Finding Famine

00: Rich Beyond Dreams

As the ship flies, so do we.
As the ship fights, so do we.
As the ship dies, so do we.

--Uhmani refrain

Montgomery Burke refused to die as he’d lived, wallowing in haphazard gravity. He’d grown up close to the Stormcrow’s engines where you didn’t have to pay for heat, but you couldn’t trust the force that held your boots to the ground. Here in the ship’s Upper Mezzanine neighborhood, pull worked the way it should. That alone tamed the risk.

Monty wasn’t big enough for the docks or brave enough for zero-g, but he had a knack for chemistry. Now Monty lived in a one-room flat in the Stormcrow’s privileged upper decks, in a makeshift drug lab and proper pull at his feet.

Atomic light flooded through the flat’s single porthole window, a detonation so close it cast stark shadows against the wall. Monty blinked his eyes to clear the spots from his vision. For the hundredth time in six days, he looked at the entrance to his flat. Still locked. Monty sighed. Then he turned back to his work, wiping fog from the lenses of his respirator.

The caustic air tasted like the filters needed changing, but Monty wasn’t about to take it off—not in the same room as three hulking SSR-490I centrifuges. He hummed a tune as he used a glass extraction rod to carefully siphon chemicals through the airtight nipple of a transport flask. He then fed the liquid into the machines, which he was using to spin up a fortune’s worth of handsome, the absolute crème of shipboard narcotics.

He was almost finished. Each of the SSR-490Is produced about a kilogram of pure handsome a day, enough for thousands of doses. All that remained was to prepare the last batch for processing, then flip the switch. Riches beyond dreams, his business partner Fendi had said. He glanced at the porthole again and stopped humming.

A week ago, his greatest fear had been being discovered. He’d paid dearly to have himself scrubbed from the Stormcrow’s duty logs: all the scrip he had, plus the promise of freshly-spun handsome to be delivered later. The flat was registered under an assumed name, and Fendi had daisy-chained batteries in the galley kitchen, divesting the room’s energy supply from the ship’s monitored grid. They’d even rerouted the atmospheric sensors so that the volatiles Monty was working with would not be detected.

That had been six days ago, before the Stormcrow went to battle stations—something neither Monty or Fendi had anticipated. In hindsight, they probably should have. Tensions within the fleet had been high for months. Monty had been too busy with his laboratory, so he’d been caught completely unaware when the Stormcrow had sounded to quarters and the door to his Upper Mezzanine flat had code-locked shut.

To hell with the Armada, Monty thought. He would never understand politics. People were too unpredictable. Not like chemistry.

Monty was perfect for this: he had no friends to come looking for him, no family left alive to care where he’d gone. Despite the sweat running down onto the respirator’s lenses, his measurements were exact. Monty straightened up, cracking the vertebrae in his back. He closed the cylinder and punched in the sequence on the time-lock. The first centrifuge was set. Two more to go. 

The hair on the back of Monty’s neck stood up. He knew every one of the ‘Crow’s vibrations firsthand: the whump-whump-whump of a greatlift elevator, the angry tremor of a starfighter catapult. This was different—power from the Kimberling drive was being diverted, flooding the shields with energy. Something’s wrong. Monty cracked his jaw to release the building pressure and felt his stomach drop into his boots.

“Fucking engine-boys,” he said out loud.  They’re flooding the field too fast—

Then the floor bucked as something big hit the ship.

Monty pitched backwards into a centrifuge, knocking one of the massive cylinders from its rotor coupling. The glass extraction rod in his hand shattered, spilling chemicals down his arms. He collapsed beside his equipment, eyes wide behind the respirator’s lenses.

Monty stared at the broken glass. That’s not supposed to touch raw air.

He scrambled to the diagnostic panel on the side of the centrifuge, punching in the override code to delay the spin sequence. Everything read nominal. He was about to thank his luck when he heard a hiss, followed by a malignant pop. Monty looked around, horror filling him as he located the source of the noise; the transport flask had spilled, its nipple torn. Reagent was pooling between the centrifuges.

