Sullen Stars: Free Merchant

While she had no intention of it, Rachel ended up spending most of the three days in that same spot in the copilot's chair.  The flight deck was pretty boring, but at least it was boring with another person nearby, unlike the lounge that only had someone in it long enough for them to reheat something to eat.

Plus, while she was at it, she could get free impromptu lessons on how to perform a spike drill.  Daphne and Frank both knew how to do it, and Frank even enough to teach her some of the basics, but for better or worse, none of the riskier situations cropped up during the drill to really show her the whole point of having someone there to watch it.  The navigation computer handled pretty much the whole show.

Eighty hours later, the ship emerged from metadimensional space back into the Antonious system.  The process worked more or less exactly as she expected, with a subtle hum followed by stars redshifting into existence all around them.

From where they emerged, they had a fortuitously short trip to Asa, clocking in at only another thirty-four hours.  Compared to everything up to that point, the waiting wasn't so bad.

That is, until it was time to land.

Rachel decided to return to the lounge instead of giving herself a front seat view of another controlled descent through an atmosphere, and spent the entire process glued to a bench and braced against the table.  Every little rock or jitter of the ship felt like it transferred from the tips of her hooves all the way up to make her teeth chatter, but like the rational part of her brain told her would be the case, Borealis made it through the reentry in one piece.

A palpable sense of ease washed through her after the final jolt of the ship touching down on its landing pad, and she finally pried herself free from her self-imposed prison and headed to meet the others at the boarding ramp.

Both looked prepared for hot weather.  Frank wore a plain white shirt and loose denim shorts with a simple pair of sandals.  Daphne was about the same, wearing a light gray shirt with a caption in what she guessed was Italian, plus a pair of considerably more form fitting shorts and pink sandals with little plastic flowers that came up between her toes.  Rachel decided she should probably lose her over shirt, even if the heat wouldn't really bother her.

Daphne looked up from her compad as the ramp lowered and said, “You know what?  We should get some tacos from Miguel's on our way out.  I hope it's still here.”

“Sure.  It's probably still here.  They've always been busy.”

Rachel descended after them and asked, “You've been here before?  Where are we, for that matter?”

“San Polosa,” he answered.  “Nowhere on Asa is really big compared to Alcmene or say, Sethena, but this is one of the smaller cities that actually has a spaceport that doesn't consist of just open ground and fences to keep the critters at bay.”

The space port appeared to have been established... a little out of the way.   While there were some larger buildings off in the distance, she didn't see any skyscrapers at all.  Mountains rose in the far distance, but instead of being covered in snow like she expected, they were just deep hues of red and brown from top to bottom.  The tree cover was pretty sparse too, but not completely absent.

There wasn't much to the space port itself.  Despite what Frank said, it looked kind of like a big fenced in lot for ships to land at, of which there were only two others present.  A modest at best terminal building sat ahead of them, but there were no ground crew visible.

A gust of hot wind rolled past them, and her organic companions winced.  Yeah, okay, I can see why they dressed lightly.

Miguel's was apparently right where Daphne and Frank expected, just inside of the terminal building and past the almost nonexistent customs that waved them through once they realized nobody was carrying any bags.  The small eatery looked professional enough to be a chain restaurant of some kind, with a sign that looked like a stylized taco stuffed with the location's name.  “Miguel's of San Polosa,” which really was quite a bit to stuff into a taco.

The food court had a handful of cattle and what Rachel guessed were opossums were scattered around its tables, and the interior of the terminal was better furnished and decorated than she expected.  Rows of neat ferns and bushes lined the far wall of windows overlooking the landing area, and the walls were painted to resemble thick vines covered in stubby spines sprawling around them.  Vines painted into the floor were interspersed with helpful directions to the restrooms and other restaurants in the food court.

Rachel was still mindful of her need to save money, so while her two chauffeurs ordered an impressive variety of tacos and home style tortilla chips, she passed on getting anything herself.  Even when they offered to get it for her.  No reason to waste anyone's money or food.

While they ate, her mind started wandering, and while she wanted to not be too rude by interrupting either while eating, she asked, “So, who was it that you had to pick up here?”

“A group of entrepreneurs from Alcmene, actually,” Frank answered in between chips.  “Four of them, all headed back there.  They work for some kind of biotech firm I think.”

