“You… were smart, with Drogan. Deliberate. Now you’re using time better spent in a PTSD fallout dragging me to a medic,” Miller listed his surprisingly well-thought-out reasons, “It’s only your first mission and you’re keeping it together better than some veterans on the crew.”
“I… didn’t make a scratch on Drogan,” Dawn objected. She heaved Miller upright when his heels started to drag behind her. Where this endless second wind of breath had come from, she couldn’t guess. The clinic was hardly a hundred feet away.
“Is it any better that I did? Just to leave my ship stranded without a Captain? You… you did better than me today, Dawn. When Drogan first came, you thought to send for help. You distracted him. You put our shields up before we all died. Even though you bicker any other time, you even stood up for Alice when she was in danger.”
“I…”
“You could improve on accepting a compliment, though, when you finally get one,” Miller chuckled. A bead of blood trickled from the corner of his lips.
“Alright, alright. Whatever you say,” Dawn conceded, if only to silence him. This was around the time a few attendees from the clinic noticed the man trailing blood across the steel outside. Two uniformed healers rushed out to take him from Dawn. She was focused on helping them grip him, and so jumped when something struck her chest. Her instinct was to reach up and grab it.
“Emergency Title Transfer,” Miller sputtered, just before the clinicians tore him away. Dawn was left alone with an ovular golden badge in her hands. The olive screen in the center of it had a real-time recording of Miller grinning. Dawn watched it disintegrate, along with his name. It was replaced by a swirling rendition of her, like white ink in dark water. Acting Captain Dawn Redding, spelled itself out.
“Miller!” Dawn called out to him, but the doors were already closing him inside.
“We’ll contact your ship when his treatment is complete, Captain,” one of the clinicians told her. All three vanished.
Dawn stood in the frigid air of Solstice, silent and still, until she noticed a passerby glance the badge in her hand. Crowds of dredgers swirled around her, each one with big eyes for something so shiny. It weighed no more than a few ounces, but just then it felt like ten-thousand pounds in her hand. Dawn tucked it inside her jacket. Whether or not Miller was right about her, her options were thin. She saw them clearly now as these alone: return to a ship full of high expectations and shaken, injured crew empty-handed, or try to fill those hands. First, she filled them with a transmitter to the ship. Dawn inflated her chest to twice its normal size to mutter:
“Alice.”
“Yes, Captain?” her voice sounded eerily human though such a small speaker.
“You… know about that already?” Dawn asked.
“The badge and I are linked,” Alice explained, “What can I do?”
“Actually… it’s what I can do,” Dawn gripped her own holographic image in her jacket to keep calm, “I need you to tell me what parts you need replaced; the ones that can’t self-repair.”
“The list has been uploaded to your badge. Tell it what you want to see, and it will show you,” Alice answered, “It… won’t be a cheap trip. Drogan knew what he was aiming for, to keep us down.”
“In more ways than one…” Dawn mumbled.
“Does that mean… Miller…” the hurt in Alice’s voice almost made Dawn forget who she was talking to.
“He’ll be alright,” Dawn lied without any idea. A leader after all, I guess. “I have an idea for a place I might be able to cut some financial corners. Tell me this thing gives me access to the Arcadia’s credits,” she shifted subjects with twiddling fingers on the badge in her jacket.
“Well, if it isn’t the tack on my seat,” the barkeeper heralded, when he saw Dawn stroll in. She forded dredgers, who turned at the smell of a mission about her, straight for the bar. Nereid’s Slushpit was about the last place Dawn wanted to be, but she’d seen devices and credits slide past one another across tables in her last visit. If there was any place the Arcadia and its crew could afford to do business, it was here.
“That’s Captain tack-on-your-seat now,” Dawn flashed the badge from inside her jacket. The barkeeper’s eyebrows jumped up his forehead.
“A mutiny? On Captain Miller’s ship?”
“More like an attack. You might have heard of him. Drogan, the outerworlds outlaw?” Dawn baited him. The barkeeper turned a challenging glare at her. She reached past him to turn up the volume on the screen playing an emergency transmission behind him.
“ANY TRAVELS DEPARTING FROM THE ACCLIMATION STATION WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL REPAIRS ARE COMPLETE.”
“Repairs… notice the lack of specifics,” said Dawn, before turning the volume back down.
“You mean to tell me…” the barkeeper began to come around to the idea.
“I mean to tell you,” Dawn leaned over the counter to whisper, “I’m Captain of the Arcadia now because a damn Dragon burned holes through the station like it was nothing and put claws through Miller. If you don’t want a visit from him yourself, when he comes to clean up the leftovers, you’ll help me find the parts I need. Once it can fly, the Arcadia can lead him away from here.” The barkeeper’s hand slowed from wiping out a shot glass. He slammed it on the bar, filled it with Slushpit Special, and downed it in a single gulp.
“What parts do you need?” he coughed. Dawn pulled the list up on her badge to show him. Most of them were thankfully small. Dawn radioed in Alice to ask for backup to cart the rest along. Each missing piece of the Arcadia came with a finger pointed at a different unauthorized seller around the bar. Dawn had to pay a visit to each one of them, if she didn’t want to spend the rest of her days wading the slush on the ice giant.
Aside from initial impressions and haggling, Dawn was surprised at how easy most of the dredgers were to talk to. She afforded it to them seeing a face unstained
by Chrysum slush. All of them had parts they were willing to sell. The prices she was able to secure made her wonder just how little the Chrysum collection companies paid them to work the slush. But then, the dredgers had a little business strategy of their own. Dawn didn’t see it until she headed outside the bar to meet her backup from the Arcadia.