Smoke began to rise from the pool. Monty’s heart hammered in his chest. His rapid breathing filled the respirator. Handsome was made from very volatile chemicals. If all the raw material in the room detonated at once, there would be nothing left of Monty to court-martial. He glanced at the porthole again.  It might even be enough to hole the ship.

I have to counter the reaction. Monty surged to his feet, lurching across the tiny room to snatch a bottle of equalizing solution from its shelf, then back to the smoldering mess. He twisted the seal free from the bottle’s neck, upending the jug onto the spilled chemicals. He didn’t skimp.

The wisps of smoke rising from the pool began to thin as the equalizing powder retarded the reagent’s ability to combine with oxygen. Monty bit back a sigh of relief. The spilled chemicals were no longer in danger of actually igniting. But even as he stood there, unseen fumes would be rising from the floor, and those fumes were lethal.

Monty held his breath as he hastily made his way to the dummy climate monitor. He and Fendi had cobbled it together out of repurposed sensors and obsolete aero-tech from the filtration decks in order to bypass the flat’s real environmental controls. With trembling hands, he thumbed the text-only readout:  

Contamination 76%. Toxin concentrations well above actionable levels.

Recommend immediate evacuation and vent procedure.

Gears above. Monty fought back panic as he pressed the respirator against his face. He slowly, carefully, drew a shallow breath, acrid through the mask’s near-spent filters. His lungs tingled with the telltale beginnings of inhalation exposure. He glanced at the lock panel on the inside of the flat’s only entrance. It was still red, still locked.

I could call Fendi. The blond gypsy had helped Monty build his drug lab, maybe he could get through the door locks. Monty picked up his hand terminal, then nearly dropped it again at the sight of his gloves. They were disintegrating into ribbons before his eyes.

The reagent. Soon, the caustic chemicals would seep through to his skin. He fought the temptation to rip the sealing tape from his sleeves and tear the gloves off—that would leave him even more exposed. Monty’s fingers shook. Steady. He punched in Fendi’s comm address.

Inter-ship communications restricted. Press send for priority channel.

Message will be monitored.

Idiot. Monty slapped away the comm screen. The ‘Crow was at battle stations. Any activity would reveal a ping from this flat. Light from another detonation flooded the room. The ship shuddered as her massive ship-defense batteries began to fire. Monty was on his own.

Lists, he thought. Chemistry always starts with a list. 

First, he needed clean oxygen. The filters on his respirator were being overwhelmed. Monty looked around. The shower. Monty’s flat had its own head with its own door, which self-sealed against moisture. There would be clean air on the other side.

Next, Monty needed to vent the flat. His eyes fell on the carbon scrubber hanging from a single screw above the cooking alcove. He and Fendi had stripped out the food-preparation equipment to make room for the batteries, pulling the scrubber loose in order to bypass its atmospheric sensors.

Monty lurched into the galley. His head was starting to hurt. Fighting the urge to cough, he reached up to the carbon scrubber. He didn’t need the sensor, just the chemical sinks encased inside. He pulled the power cable from one of the batteries. Please have enough juice. 

Monty’s fingers scrambled around the inside of the sink, catching hold of a kitchen knife that had languished there for months, magnetized to the metal basin. Monty used it to strip the wires as quickly as he could. His gloves were little more than bubbled sponges.

Hot to hot. He twisted the exposed lines together. Ground to ground. 

Electric light crackled, biting right through his ruined gear. Monty shouted in pain, the reflex reaction causing him to draw more breath than he’d wanted. He fought back against his own spasming lungs. Spots danced in front of his eyes. Not much time left. 

He squeezed the last of the wires together and lay them gently down inside the sink, beside the scrubber. Seconds passed. Then the scrubber let out an electric beep, accompanied by a tiny green light as its fan spun to life.

It worked. With sheer force of will, Monty quenched his urge to breathe as he stumbled across the room to the head. He punched the access panel and the door slid open. Monty caught it before it could slide all the way into its wall recess and release all the clean air into the contaminated flat. He slapped the access panel again as he stumbled inside. The door wrenched from his grip as it sealed shut behind him.  

