Work Text:
Scraprats
The Company-issued relief room’s door banged open. Captain Dominic Jackson stalked in, jaw clenched as she pushed back the pain radiating through her abdomen. She shook her head in disbelief at the blood staining her leg, frantically cramming toilet paper into her pants. Damn pills. Ransom had sworn that they would suppress the bleeding, but what did he know. He didn’t have the goddamn organ.
An alarm blared right next to her ear. Shit. She was late. Dom grabbed her Company-issued pack and hurried out the door to join the other scrapper captains for roll call.
Standing in the roll line, she closed her eyes as she felt a drop sliding down her leg.
Please, please, please.
They snapped open as a Company officer approached her.
“What’s your name, scrapper?”
“Jackson, sir,” she responded, furiously praying to whatever gods would listen.
“Why were your eyes closed, Jackson?”
Her mind raced as she tried to find the excuse least likely to get her killed.
“It- was a momentary lapse of judgement, sir.”
The drop of blood plinked onto the floor next to her heel. She shifted her foot slightly, covering the scarlet.
The officer scowled and moved on. Dominic released a breath and almost stumbled.
On the tram, Solstice, her lieutenant and closest friend, glanced at her.
“I thought you got your tubes tied.”
Dominic shook her head.
“Company wouldn’t let me. Said the population might die out, like anyone cares, and every viable ovary has to be functional. Remember when having a kid used to be your choice?”
“Well, it never really was,” Solstice mumbled, pushing their thin hair behind their ear. Dom snorted.
“Fair.”
“Captain Jackson, sir.”
Dom looked up. A scrawny redhead kid stood before her, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. He looked to be about seventeen. She felt a pang of sadness as she observed the kid’s sunken gray eyes, nevertheless bright with anticipation.
“That's me. Are you Mars?” she asked
“Arthur Mars, sir. I've been assigned to your ship?”
“Yeah. uh, here’s your gear, ship’s number 27 in dockyard Georgia. You’re bunk three.”
Mars nodded and scurried off.
Back on the ship, Dom surveyed her crew. The standard four; Solstice, Mars, and a stern-looking gray haired man named Seeker Brown. Brown had checked in at oh nine hundred sharp. She filed that away under ‘personality traits to be wary of’: punctual. Dom wasn’t much for the strict rule-adhering assholes, but it wasn’t her choice to have him assigned to her crew. Each captain got to pick a lieutenant, who had to be approved by the Company, and then was tossed two soldiers from the mess of applications. They were usually desperate, money-hungry teenagers, but occasionally you’d get a veteran like Brown. Dom and Solstice had been on the same crew since they were the desperate, money-hungry teenagers.
She straightened her back.
“Scrappers.”
“Yes, sir,” they chorused.
“We'll be flying to 61 Signet today. You know the drill; jump off when the ship lands, find an entrance, grab your shit, get out. The Company requires efficiency and reliability. If we don’t meet the quota, we’ll be let go, and that’ll look bad on all of our resumes.”
There was a smattering of laughter among the minuscule crew. If you get fired by the Company, no one else in their right minds would take you on.
When the ship fell into orbit, the crew zipped up their suits and secured their helmets.
“Test your comms, everyone,” Dom said.
“Solstice.”
“Mars.”
“Brown.”
“Jackson.
“All set,” Dom said. “Try not to die out there, scrappers.”
The ship landed. Solstice and Brown headed west, Dom directed Mars to the north. When they arrived at the building, she slammed her shoulder against the rusted metal door and it screeched open. Two doors led out from the antechamber. Mars took the left, Dom took the one straight ahead. Inside, it was basic procedure, what she’d done for going on sixteen years now. Click her scanner for scrap, pick up anything worth something. Her comms cracked.
“Captain?” It was Mars.
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing, I was just wondering… what’s Solstice's first name?”
“They just go by Solstice. I don't know their first name - I’ve never asked and they’ve never felt the need to share it.”
“Oh. Ok.”
“Hey Mars?”
“Yes sir?”
“Keep the comms usage to emergencies only, ok?”
“Yes sir, sorry sir.”
“No worries, it was an honest mistake.”
Twelve minutes and nineteen seconds later, Mars screamed. Dom dropped her scrap and flew around the corners, scrambling to find him before someone - something - got him. She found him curled up on the ground, staring into the wall with all the intensity of a charging bull.
“Hey, hey, are you ok? What the hell happened, Mars?”
He was trembling.
“I don’t- I don’t know, there was a girl I think, she laughed and then just- ran at me and - I don’t know! She disappeared!”
Dom frowned. She felt his forehead - no fever.
“I'm fine,” Mars protested weakly.
“You're clearly not fine. You're seeing ghosts.” His legs shook as she pulled him up by his arms. He retched onto the floor.
“Yeah, you’re not fine. Go back to the ship, Arthur. Pseudo’ll take care of you.”
His brow furrowed. “Pseudo?”
“The psuedo-intelligence. The autopilot. The AI. