well I will just hang here and keep Simonee company. Maybe we’ll order take-out. You go have fun.” He patted her shoulder.
He passed and she called after him, “Yeah, tell her some of your stories, she needs to sleep.”
Carlos kicked his heels and dance walked through the hatch, whistling the tune to “Eye of the Tiger” for reasons she didn’t want to know. She shook her head barreled into the cargo bay.
She dinged Tim’s door a few minutes after eighteen-hundred carrying a chocolate cake the size of a truck tire. It took them all night to eat it.
The next morning, after loading a pile of crates from station medical, the Fénix rose on a shimmering mirage of expelled gases and backed out of Corporate Ring B, gracefully, but for one long scrape against the slip wall.
“Hijo de puta!”
“I told you to let me back out!”
Saturn tiptoed away through the port window in the Fénix galley, far enough away now to show all his rings and the outer fog seeping in between the frame. Enceladus was a white dot; the station, a sparkle.
Simonee tapped her smartcomm. She’d transferred her agents to the Fénix computer, but there wasn’t much here for them to do—few cameras, no surveillance, almost no compute. So they lay idle. She’d left running copies behind though. The great thing about code is that it can be in two places at once. She replayed the video KeenKite sent her—Dalia’s last station-wide address. Dalia had ignored all of Simonee’s messages, blocked them even. But there was a message in here she’d keep forever. Dalia told the truth about everything—her role, Simonee’s, the end of the Ledas line. Her only lie was painting Simonee a hero—she didn’t feel like one—and at the end, Dalia looked straight at the camera and said, “Thank you, Simonee. For everything.”
A message indicator popped up. She had few goodbyes to give, but one had responded:
GORA34567: 🫂
That was it. It hit her eyes like a stubbed toe. She set the comm down and sipped her tea—bitter, stale, fake lemon. The reach stung her shoulder and she rubbed it under the sling strap. The hole had closed, thanks to her construct metabolism, but things were still tender inside.
Someone tumbled into the galley behind her. She turned as Carlos reached into a cupboard and pulled out a thick bottle sloshing honey-colored liquid. He caught her eye. She turned back. He dropped into the chair across from her, pounding the bottle to the table along with a shot glass—cartoon Mars in a yellow cape, making fisticuffs; “Martian Comic-Con 2194” arced over his head— and poured to the brim.
He nudged it toward her. “Tequila?”
She shook her head. He gulped it and slammed the glass down, humming. “Smooth añejo.”
He poured again, but left the glass on the table. “So. Mariem tells me you’re indecisive about the offer.”
She shrugged.
“I know you’re a rica chica now, but we could really use someone with your talents. Besides—” he pointed the bottle at her—”take this from experience. Retirement is boring as fuck.”
She blew out a long breath. “I don’t know what I want. I’ve always drifted. But at Enceladus Station I was… comfortable.”
He downed the second shot and poured again. This time he pushed the glass toward the middle of the table.
She eyed it. Let it be.
“Not much to do around here anyway. When we get to the lunar colony in a few months, you can part ways, find a new direction. Until then—relax. Heal up.” He winked. “Make yourself comfortable.”
He grabbed the shot, drained it, filled it, smacked it in front of her.
She looked at it sideways. “I’m sorry.”
His brow dropped. “For what, nena?”
“For all of this.” She blinked at the light above. “I almost got you all killed. I owe you both so much and I won’t even consider your offer. Why do you even want me here?”
He sighed. “Here.” He downed the fourth shot. “Let me tell you a story.”
He poured and pushed the glass to the edge of the table. She grabbed it before it fell, stared at it.
He pointed out the window. “That star over there—the kinda blue one in the corner—is spraying light all over the universe. Some of it enters our eyes and we get this idea of a star.”
“Those tiny bits of light,” he pinched the air, “spent a million years traveling through the vastness—”
“A thousand,” Simonee said. “You’re pointing at Zeta Puppis.”
He stopped. Looked at her. “How the hell do you know that?”
She tapped under her implant. “Star map.”
He leaned back, eyes darting. “Right...” He puffed a breath. “Well. A thousand years, then—those little bits of light set out when men were fighting petty battles over who wore a funny hat and called himself king. Halfway here, people were burning each other alive for suggesting a star might be another world. When Edison lit his first bulb, this light wasn’t three-quarters done. On it came, past the moon landing, past the internet, past Mars and Enceladus Station—oblivious to every human matter—until, finally, it zoomed into a four-millimeter hole in the head of a glorified ape.” He tapped his chest. “That’s me. And gave him the idea of a star—a mass of incandescent plasma bigger than his mind can fathom, powered by the bending of space and time created by its own fucking mass.”
She watched him pant.
He wagged his eyebrows. “Now I turn my head and that long-traveled light, those thousand years of sailing, just bounces off my shiny grey hair into nowhere. Doesn’t get to do anything nearly so wonderful as spark my imagination.”
She looked down at the tequila.
Carlos waved a finger and grinned. He grabbed the shot from Simonee and drank it, slapped it empty on the table.
“People can be like that. Stars spreading their light, lost to so many turned heads.” A shadow leaned in the doorway behind him. He winked. “Once upon a time I saw one of those stars, at a wrestling match around Jupiter. Watched her trample a man twice her size, stand with her foot on his chest—and then help him up and make sure he was okay. I refused to look away. I convinced her to join the Zentari-Neys Navy under my command. She’s been bringing light to my life ever since.”
The shadow drifted forward.
“I can hear you breathing,” he muttered. He filled the shot glass—nudge, nudge, nudge—inching it toward Simonee.
Mariem stepped into the light. “The starlight story again?” She took the glass and drank it.
Carlos filled it again.
“I see a star in you, nena.” He slurred slightly. “And like your Zayda Puppy or whatever—we’re not turning away so easily.”
“But you have to turn away sometime,” Simonee said.
“Just let the man have his metaphor,” Mariem said. “It’s better for everyone.”
Simonee looked out the port window. Saturn’s rings caught the light differently from here—not the same angle day after day in the cold geometry of the station glass, but wider, quieter. She picked up the shot glass, turned it once in her fingers, and drank. Gasped. Teeth tingled, throat burned, sweet vapor crowded her nose with woody overtones. Her eyes watered.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll help while I’m here. But no contracts, and I won’t take your money.”
Carlos shrugged.
Mariem took her hand and squeezed it. “That’s the thing about family, hon—no contracts required.”
The Fénix cruised past the border fog of Saturn’s ring system and out into the black between worlds. The light of Zeta Puppis scattered off her bow in minuscule waves that blended with the rest of the radiation reflecting off her hull. On the port side, a pair of cowboy boots stood, attached magnetically just outside the laundry room closet—their owner passed out at the galley table, a large bronze hand patting his grey head.