Monty pulled the respirator off and drew a slow, careful breath. Nothing. I’m safe. He leaned against the door. In front of him was a sink. Beside that was a nook shower, a toilet and a recycling vestibule.

Suddenly the little room shook, vibrations sinking into Monty’s tired muscles. He pressed his palm against the wall. The spill had forced the Armada’s civil war from Monty’s mind. Now, it came flooding back to him: the detonations, the shudder of the ‘Crow’s guns.

“Hang in there, Old Girl,” Monty said.

At the sound of his voice the bathroom mirror flickered on. His eyes were bloodshot, an angry red line wreathing his features where the respirator had sealed to his face. The skin that had remained exposed was red and ruined. Boils were rising along the edges of his hairline.

Monty upended the mask. The respirator’s cartridges were ringed with multi-colored bands, each one denoting a different particle, gas or toxin the filters were rated for. Monty had bought the best respirator the ‘Crow’s black market had to offer—but a single pair of filters. Monty held up the respirator to his reflection. “Next time, buy spares.”

To accentuate his point, Monty popped out the spent cartridges. He grimaced at the hateful mustard-colored stains covering the mask’s intake vents before he dumped the entire lot into the sink. Then he stripped down, smock first, followed by trousers and tunic. He removed his gloves last, turning the ruined rubber inside out to avoid contact with his skin.

All of it went into the recycling vestibule above the toilet. He crammed the small receptacle full, then thumbed the lever that slid the hatch into place. The release would suck the recycler’s contents down to waste management to be sorted, broken down, and reconstituted. But the message on his hand terminal gave him pause. Communications will be monitored. 

Monty pictured the great conveyors, usually clogged with the Stormcrow’s refuse, bare but for his tarnished chemical gear. That’s going to raise some eyebrows. He winced as he stepped away from the recycler. His face and hands were still burning. He looked down. Blisters were forming where his gloves had failed.

The reagent. He had to get it off of him. Monty turned on the shower, wondering if the water would still be running. To his immense relief the nozzle responded as he thumbed the controls toward heat. Monty scrubbed his hands clean first, then turned the temperature down to wash his smarting face. He smiled as the water washed over him, sputtering as he tried to rid his unruly hair of the handsome's chemical stink.

A thunderclap jolted him from his reverie. The pipes behind the shower began to bang. The water pressure dropped precipitously. Monty slammed the shutoff valve on the shower and stood frozen, listening, one hand on the shower wall. That explosion had been inside the hull.

Monty heard the staccato of gunfire. More piecemeal vibrations shivered through the soles of his feet. Paranoia gripped him. He leaned over and waved a hand in front of the mirror to kill the light, then sunk down into the corner of the tiny shower.

He was suddenly freezing. His spare clothes, along with anything he could use to dry himself, was still in his poisoned flat. He slowed his breathing as best he could. Let’s figure out how long I’ll be stuck in here.  

With few exceptions, even the poorest uhmani were gene-edited. Monty’s chromosomes had been rid of undesirable traits like cancers, nearsightedness, obesity. And there were improvements, such as the cryptochrome proteins in Monty’s eyes. They allowed him to sense magnetic fields. Monty could feel the magnetic waves of the ship’s Kimberling drive coursing through the ship. With a little effort, he could even see them.

Monty closed his eyes and concentrated. The patterns that played across the backs of his eyelids did not reassure him. The drive was pushing out power at a rate Monty would never have thought possible. But the shield couldn’t be all the way up, or else he’d never have seen those detonations through the porthole window. We’re vulnerable. 

The thought bothered Monty. He’d always thought of the Stormcrow as a constant. Now she was in danger. It made his heart hurt. He’d never truly had anything against the thousand-year old ship. I just wanted more. A few tense moments passed, but there were no further detonations and the gunfire did not come again. Monty patted the shower wall. I’m right here, Old Girl.

After a long pause to reassure himself, Monty reached into the sink. His hand found the respirator. He shifted his weight out of the shower, closer to the toilet, and started pulling wads of bathroom tissue from the dispenser, balling each one up and stuffing it into a corner of the now-empty filter recesses. It was a laughable solution. All I’ve got. 

He continued plucking paper and filling the gaps until both the respirator’s filter slots were full. Then he slipped the mask back on, cold and painful against his ruined skin, and leaned his head against the shower wall which felt as cold and miserable as he was. In his flat he could just make out the ventilation scrubber whirring in the sink.

Monty bolted awake, cursing himself. He had not meant to sleep. Monty strained his senses in the near-total darkness, searching for the memory of the sound that had woken him. His head pivoted towards the dim outline of the bathroom door. Someone was inside his flat. For a second, Monty froze. Then a new kind of fear raised his flesh. The handsome.

The door had been locked. If battle-stations had been lifted, the claxons would have woken him. Could it be SecOps Marines? Had the ship’s security forces finally sniffed out his laboratory? Silently, Monty moved into a crouch.

“Monty?” A voice, little more than a whisper. “Come out if you’re here.”

Fendi. 

“I’m in the head,” Monty said. How long had he been asleep? His skull still hurt, but the ache of his skin had receded. It didn’t matter; if Fendi was inside his flat, then the door was open and the air was safe to breathe. I can escape. Monty stood up and pressed the door release, squinting into the brighter light.

Fendi Morrison was just inside the door to his flat, and he wasn’t alone: next to the blond gypsy was a thick woman in a dockhand’s jumpsuit, the kind worn in Mainbay Hangar. Her skin was creased and sallow, with gray-streaked hair pulled into a utilitarian bun above a sloped brow. She wore heavy boots, which like her jumpsuit were dull and stained. But the bronze bars of rank insignia on her shoulders were polished to a shine.

Clairre Morrison, Monty thought. The quartermaster.

“Cover yourself up, man,” Fendi said. Then he stooped to pick up a towel from a corner. As the blond man tossed Monty the towel, a young woman with a huge pregnancy slipped inside the door. Monty blinked as he fastened the towel around himself.

The sight of the woman’s rounded belly quickened a strange worry in Monty. Like all gypsies, the Morrison’s preferred natural births, tended by their own midwives aboard their ancient freighter down in Mainbay Hanger. A more natural way, fraught with peril. Monty glanced at the climate monitor.

Contamination 13%. Toxin concentrations

well below actionable levels.

The quartermaster began rolling her sleeves back. Her forearms bore twin crow tattoos, both diving towards her palms. The bird’s feathers were faded, the design scored with the haphazard scars of long-healed welding burns. “You Monty Burke?” she asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Monty said.

“Stinks in here,” the Quartermaster said. “You have an accident?”

“Reagent spilled.” Monty gingerly removed his respirator. “There was nowhere to go.”

The quartermaster looked from the ruined floor to the scrubber fan still whirring in the sink, then finally to the bathroom. “That’s smart thinking,” she said. “Is there somewhere to sit?”

Monty just stared for a moment. Then he slipped to his bunk, sliding down onto the edge of his sleeping mat. “Fendi and I got rid of the chairs,” he said.

The large woman shrugged and hefted one of the empty chemical containers from the corner. She checked to make sure it was closed, placed it nozzle-to-floor, then settled onto it. Monty’s eyes flitted to the flat’s access panel. Still red.

“Quartermaster,” Monty said. “The door’s still locked.”

“We’re at war, Monty,” the quartermaster said. “Have been for six days.”

Fendi laughed. “Monty, have you been locked in this room for a week?”

Clairre turned her head to stare at Fendi. The blond man’s chuckled died in his throat, and he wilted back into a corner. Clairre motioned to the centrifuges.

“We need to talk about the handsome,” she said.

“We’re not changing the price,” Monty said. The Morrison family had their fingers in virtually everything supply-related, from starfighter parts to the black market. It didn’t surprise Monty that the quartermaster knew about his work. But his deal had been with Fendi.

“Not about scrip.” The quartermaster sighed. “And you can call me Clairre.”