“Huh.  That's unexpected.”

Daphne stopped trying to chase little bits of salsa around on her plate and asked, “Why's that?”

“Well, maybe it's just first impressions, but this doesn't look like the kind of city I'd expect a biotech firm to be operating out of.”

Frank shrugged.  “You'd have to ask them.  I just looked up the company name after getting their paperwork, so I don't know much more than you do, honestly.  Tosanda, I think was the name.  We're supposed to meet them downtown in about two hours.  I hope they're paying for transportation back here.”  He scooted the plate of chips closer to her.  “And eat at least one, okay?  You're making me feel... weird.”

She rolled her eyes and obliged.  The chip actually was quite good, especially if this was a mass produced chain restaurant.

For a moment, she considered if she could find a recipe for it and try cooking some on the ship between here and their next stop.  Tortilla chips were fairly simple to make, but it had also been many years now since she'd tried her hand at cooking, and she had no idea what kinds of provisions were even stocked aboard Borealis.

Something to bring up later, perhaps.  Before they left, since they'd need to buy some flour and oil before leaving if they didn't have any already.

[hr]

After getting a cab ride into the city, which to Rachel's amazement took only about fifteen minutes due to the relative lack of traffic and pedestrians, they planned to meet up with their new passengers in a Star-Bucks coffee shop.  Much to her shock, the coffee shop also doubled as a small book store, and there were a few shelves stocked with paperback novels!  The end of the throwback printed book novelty phase must not have reached this little end of the galaxy yet.

She busied herself with skimming through a small selection of books labeled as being written by authors local to Asa.  One really caught her attention, being about a crew of colonists who got stranded on an arid backwater planet and had to make do with livestock instead of heavy machinery to do their chores.  It was only five credits too, so she happily paid the young coyote running the counter for the collection of pulped trees with words written on them.  The temptation to find a little corner to tuck into while she read it was great, but she needed to exercise restraint.  Even with more passengers aboard to talk to, she'd need something to do once they were back in space.

By good fortune, their new passengers arrived early, which meant they could get going sooner too.

The group wasn't quite what she expected.  A bear, a raccoon and two dogs that she guessed were border collies and probably locals.  All were dressed in business casual, instead of the suits she'd have expected for a biotech company.

One of the collies, a tall woman with a flowing white coat of fur that had to have been miserable in the heat, shook hands with Frank and Daphne.  “Good to meet y'all.  We kind of beat traffic here, but we're glad y'all made it early too.”

Scratch that, definitely a local.

“Likewise.  Uh, anyway, we've got the landing pad for the rest of the day already, but you're all ready to leave we can head back to the ship.  We can't leave until we refuel though, so it'll be tonight at he earliest either way.”

“The sooner, the better,” the bear said as he adjusted his shirt, which was damp from sweat.

The other collie nodded.  “Yeah, I think so too.  I'm ready for the sterile cold interior of a spaceship for a change.”

Nobody objected, so without wasting time, everyone poured outside to hail a cab.  Once it became apparent that was going to take more than a few minutes, they poured back inside of the air conditioned shop to wait for one of the on-demand drivers to show up.

After the predictable heavy silence fell, Rachel cleared her throat unnecessarily and asked, “So, you're with the Tosanda company from Alcmene?”

The collie woman from earlier nodded.  “That's right.  Well, Salvatore is from there anyway,” she said, pointing to the bear.  “Danny, Michael and I are all from the local branch.”  She offered a hand to shake.  “Summer Parnell.  Pleased to meet you.”

She returned the shake.  “Rachel.  Rachel Freeman.  And that's interesting to hear.  I was just curious what all your company did.  Seems like kind of a small town here.”

Summer grinned.  “Well, we're hoping to change that.  Tosanda was looking to build a factory or two here on Asa, and this was one of the spots we were considering.  Lowest docking fees on the planet.”

Ah, factories.  Labor must be cheaper here than on Alcmene, although it would have to be much cheaper to be worth transporting things back there.  “Oh, I see.  What do you build, exactly?”

“Medical prosthetics, mostly, but we're gearing up to start manufacturing some more mass market cybernetics.  We were actually just scouting out a location to set up a possible BCI link factory.  Lots of logistics to work out though, you understand.”

“Oh, I'm sure.  Getting materials would probably be a challenge here, unless you're going to do all of the fabrication work yourself.”

