The Zone

Cycles Go ‘Round [Chapter 13]

I had just finalized filling out the forms with a little science vessel of three, the clients being Espinoids, seemingly nice green-tinged humanoids. Contact was made in deep space, my own ship docked in the top bay their own. They were ready to open up for me as soon as I was sealed inside and had waved my hand at the man behind the control window. Before I could start my flight engines, I noticed the notification of a missed communication from dispatch waiting on my heads-up screen.

I tuned into Grep’s frequency while the engine warmed up. “Hey Grep, you called?”

“Anna, do you know where you are?” His tone was uncharacteristically like an owner upon finding a long-lost pet.

“Right now, I’m aboard a client’s ship. I better lift off before they get annoyed that I’m running my engine inside their bay.” With a gesture out the window, the Espinoid opened their ship’s hatch for me to lift off into space once more. “Okay, there we go. Is something the matter, Grep?”

“How long were you on that ship for?” His voice was harsh.

“About a half hexiturn.” I glanced at the time readout. “Not too long. And I got them signed up for a policy.”

“Save it,” Dispatch huffed. “I’ll take the upload in a bit. Just get on a move, here are the next coordinates.”

I transferred the directions to my autonav, causing my ship to take a sharp turn away from the Espinoid vessel. “Okay, all set. You’re freaking me out, though, Grep.”

There was a sigh on the other side of the line. “Sorry, it’s just that you were getting close to the DMZ.”

“Oh, sorry… I’m not sure what that is.”

“The demilitarized zone, Anna.”

“… how about you pretend I don’t know what that means?”

“It’s a neutral area, essentially. But there has been some conflict in this area in the past. There are rival factions on either side and an intrusion into the DMZ can be seen as provocation.”

I glanced out into the darkness of the space, imagining some sort of invisible barrier. “That sort of concept would have been great when I had this terrible roommate in college. I totally would have burned some of her dirty clothes that somehow crossed over to my side of the dorm without a second thought.”

Grep’s voice returned to his normal calm, slow plodding. “Yes, well, it could end up like that.”

“Sure, but would they give a care about a single little vessel like mine being in that area?”

I heard what I assumed was a shrug on the other side of the line. “If you were to run across an official patrol, they might give you a slap on the wrist for being ignorant. They want you to cross through their checkpoints, officially. And if they determined, through the company records, that we were serving someone from the other faction, they might do you worse.”

“Well, I can tell you that I am good at… acting… ignorant enough so they wouldn’t think to look so deep into my actions.”

Grep seemed to ignore my words. “Strange though that folks would choose to meet with you out here, too. What origin were they?”

“Espinoids.”

“I don’t recall such a people.”

I sat up and glanced out the corners of the window, attempting to see if I could get one last look at their ship. “Strange. They were nice enough. Hold on now, that’s not them.”

My eyes came across a pale saucer whipping across the black void, only slowing when they were certainly in range for their presence to be unmistakable. I took the controls to shake the ship out of autopilot in hopes of better respond to whatever was going to come next.

A red light focused on its hull. In the blink of an eye, a laser launched from the saucer, impacting upon the Espinoid ship that was barely visible. Shrapnel flooded the space, sparkling like a solar flair. “Oh stars.”

“What is it Anna?”

“This… saucer craft just exploded them.”

“The Espinoids? A saucer? Wait, Anna, stay put.”

My hands turned white on the controls. “I’d very much like not to stay here.”

“You need to open a channel with them right now. Drop me, and explain to them who you are and what’s going on.”

“Well, you’ve never steered me wrong have you?” I nodded, mashing on the comms panel, attempting to forward something that would reach them. “Hi, this is Anna, uh, from Cycles Go ‘Round, that’s like Around, but with an apostrophe instead of an A, look us up and, uh… please don’t blow up my ship.”

There was a jerking motion upon my craft and I closed my eyes for what I imagined to be the last time. The controls let out a warning siren to signal a loss of control. The comms chirped on as I barely managed to open my eyes.

“This is Captain Malark from the DSSS Earl Grey. Rest assured we will not fire upon a weaponless Drifter. But we do have a tractor beam latched to you, so you will find escaping not an option.”

I wanted to say, ‘but you just did fire upon a weaponless vessel,’ but decided against it. “What do you want with me?”

“Come aboard and we will discuss it. Your options are to make an immediate path for our shuttle bay, or we will energize you directly from your ship to our brig.”

“Don’t you dare energize me. I’ve read about what those things can do.”