“I’m sorry Quarterm”—Monty corrected himself—“I’m sorry, Clairre, but I’m not ready yet. The spill. It puts us thirty kilos short.”

“It isn’t that, either,” Clairre said.

“We’re out of painkillers.” The pregnant woman said. She’d slipped around the room to the galley and now leaned over the sink, examining the basin full of carbon-filter.  

Something’s not right, Monty thought. “Who’s we?” he asked.

“Marines. Starfighter pilots. Ship security.” The young woman held Monty’s emergency splicework up to the light and sniffed it. “Everyone who’s fighting.”

“Send them up to Medica,” Monty said. There was bound to be painkillers on the hospital deck. Monty’s thoughts were still fuzzy; the pieces were coming together slower than he liked. Unless—handsome. The narcotic Monty was making could function as a painkiller, in a pinch.

Rich beyond dreams. “I need this,” Monty said.

“We do too, Monty.” Fendi’s voice was soft.

“We’ve been boarded.” the young woman said. She was staring at Monty with wide eyes.

“Alyaria.” Clairre waved the young woman into silence, then scrubbed her face with dirty fingers. “We’re cut off from Medica, Monty. And Engineering, and the Frigate Hangars. And the bridge, for that matter. Captain Blythe has barricaded himself there. We’re risking everything just being here.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” Monty said.

Fendi would not meet his eyes. Monty looked from the pregnant woman back to the quartermaster. The Morrisons were outcasts, not much better off than he was. His eyes fell to the burnished bars on Clairre’s shoulders. I can make her understand. 

“You’re an officer,” Monty said. “Call Captain Blythe. Beg him.”

“To do what?” Clairre asked.

“Raise the shields!” Monty said. “Pull them all the way up. Then nothing gets through.”

“We’re fighting room by room.”Alyaria’s voice was a desperate whine. “Deck by deck.” She glanced at the porthole as light from another detonation flickered through it.

Clairre stood up. “And we’re losing, Monty. If any of us are going to have a future, I need to take what you’ve spun up to where it's needed. Now.”

Monty’s heartbeat quickened. He didn’t want anyone to suffer. But the handsome he was making, the chemistry he was doing, it was the only edge he had. Without it, he’d go back to the slums. Another sob story, told over watery beer, again and again. Waiting to die.

Monty glanced towards the other side of his sleeping nook. There was a gun under his pillow. All he had to do was get to it. Stall for time. 

“What I’ve spun up?” Monty gestured at the centrifuges. “Clairre, this is the last batch.”

“Last batch?” Clairre’s voice registered genuine surprise. “Monty, Fendi said you were working with enough raw material for nearly a hundred kilos.”

“One hundred and sixteen and a half, originally.” Monty shifted his weight along his mattress. He hoped the movement looked random. “The spill cost us some of it, like I said.”

“Monty,” Clairre said slowly. “Where is the rest of it?”

“Right here.” Monty patted the mattress of his sleeping pad.

“You have over seventy kilos of handsome, in the same room you’re spinning it up?” Clairre asked. “Monty, you never thought that was…putting all your eggs in one basket?”

“Eggs?” Monty had never heard the expression.

“Never mind,” Clairre said. “Monty, we need to go.”

“You can come with us,” Alyaria said.

Monty searched the pregnant girl’s face for any sign of a double-cross, the tell-tale         arrogance of someone springing a trap. There was none. Despair welled up in him. This is real. 

Then another sensation washed over him: the Stormcrow’s mighty power output was ebbing. The ever-present feeling of the Kimberling field receded, leaving Monty cold all the way through his bones. This can’t be happening. 

An awful shudder rattled through the ship. Alyaria whimpered, gripping the edge of the sink. Fendi shifted on his feet. Clairre peered at the porthole window again. Monty realized he was holding his breath. The shields are down.

Monty fought a wave of trapped panic. The great engine’s containment rings also generated the ship’s artificial gravity. When they stopped spinning, a wave of no-pull would follow, like the gravity eddies that had tormented him as a child, but much worse. Monty gripped the edge of the sleeping nook so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Monty, what’s the matter?” Clairre was looking at him with a puzzled expression.  “You breathe more fumes than I thought?”