Summer's grin faded to a little smile.  “Yeah, well, I can't say too much, you hear?  You might be a competitor!”  She noted the two deer playing on their compads and made a mental deduction.  “Are you part of the Buscemi crew?”

As if, she thought.  She wasn't getting back into the spacer business if she could help it.  “No, no, just hitching a ride with them to Rawiyah.”

The collie made a little silent “Ah” and said, “Rawiyah's a beautiful planet, I tell you what.  I wish we were headed there with you.”

Summer wandered off into a tangent about their competitors on the planet, but was interrupted by the cab arriving a few minutes later.  That was too bad.  Rachel could use some ideas of where to seek out employment when she got there.

[hr]

Rather than force a detour to pick up groceries, Rachel kept quiet on the trip back to the space port.  There would be plenty of time to go run some errands before they left anyway.

Passing through security was almost as painless as arriving, and nothing like what she expected from dealing with the orbital stations that had much more to fear from someone lugging hazardous materials around.  The security guard checked her bag to make sure she only had the book in it, and that was that.  No metal detector, thank goodness, since she had no idea if the local security team would even have a way to deal with her unique circumstances at all.

The walk back to the ship was longer than she remembered, and it looked like the space port was busier than she had given it credit for earlier.  Two additional ships had landed while they were in the city, bringing the landing area up to five ships arranged in neat lines.  Borealis was at the end of the first row, in the eighth slot for some reason.

Another ship was inbound too, still a little too far to resolve with any detail, but trailing contrails that indicated it was heading their way.

“I'll see if I can get the cargo lift down.  We just did some maintenance on it so this will be the first test since we landed,” Frank told the new passengers as they neared the ship.

Daphne chuckled.  “Yeah, don't worry, we just overhauled half of the ship, so you're in good hands.”

That was a bit of an exaggeration, of course.  They'd need to put the ship into dry dock to work on half of the systems that needed regular maintenance.  It was true that they had multiple spares for a lot of vital systems at least.

Rachel found it hard to focus on the conversations around her as she watched the other ship draw closer.  It seemed to be coming in awfully fast, and the contrails following it looked awfully dark.  Wait.  That was smoke.

“I think that ship's going to crash...”

“Huh?”  Daphne stopped her ascent up the ramp and peered out from the overhang of the ship's hull.  “Where?”

Rachel thrust a finger up toward the shape that was definitely barreling their way and not slowing down very much.  “There!”  A moment of panic gripped her.  It was moving too fast to guess where it would hit.  Should they run or stay put?

“Everyone inside!” Daphne shouted, making the call for her.  The deer disappeared up the ramp, followed by all four Tosanda employees.  “Rachel!  Come on, the hull will protect us if it lands nearby!”

But she couldn't move.  She watched as it plummeted lower and lower.  It was going to land nearby, but not right on top of them.  Visible flames trailed from beneath the oblong freighter as it banked to the left...

“Rachel!”  Someone grabbed her shoulder and-

She picked herself up from the boarding ramp's deck plating.  The pressure wave from the impact was incredible and entirely out of proportion to her expectations.  A massive rain of dust and soil kicked up from the landing rained around them, pattering off of Borealis and obscuring what little she could see of the crash site.  The ship hit not far outside of the fenced in landing pads, plowing a clear trench in the sparse trees as it went.  Bits of one landed just next to her on the landing pad, but the crunch was lost among the hail of dirt.

At some point, she realized she was running for the fence.  There was no sign of anyone else around her, as they all no doubt did the sensible thing and took cover inside or beneath the ships in the yard.  No sign of any emergency response vehicles either, but the crash had happened just seconds ago.

Thick white smoke began to roll away from the wreckage, and by the time she got to the fence it had already overtaken her.  The searing fumes would have blinded any organic person without serious protection, and even for her it obscured the fence and made it hard to navigate.  If there was a gate anywhere nearby it was now blocked by the roiling smoke, so she grabbed hold and started to climb, hoping that she remembered correctly that there was no barbed wire or electrified coils at the top.  Her bad arm slowed her ascent, but she still had more than enough strength to haul her weight upward.

Daphne shouted after her, but she was far too committed at this point to turn back.