“Then your option is narrowed down to one, Anna. Someone will be there to meet you.”

I had never piloted more precisely in my career, save the moments when one of my hands was tuning back into dispatch’s frequency. “Grep, I’ve got… a situation update. No, wait. First, a question.”

“I’m listening…”

“What is the DSSS?”

“Them, huh?” He sounded deflated. “Well, we’ve opened a bag of phleps, haven’t we? The Deep Space Systems Security. Kind of like a mostly neutral oversight agency. Decentralized. For the people they represent, most on this side of the DMZ, they do a lot of nose-sticking-where-it-doesn’t-belonging.”

“They’ve asked me to come aboard.”

A groan came to my ears. “See what I mean?”

“And… what should I do?” I said, creeping ever closer to the massive saucer’s shuttle bay.

“Just tell them the truth. We’ve done nothing wrong, or if we have, you’ve been misled. Do that feigning ignorance play you mentioned before. Overall, you just want to cooperate.”

“I couldn’t imagine another way out of this,” I gulped, glancing out at the debris field. “I’d better get off the transponder.”

“Luck be to you.”

Passing through their fancy airtight landing port, I was met with a small battalion of crew members, pointing at me with laser weaponry through every step of the landing procedure. I had never been faced with the opportunity before, so I decided to hold my hands up in the air as I exited, just for good measure.

Someone with a similar uniform but slightly more flashy lines across his chest and shoulders waved at the others. “You can put the weapons down. It’s not one of them, as you all can see. Anna was it?”

I almost forgot my name for a moment. “Uh… yes! That is what I said over the waves, didn’t I?”

The man’s heavy brow leaned forward like a glacier ready to drop into a freezing ocean. “Well, Anna, the Captain of this vessel would like to have a word with you and get this figured out. Anyone not on a duty shift, have a look at this ship of hers.”

“Aye, sir.”

I glanced back, almost offering them a warning to not go through my underwear or something, but I figured I had already said enough stupid things. They’re going to think I made the name Anna up, aren’t they, I thought to myself, watching the security officer’s back. In a lift to another deck, I tried my hardest to focus on anything but the man, but the circular, pale, windowless walls picked up on my suddenly resurfaced claustrophobia. By the time the space was closing in on me, the doors opened for the both of us.

“The bridge,” the security officer declared in as close to a single syllable as the language allowed.

I jerked myself about, ready to feign my every ounce of ignorance and likely a little more. The man with the most pronounced uniform embellishments was looking at me intently, arms crossed behind his back.

“Captain Malark, the sole pilot of the drifter, Anna, or so she says.”

“Welcome aboard, Anna. Come with me.”

I found myself following yet another wide back. The captain was older, blue-skinned, with tall, pointed ears. His pale uniform was not too different from the others aboard, prim, pressed, and possibly a pinch too taught, presumable on purpose. We moved from the bridge and entered a viewing deck, the vastness of space as heavy as my discomfort.

Malark finally swiveled back around, planting his feet down before taking a seat at a circular, wooden table. He gestured in a way I imagined to mean ‘sit down.’

“I have one of my officers researching this ‘Cycles Go ‘Round.”

“We have good reviews. I don’t know if the DSS…SS…S has any need of insurance, but we certainly can do—“

I found silence in the palm of his raised hand. “I’ll need to know what sort of business you were doing with that ship.”

“Insurance business, of course. And to be honest, I’m not sure if my employer will be miffed that we missed out on a sale from them, or happy that I was yet to submit their application to the central office and force us to pay out a claim already. But was it necessary to… kill them?”

Malark crumpled his lips. “They are not dead. We transported them across to our brig before we completed our attack.”

My hand jittered against the smooth wood of the table. “I had just left their docking port, you know! What if I had been caught up in the attack?”

“Rest assured, we made sure to transport every last life sign across to us.”

“Well, I’m glad I was out of there, then. I don’t trust that transporter technology, you know. I’ve heard the stories.”

Malark made a face that either told me he was realizing my innocence, or that he was going to enjoy interrogating me further. “I don’t assume you can tell me more about the crew of that ship. Perhaps how many there were?”

“There were three,” I answered, nodding my head before I could think of any more incriminating details, be it from myself or the Espinoids.

“Good. And what about their ship?”

“What about it?”

The captain nodded slowly. “What were you led to believe about its purpose?”

“A science vessel?”

His face twisted up, eyes narrow. “You don’t sound sure.”