Monty stared at her for a moment. Then realization dawned on him. The gypsies don’t tankbirth. He looked at Alyaria. Wet births meant no gene editing; their magnetic cryptochromes were inert. They couldn’t feel what Monty felt. They don’t know the drive is dead.

In a few seconds, gravity would give out entirely, and everyone in his flat would know what happened. It wouldn’t last long. The Stormcrow had a pair of auxiliary fusion drives, which would already be working to spool the containment rings back up. But Monty remembered the wild patterns on the backs of his eyelids, the ones he’d seen while hiding in the shower. The Stormcrow was fighting for her life. The backups would take a few seconds to engage.

Then, pull was gone. Alyaria gave a little cry as her feet slid out from under her. She didn’t fall, only hung there, a hand’s breadth from the sink’s edge. Fendi placed one hand on each bulkhead, wedging himself into his corner. Clairre swore as her bucket shifted sideways. Only Monty didn’t move, his grip tight on the edge of his sleeping nook.

Now is my chance.

Monty pushed off the mattress with one hand, spinning himself towards his hidden pistol. He snatched wildly under the pillow until his hand grasped the gun’s cold metal handle. Monty’s other hand shot up, above his head. He pushed off the bulkhead, propelling himself across the room. He kicked out hard, connecting with the floor. The force sent him somersaulting through the air, over the centrifuges, impossibly high in the sudden zero-g. 

“What in the gears are you doing?” Fendi shouted.

Then Monty fetched up against the wall beside the galley nook—right next to Alyaria. Monty grabbed the pregnant woman by the neck, wrenching her away from the sink. They spun together at an almost lazy angle, hanging just above the floor in the zero-g.

“Aunt Clairre!” Alyaria’s voice was pure panic.   

“Be still.” Monty could see the whites of the girl’s eyes. He tightened his grip, twisting one arm behind her back. Then the backup drives kicked in and gravity came back on. Again Monty felt the wave coming, and was ready. He and Alyaria settled to the floor.

Alyaria squirmed, but Monty held the pregnant girl close, a shield between him and the other gypsies. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” Monty raised his voice. “But I have to go.”

“Go where, Monty?” Clairre’s arms were wide. “We’re at war.”

One of Fendi’s  hands was held out before him, palm wide. The other held a handgun of his own. “Do not hurt her, Monty.”

This one sold me out. Monty pointed his pistol at Fendi. “Let me go.”

“Monty, that girl is precious to me,” Clairre said. “I pulled her into this world myself.”

“Then leave me alone,” Monty said.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Fendi said. But he didn’t lower his pistol.

Monty’s mind raced. The Quartermaster was a powerful figure on the Stormcrow, but she wasn’t the Captain. In fact, Clairre would have to keep this a secret, or risk exposing her involvement. There were places he could hide. Monty had heard of pressurized holdfasts welded into the Stormcrow’s catwalks: drug dens, smuggler’s stashes. I can still get out.

But he needed at least some of the handsome. Monty shifted Alyaria towards the sleeping nook, around the now-lifeless centrifuges. Monty’s hip bumped the edge of the first machine. Glass rattled. Monty winced. Not again. 

Alyaria squirmed again, wrenching her face into the flesh of his arm. She bit down hard. Monty bellowed in pain. He tried to keep hold, but the pregnant woman was shorter than him. Alyaria ducked out of his grasp. The young woman slipped around the centrifuge and scrambled to Clairre’s side, holding her belly. For a moment, no one moved. Then Fendi raised his pistol.

No. Monty’s finger squeezed the trigger at the same time that Fendi fired. A sudden push knocked all the air out of Monty’s lungs. He looked down. There was a hole in his bare chest. Blood rained from it, down onto the floor. Alyaria screamed. Clairre shouted something neither man heard. Monty fired again. Across the room, Fendi crumpled to the floor.

“Fendi!” Clairre rushed to the blond man. “Alyaria, help me.”

Alyaria took two steps towards Monty’s sleeping nook.