She made the mistake of trying to brace herself at the top with her damaged arm, and lost her balance.  The fall was over as soon as she realized what was happening, but there wasn't much point in checking herself over.  She didn't hurt, so she jumped back up and ran along the edge of the fence in the direction of the crash.

Black smoke from trees ignited by its passing added to the perpetual bank of white ahead of her and for a moment she feared she'd never find the crash, but a sudden change in the wind revealed flares of red flickering in the clouds.  The distant pops of heating or cooling metal grew louder with each second as she ran as hard as she could.

Long before she found the immolating debris, she knew in the back of her mind that even with modern crash hardening and all of the preparatory actions one could possibly take during a crash, the odds of anyone surviving such a hard impact were vanishingly small.  Even if she could get inside, she wasn't going to find anyone alive.  The forces were just too great.  People didn't survive aircraft crashes often, much less crashes from orbital reentry.

But even so, she was here.  She had to try.

She ran past a tree that had had all of its branches blasted off and was impaled by pieces of hull plating as she approached the wreck.  From the rear she could already guess what had gone wrong.  What was left of the two engine nacelles on its port side were awash in flames.  Thin streams of burning fuel jetted from the underside of the ship, licking at the soil churned up all around her.  She circled around it to the side of the ship, where she hoped to find an access port of some kind.  If there was a loading ramp, it was hopelessly pinned or crushed beneath the bulk of the ship…

A circular doorway caught her eye, recessed into the edge of the hull, just ahead of where its port wing or control surface had been before being ripped free.  An airlock!

She didn't recognize the model of ship, but to her immense relief it looked like the manufacturers used a standardized docking ring.  With a little jump to reach the platform, she hauled herself upward and pulled the emergency release.

A heavy clunk sounded over the pervasive crackle of fuel cooking off to her right, and she jerked the door open with all of her weight.

Pops and cracks of overheated metal echoed from within the airlock, but the air was clear.  That meant that somehow the landing hadn't deformed the hull enough to compromise the airtight seals of the doors.

The interior door proved her wrong.  Little wisps of smoke leaked around the top of the thick door, and it resisted her attempts to force it open, even after pulling the emergency release.

She braced against the wall with a hoof and wrapped both arms around the handle.  “Come on!” she shouted as she put every ounce of strength in her body to wrest it open.  A worrisome twinge ran down her back.  A warm tingling radiated from her hip.  Her muscles were warning her that they were at their limit.  If she kept pushing them, something was going to give… but if she didn't force this door open, nobody inside had any hope.

A tiny gasp escaped her throat as something gave and she jerked back.  Had her other elbow or shoulder given away?

No, the door had moved.  It wasn't much, but if she got it to open at all, she could finish it!

With another mighty tug, the door shifted a hair more.  Then again, and again, and-

She caught herself against a structural beam as the door flew open and threatened to dump her on her butt in the airlock hallway.  Thick, black smoke clung to the ceiling and rolled through the open portal, filling the airlock on its way to join the masses already leaking from the ship on the outside. She waved a puff of it from her face and crawled through to find abject chaos.  Crushed cans of food were strewn through the corridor, coating the floor, walls and even ceiling with sprays of reds and browns.  A dining table had been sheared free from its supports and blocked the hall, but with another mighty shove she forced it out of the way and cleared hundreds more cans, boxes and packages of food out of the way.

No sign of anyone yet.  Would she even have any way of knowing how many were aboard?

And what would she do if she found someone still alive?  The smoke and fire would be the first concern.  Even if she dragged someone outside, the smoke would choke them before help could arrive.  In here, the smoke was building, but hadn't completely filled the lounge at least.  There should be emergency supplies somewhere.  The airlock should have EVA suits, but that wasn't what she needed...

A compartment recessed into the wall emblazoned with icons for air masks and first aid supplies caught her eye through curls of smoke.  She snatched it open, and to her relief, found oxygen bottles and masks inside.  More than she could count in an instant, so she grabbed two, stuffed them under her bad arm, and rushed back toward the fore of the ship where she guessed she'd find access to the flight deck.  There had to be someone piloting the ship during its descent.

Sure enough, after climbing a single flight of stairs and forcing a damaged door open, she found the flight deck.  Through the emergency lighting flickering from strips in the ceiling, she picked out the unmoving forms of two people.