“There are lots of scientific fields. I didn’t ask about the exact thing they were sciencing. It could be social science for all I know. Well, it could have, but… you know. Why destroy it?”

Malark stood up, his unimpressive, past-prime mass struggling against the tight uniform. “That’s for me to know, and for you to find you.”

I looked at the table, nearly rolling my eyes. “Okay, dad,” I murmured.

The captain tensed himself as if he had heard, then jerked himself up out of the seat.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” I replied meekly.

“Well, if you don’t already know, then you most likely will not. And until we find out more about you and your company, you won’t be going anywhere.”

“Sure, I’ll be fine here,” I said leaning back in the relatively comfortable slightly padded chair.

“In the brig.”

The seat squeaked as I jerked up. “The where?”

Malark shuffled, turning his back to me, possibly looking at me in the reflection of the viewing windows, while the security officers he buzzed in took me away. I offered up a slight bit of resistance, simply to force them to earn their paycheck or whatever, but not enough that they would treat me like they did the Espinoid’s ship.

Soon enough, I found myself several levels down behind the heavily tinted glass of the brig’s cell. As soon as the shadows of the security officers disappeared from the hall, I heard a knocking.

“Well, so it ended up like this, insurance girl?” The voice I recognized clearly, belonging to the one who was once in command of the craft-turned-space-dust.

“Commander Kale…” I sighed and grunted, lamely pounding at the wall between our holding cells. “You must have pissed them off big time. And it goes without saying that they’ve decided I was a part of it too.”

“A shame,” Kale said, his voice hollow and uncaring beyond the reinforced wall.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, twirling a finger in the air. “How about you tell me about your relationship with the DMZ? Or the fact that my people don’t seem to know a thing about you people.”

I heard a low chuckle coming through the wall. “Oh, is that how it is? Did Malark bring you aboard so you could pretend to be guilty as well, and through commiseration, get more information out of me?”

I sent a kick to the wall, certainly dealing more damage to myself than the metal structure. “Like hell! I can barely remember what I eat for breakfast, and the only thing I have to eat on board my ship right now is nearly expired energy bars! Like I’d be able to remember anything you tell me.”

The chuckle returned. “Fine, fine, understood. So, how’s about you tell me if our insurance deal went through? That would be really great, seeing as how… you know.”

I jumped back as the glass gate holding me captive shifted suddenly. Captain Malark and his security officer were there to greet me beyond the cell. “Oh, Mr. Kale, no doubt you know about how much red tape goes on with things like that,” the Captain shrugged. “Come on out, Anna.”

I paused on the threshold of the freshly opened cell. “So you know I was telling the truth, eh?”

Malark folded his arms behind his back and paced about between the front of the two cells. “Well, we determined that Cycles Go ‘Round is legitimate, and with decent reviews from its clients. But you won’t be getting any stars from our Espinoids friends here.”

Kale clicked his tongue, hand pressed against the glass, green eyes glaring angrily. “Do what you will with me.”

Malark turned and winked at me. “I lied, Miss Anna. I will allow you to find out. About why their craft was to be destroyed.”

“That’s nice, but can I just get back to—“

“Take it as some insider information, for the industry. These folks are from deep beyond the DMZ. Not a species we see very much of in these parts. Our scans just before they engaged us revealed that there was a positron explosive cache aboard. If we hadn’t taken them out, they would have engaged us head-to-head with that devilish warhead. Dealing to us a non-insignificant amount of damage, and certainly destroying themselves in the process.”

I shook my head, processing the information. “That’s crazy talk. What is that, like a suicide mission?”

Malark nodded. “Likely, also that they did not know that themselves.”

“No, no, no, you can stop right there,” I held up a hand in Malark’s face before turning on my heel to Kale’s cell. “I’ve heard plenty. You— Kale! You mean to tell me you wanted to take out an insurance policy on a vessel that, by design, is destined to be destroyed! That is fraud of… the highest caliber! And, on top of that, you were a single step away from taking me with you on your little… explosion quest! That gall of… of… this is unimaginable! What were you… what did you say, Captain?”

Kale huffed and pounded on his glass enclosure. “We were told to get the insurance! Our commander said it couldn’t be handled anywhere else. Nobody said that the bomb was going to take us out too if we used it! Malark, get this crazy chick out of here and we’ll tell you anything you want!”

Malak took me by my shoulders, pulling me back. “Okay, okay, that’s good enough. We will send you on your way, Ms. Anna of Cycles Go Around. Perhaps take heed around the border of the DMZ from now on, you and the other agents, huh.”

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