They’re going to take it all, Monty thought. He tried to raise his gun again, but his arms were lead. He clutched his side as he dragged air into his lungs. The effort hurt.

But the pregnant woman only pulled his blanket from the pad. She and the quartermaster huddled over Fendi, bundling the thermal cloth against his chest. The blond man wasn’t moving.

I can get to Medica, Monty thought. He’d tell them it was an accident. They’d patch him up. Adrenaline surged through him. Monty raised his arm.

Clairre saw the movement from the corner of her eye. She whirled to face him. “Monty, don’t!”

But Monty wasn’t listening. He pulled the trigger again. Only this time, a surge of fatigue dragged his arm down as he fired, the shot slamming into the still-loaded centrifuge before him. Reagent spilled from the machine. Shit, Monty thought. That’s not supposed to touch—

There was an audible intake of air as the volatiles ignited. Flames blossomed, cartwheeling across the floor, spreading like the vine-flowers in the Mezzanine gardens. Fire filled the room.

Clairre pulled Fendi to his feet. “We have to go!”

“What about the handsome?” Alyaria asked.

It’s mine. But Monty’s tongue was too dry to speak.

Clairre pushed Alyaria towards the door. The young woman hesitated in the entrance, pulling a slim tool out of the locking mechanism. Then the quartermaster shoved her through the gap, dragging the limp Fendi behind her. The door cycled shut.

Monty dropped his pistol. His flat was a nightmare made of fire. He stumbled to his sleeping nook. The blood made the floor slick. He could feel the flames blistering the skin of his back and legs. The pain felt very far away for some reason.

“Monty, why isn’t the fire-foam working?” Clairre’s voice was tinny through the door’s intercom. The quartermaster’s face was wreathed by the viewscreen on the access panel.

“We disabled it,” Monty said. They’d taken his blanket. Monty pressed his pillow to the hole in his chest, trying to stop the bleeding. The zero-g had shifted his mattress. One of the cases of handsome peeked out at him from beneath it.

“Monty.” Clairre’s voice was quiet. “I’m sorry it turned out this way.”

Heat from the flames was making it hard to see. The ceiling of his flat was blackening with soot. The ‘Crow was burning. I’m sorry, Old Girl. “Put the fire out,” Monty said.

“We’re trying,” Clairre said. “But the environmental overrides aren’t coming up.”

“Disabled—” Monty coughed. It tasted like copper and iron. “—Disabled those, too.”

Monty sank down onto the mattress. Guilt rushed through him. The fire was his fault. He had to put it out. He thought of the chemical scrubber in the sink. Fire needed oxygen. To put it out, he had to vent the room. But not like before. The other way. The porthole. 

“Clairre,” Monty said. “Tweak the door. Tell it I’m not here.”

He looked up. Clairre’s head was turned. She was talking to someone. Monty hoped they understood. Fire was a serious threat on a starship. For that reason, every viewport that faced a hard vacuum could be detonated, causing near-instant decompression.

But there were failsafes, to make sure that such a detonation could never happen while any of the ‘Crow’s crew were nearby. The door panel registered Monty’s presence—he’d entered, but he had not left. And with Monty in the room, the porthole couldn’t detonate.

Can’t trigger the sensors, Monty thought. I pulled those myself. But the failsafe was just a simple binary count. If they changed the one to a zero, they’d have effectively told the door that the room was empty. The operating protocols would do the rest.

“We got it, Monty.” Clairre gave Monty a thumbs-up through the intercom.

Then a series of pops pulled Monty’s attention away from the screen. A square hole appeared beside him where the porthole used to be, black space beyond it. A roar filled his ears. His mattress ripped past him, sucked into empty space in a matter of seconds, followed by one hundred and sixteen kilos of handsome.

The escaping air pulled Monty across the room after it. His lungs weren’t working, and his vision darkened. Still, Montgomery Burke was able to marvel at the sight of the Stormcrow as she rushed away from him. The jet-black ship hung against a wall of stars, each one a jewel. Monty shut his eyes. The fire was out. His ship was safe.

Rich beyond my dreams.