She picked her way past the chairs that used to be at one of the instrument panels and examined the dog in the pilot's seat.  He'd had the restraints locked into place, but from the sheer energy imparted by the landing, it didn't seem to have done much good.  It was hard to tell in the dark, but he didn't appear to be breathing, and his light fur was stained with blood that flowed freely from his mouth and nostrils.  One of his arms was clearly broken, and from the way he was sitting, his back might have been too.

With a grimace, she turned around to check on the copilot.  A cat with black fur, she too had been restrained, but her seat had also broken free and thrown her against the instrument panel.  Rachel knew that moving any of them would put them at risk for aggravating any injuries, but time was short.  She could still smell the smoke, and now that she'd opened the door, it was going to begin flooding upward into the flight deck and would suffocate anyone who had survived.

The chair was much heavier than expected, but she managed to force it back from the panel and around so she could see the other victim.  Her face was coated in blood that also covered the panel, glistening under the lighting.

The cat groaned, and her fingers curled.  She was alive.

“Try to hold still, help's on the way,” she said, doubting the woman could hear her.  Maybe she said it for herself as much as anyone as she opened the valve on one of the tanks and placed the mask over the cat's face.  The woman protested weakly, but was either too weak or delirious to fend her off.

What now?  If I try to move her, I could break her neck or back.  I can't carry the whole chair down to the airlock…

Without wasting more time dithering about, she activated the second mask and put it over the pilot's muzzle.  He was probably dead already, but there were more masks in the lounge, and he'd be dead for sure if she didn't.

Now that she'd done all she could for these two, she raced back downstairs through growing smoke.  She grabbed two more masks from the lounge, leaving just two more, but the sight of a pack of signal flares caught her eye.  Before searching the rest of the ship, she grabbed two of them and detoured back to the airlock, where she lit them and tossed them outside.  If any emergency crews showed up, now at least they'd know how to get inside.

Back in the lounge, she crawled over the debris to make her way back to engineering.  There might be survivors in the bunks or cargo holds, but the situation in the aft of the ship was more urgent.  Orange and red light flickered and reflected from the corridors ahead, and the smoke grew thicker still.  The entire engine compartment must have been consumed with flames, but she had to check.  The crew had to know of the emergency, and someone was probably trying and failing to fix or contain the problem.

A deep groan rolled through the ship and the floor shifted under her hooves.  The intense temperatures must have been weakening the superstructure, and even from here she felt the oppressive heat wash over her in waves.  A panel cracked and loosened from the ceiling before dropping in front of her.  She considered turning back to grab the pilots after all and try to escape before the ship's superstructure collapsed…

Someone coughed ahead of her.  A deep hacking cough, followed by a groan that transitioned to more strangled hacking.

“I'm coming!” she shouted while forcing her way past what looked like the contents of a dozen tool chests that had been vomited in the corridor.

Engineering was a disaster.

Naked flames roared past the first room she emerged in, rising from exposed subfloor compartments and swirling around dark fumes that poured from deeper into the ship.  The support struts running along the ceiling had failed to her left, burying part of the engine room with collapsed debris from above and spilling snapped conduits and wiring from ducts formerly in the ceiling.  The wall to her left looked like it had [i]exploded[/i] and showered the room in debris.  Shards of sharp metal as long as her forearm littered the walls where they had been projected with such force they speared straight through the metal sheeting.

The source of the groans was a dark coated cow, who was pinned beneath the fallen ceiling in the center of a puddle of clear liquid pouring from ruptured pipes overhead.  She stepped closer and froze as her hoof brushed the fluid.  A sharp tingling ran up her leg.  It was electrified!

“Hold on.  Hold on, I'll figure something out,” she repeated to herself as she searched the room for something to help pry the ceiling panels up so she could drag the woman out.  A severed pipe laying near her hooves looked suitable.

She rammed the pipe under the panels and pulled up with all of her might.  The debris shifted, but not much.  Even with all of her strength, to the point the searing warning that her muscles could tear from the strain, wasn't enough to push aside what must have been literal tons of fallen material.

“Can you hear me?  Can you move at all?” she asked the prone woman, but she got no answer.

This was pointless.  Even if she could shove the debris aside, the injured cow couldn't pull herself free, and if she let go it was all going to just fall back into place where it was now.  She has no choice.

