Just a little sketch. T.A. Leederman may guess what it’s about.
Persape sat in the pilot’s chair, a length of black hair drooping into her eye. There were only two seats in the transparent bubble at the prow of Mia Muŝeto: captain and pilot. But there was only one of her…and she never took her father’s chair.
Mia Muŝeto was a forty-meter prospector’s ŝalupo. Command capsule at the prow; crew cubby, fuel tanks, waste-heat radiators amidships; tokamak and engines astern.
The little spacecraft hovered meters over the surface of a nameless chunk of rock, under a field of gemlike stars. Along the rock’s horizon was an orange gleam, the sun’s light blocked from view by a world the size of a hill.
Under the command capsule hung the manipulators. Persape’s hands grasped the levers, delicately choosing samples from the surface and dropping them into a basket visible on her terminal. The metaplastoc fingers, though so clumsy-looking, she worked with a lover’s delicate touch, and in the lamps underfoot, she expertly decided which samples were more promising…which less so.
In the instrument panel, she’d wedged a picture between comms and radio-ranger. Two figures, one short, one tall, a station promenade. The smaller figure looked up at the taller one, holding his hand.
“There you are,” she said to herself, adjusting the handler. “That’s a nice little kamasite, how’d you like to come along? In you go…”
There was a faint hiss on the radio. A click, silence, click-hiss.
Persape looked at it.
Click-hiss. Click. Click-hiss.
“Hello?”
Persape sat back and put the handler in neutral. “Did I hear that?” she said.
Click-hiss.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”
The voice was a woman’s, nervous, strained.
“Hello?”
Persape leaned forward and picked up her handset. “Hello, this is the Mia Muŝeto. Who is this?”
She watched her chrono as she listened to another Hello? Hello?, then the voice gasped, “Oh! Oh! Irodiada! Help! I need help!”
“Oi, who’s this? Who are you? What’s happening?”
“Help! I’m in a lifepod!”
“What happened to your ship?”
“Can you help me?”
“What happened? How long ago?”
“We were attacked by pirates,” the distant woman said. “We were shot up. I got put in a lifepod. I’m scared. Who are you?”
“I’m Persape Sidonio. Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Can you see out? Do you see anything?”
“There’s a window. I see stars. They’re moving…I think I’m tumbling.”
Persape put her face in her hands. Oh no. There goes time and fuel, she thought. And money. This’ll ruin me. How can I pay for the fuel to chase down a lifeboat?
So much easier this would have been in the inner system, a militia aviso just a few million kilometers away, wherever you were. Ready to come pick you up within days.
She toyed with the idea of turning off her radio, going back to work.
She looked at the picture on the instrument panel.
“What’s your name?” her mouth said against her will.
“Zloha. Zloha Salvafor. Will you help me? Please?”
Persape swallowed. Her tanks were three-quarters empty. Her samples were promising but not fully convincing. She wouldn’t be able to sell this rock’s location for anything near what it would cost to refuel without a few hundred kilos more samples, and a core set, and imaging, and seismographs…
Hands over her eyes. Some lifepod flying off through space, a kilometer a second…chase her down…
“I…can help you if I can find you. We’re supposed to help whoever needs help. That’s the code of the outer system.” She looked at the little picture on her instrument panel and felt sick. “That way…that way someone will help us…when we need it.”
If I’m not a bankrupt.
“Oh, Goddess, thank you!”
Persape pulled back the handler and locked it. Click-clunk. “Let me listen for your beacon.” She threw a switch and put on her headphones. Listened…listened…
The woman’s distant voice said grateful words, but Persape didn’t hear them. She heard a distant ping…ping…ping…
“I’ve a directional on you,” she interrupted the woman. Interrupted Zloha. “You’re close.”
“How close?”
“Six hours.” That wasn’t so bad. Six hours. She began doing the math. “Hang on.”
“Thank you!”
“Thank me when I get there.” She latched her belts, threw the lever on the drive. “Here we go.”
The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)
Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)
And more—now out!