Rachel released the pipe and stepped into the puddle to get closer.  All of her muscles tensed involuntarily, and a curious mixture of every unpleasant sensation she could imagine ran up and down her legs.  She ignored the pain and crouched to get a better look at the situation, which was both better and worse than she hoped.  It looked like her wrestling with the pipe had loosened the debris around the woman enough that she might be able to free her, but it looked like blood was starting to tinge the pool of coolant she stood in.

No time to think.  She just had to act.

She grabbed the woman by the arms and pulled back as hard as she could.  The cow slid forward before catching on something else, and loosed a loud groan that sounded like it wanted to be a scream.  More blood flowed, swirling in the now shimmering puddle and running between the plates toward the front of the ship.  Electrical waves flowed through her body, sapping her strength.  The other cow must have been electrocuted too, but she was alive despite everything.  The crushing injury, the smoke, the overbearing heat.  Everything.  She couldn't give up.

With another tug, she came free, sliding forward into the room and dropping Rachel on her butt.  Ominous cracks, sparks, pops and groans from the ship's hull and superstructure echoed in the claustrophobic remnants of the engine room, and she didn't want to wait to see how much longer it would stay as open as it was.  She felt the heat of the floor where the igniting fuel was running downhill beneath them, toward the midline of the ship.  If it reached the fuel tanks, whatever malfunction they had on their descent would look like a firecracker going off!

She forced herself to her hooves, which now felt weak and numb despite leaving the electrified pool, and dragged the engineer back toward the lounge.  Even the emergency lighting had gone out now, leaving her to navigate the darkness by what light the fires from engineering cast, but the trip back only took her down two turns before she had to stop and clear more trash ejected from the pantries and cabinets.

It was only when she got to the airlock that she realized she hadn't put a breathing mask on the engineer, and that she also had misplaced the two she took with her.  She raced back to grab one more from the emergency locker, but when she returned to strap it on, she got her first good look at who she'd saved.

Illuminated by what little light fought through the smoke outside, the black coated cow was motionless, save for the small shallow breaths she took.  What looked like a turbine blade from one of the atmospheric engines had impaled her above her shoulder and piercing down into her chest.  How the injury hadn't killed her before was a mystery, but now that she'd disturbed her, it leaked blood at an alarming rate.  The cow's pants had been pulled off in the rescue as well, but worse, her left leg was missing from the knee down, and likewise running freely with blood that pooled under her.

Rachel flew back into the lounge one last time to grab a first aid kit from the emergency locker, and from it she grabbed a roll of bandages.  There was no way for her to apply a tourniquet to the shoulder wound, but wrapping the severed leg was simple enough.  A can of spray on biofoam tumbled out of the hard plastic container as she dug through it, which she snapped up, snapped the top off and liberally applied to the shoulder wound.  It might not help much with such a deep injury, but it wouldn't hurt!

The thought of the fire working its way closer to them continued to creep back into her mind.  She wanted to run back and get the copilot that might have still been alive, but before she did that, she needed to get the engineer outside.  If the ship exploded now, nobody inside would survive, even here.

Getting the cow down from the airlock was simple, but doing it without aggravating her wounds was not.  Time was of the essence, so Rachel opted to do it the fast and simple way by picking her up and just jumping down to the churned soil below.  She trotted over to the burning signal flares and set the woman down.  Her chances were marginally better now, and any emergency services would spot her immediately.

With one victim saved, she leaped back up and caught onto the swinging airlock door so she could climb back inside.  All of her limbs felt heavy and useless now, but they still carried her weight so she pressed on.  She could sort out any electrical damage latter when she had time to think!

Thicker plumes of smoke filled the hallway as she returned, cast off by whatever bits of flammable food had now come into contact with the droplets of ignited fuel running from the engine room down the corridor.  She stomped past a stream of water or coolant or whatever it was on her way back to the stairs and rushed up two steps at a time.

The flight deck was choked with smoke so thick she couldn't see the consoles just ahead.  She climbed past the fallen instrument panel seat and felt her way forward to the front.  Neither person had moved, and from what she could tell, the dog in the pilot's seat hadn't even shifted.  He was dead, without any doubt.  And in a few minutes at most, the cat would be cut off by the flames creeping toward the front of the ship.

Rachel fought with the jammed seat restraints to release her, and to her dismay, the cat was completely limp.  She didn't have time to check for breathing, and despite the risk of causing further injuries, she pulled the woman from her chair and combed her way back to the stairs.  Taking her time was excruciating, but if she slipped and fell on top of her…

Tiny embers had already reached the end of the corridor by the time she got to the bottom, and she had no option but to rush through them on the way back to the airlock.  She prayed that her clothes and skin were fire resistant, but the searing pain rising from her feet gave her reason to fear that she was getting close to their tolerance!


“Almost there!  Almost there!”

“We've got another one!  I hear someone!”  Another voice!  Someone else was here!

Rachel almost ran into the man as she rounded the corner into the airlock.  He was huge and covered in firefighting equipment that obscured everything but his voice.  “There's another on the flight deck upstairs but I think he's dead already!  There's fire spreading this way and we need to get out, now!  You can't get to the rest of the ship!” she shouted over the roar behind her.

He accepted the injured cat and stepped back to the exit.  “You need a mask, now!  Come on, let's go!”

She didn't argue and instead just slipped on the oxygen mask the man offered her before jumping out of the airlock after him.  Two vehicles sat ahead, obscured by the swirling clouds of smoke and casting strange shadows from flashing red lights that lit up the entire area.  At least one other emergency worker ran past in the distance, a dark shadow among the fog.

Again without arguing, she jumped into the back of the ambulance at a worker's direction and tried to quell the fears rising inside of her that the growing conflagration would explode at any moment…

[hr]

The ship never did explode.

Or so that's what the workers told her after she'd been taken to the hospital alongside the survivors, this time against her desires since she tried to tell the crews that she was a robot and couldn't possibly be suffering from smoke inhalation or anything of the sort.  “Standard procedures” and “maybe the doctors should check you out anyway” were about all she could get out of them on the way.

It wasn't until long after she'd been sitting in the emergency room's second tier of waiting rooms that she really had a chance to talk to anyone.  A receptionist came back to inform her that, of course, she had no insurance and since she had no money they'd have to work out some kind of payment plan, which, yes, would follow her anywhere the Exchange existed.  That is, if she accepted the care from them, which there would be little point to since as she feared the doctors had absolutely no clue how to do anything for a damaged synthetic, nor did they have any suggestions on who she should see on the planet for whatever sort of care she needed.

So, she waived the treatment, agreed to be indebted to them for a hundred and sixteen credits for tying up their emergency room and being a good Samaritan, and went on her way to try to get in contact with the Buscemis or get back to the space port.  The small silver lining to the cloud of her delaying their departure this way was that they probably couldn't take off for a while anyway.  Even on top of the refueling they had to do, the whole space port would probably be shut down for a while until they did a preliminary investigation and cleaned up some of the debris.

How she was going to get back to the spaceport without attracting all of the attention ever was something she'd have to figure out on the way.  While she'd grown largely numb to it by now, she knew she still smelled like the inside of an oven that someone had burnt a quiche, two cakes and twenty liters of jet fuel in.  Not to mention that all of her clothes were blackened and singed, and her hooves now had an unnatural sheen where they'd partially melted smooth and lost the lamination on their surfaces.  Her fur was already black, so that was helpful, but the intense heat had begun to melt and curl the hairs on her feet.  She'd also lost some of the feeling in her lower legs and wasn't entirely sure she had her full sense of balance anymore…

In short, she looked like she'd just been in a crash, and walking along the streets was going to draw attention.  The last thing she needed was someone calling emergency services because a half-dead crazy woman was wandering around.

She only made it back to the main waiting before she was stopped by someone very official looking who directed her to a back room.  The donkey, dressed in a plain white uniform that identified him as part of the Planetary Aerospace Safety Agency, introduced himself as Agent Flores and took a seat across from her at the desk.  “I just want to get some facts about what happened earlier.  You're the only crew member who's awake and in any shape to talk.”

“Uh, all right, but I'm actually not part of the crew of the ship that crashed.”  And things get complicated in 3… 2… 1…

He raised both eyebrows and opened his notebook.  “Oh… is that so?  You were at the scene, weren't you?”  That must have been self-evident, so he continued, “If you weren't a crew member, what were you doing aboard?  You're not part of San Polosa ERS, are you?”

She shook her head.  “No, I was just in a nearby ship when the crash happened.  I knew it would take a while before any help arrived, so, well, I ran over.”

Agent Flores kept both eyebrows up.  “You ran up to the burning wreckage of a crash you had no relation to?  Without knowing how stable the situation was?”

Rachel nodded a little.  “Maybe not the smartest thing to do, but it was the first thing that came to mind, so… I did.”

He jotted something down.  “You're a robot, right?  That's what the breaking news at the office was a couple of minutes ago.  So, I guess that makes sense.  Can't allow people to come to harm through any inaction on your part, right?”

Any doubt about what he said resonating through her vanished a moment later as she fought to keep her voice even.  “Can you?”

“...I suppose not,” he conceded.  “But let's move on.  First, you said you were with another crew?  Which ship?”

“Borealis.  It's registered to Francis and Daphne Buscemi.  Registered out of Hypaspa Station in the Rima system.”  Maybe details she shouldn't be divulging, but she didn't see the harm in it.

“All right.  And what was your business here?”

“Picking up passengers to transport back to the Rima system.”

He jotted more details down.  “Okay, thank you.  So, did you see anything that might help to tell us what caused the crash?  Crews are still trying to access the ship's computer, but with the damage they're not sure what they'll be able to get out of it.”

“I don't recognize the model of ship, but it looks like it had dedicated atmospheric engines.  Turbines of some kind, so not ramjets or ramrockets.  It has to be an older model of some kind.  Uh, anyway, I know it had turbines because they were strewn around the engineering compartment.”  She tried to get a curled hair out of her eyes and sighed, which blew out a visible puff of smoke.  “My guess is that one of the engines had a catastrophic drive shaft failure and lost containment.  The explosion must have damaged a lot of other systems and they lost control on the descent.”

“Mmhmm, okay.  And the crew, do you think they were conscious while that happened?  No life support failure?”

She thought back to the pilots strapped into their seats, and the engineer who was not strapped in.  “I think they were conscious, yes.  The engineer was up and moving around before the crash.  I assume she was trying to contain the damage, and failing.  And the pilots directed the ship near the landing pad but away from the other ships there.”

Agent Flores wrote a great deal without speaking.  When he finally looked up, he said, “Very good, thank you.  Do you have any other details you think would be helpful to note?”

“Not much, honestly… it looked like the fuel containment systems failed too since it was spraying it all over the ground.”

He wrote that down too.  “All right, thank you. If you don't have anything else, you're free to go.”

“Actually, may I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

The question that had lingered in the back of her mind since she got in the ambulance, which she feared to know the answer to, jumped to the forefront.  “Did any of the crew survive?”

Agent Flores twisted his pen open and closed a couple of times.  “I'm afraid I can't tell you that.  Patient confidentiality, you understand.  Not to mention it's a little outside of my purview.”

“I understand, yes.  Uh, second question then: am I in trouble?”

He furrowed his brow and twisted his pen closed again.  “In trouble?  What for?”

Oh, she could think of a few dozen reasons that a particularly malicious or vindictive government or individuals might throw her under the bus at this point.  “I don't know.  I could just see some people being upset at what I did.  Interfering with the rescue, trespassing, potentially causing harm when trying to render aid...”

“I see.  Well, I'm not with law enforcement so I can't say no for certain, but I wouldn't worry about it.  San Polosa and most of Asa has good Samaritan laws.  Nobody's going to be pressing charges for a little woman like yourself rushing out and putting yourself in harm's way to try to help someone.”

A modest surprise, but relieving all the same.  It was just too bad that this wasn't a video game where she'd be rewarded ten thousand credits for sticking her neck out for strangers, but that really never was the point.  She did really hope at least one of the crew survived for her efforts.

If she were in their position, she'd have wanted someone to do the same for her.

But, after he dismissed her to go on her way, his snide little comment about her being an obedient robot echoed in the back of her mind.  Did I have a choice about helping them?  Could I have just stood my ground and hoped someone else would help?

An uneasy, tense sensation rolled through her as she thought.  She could have done nothing.  She just did something because that's what a decent person would do.  Tsoukalos did everything to make her as realistic as possible.  That was just a normal reaction to seeing someone in distress.

Yet, she was the only one who ran out to help.

Bystander effect?

Knowledge that she could survive where the others couldn't?

Or was she just an obedient little machine?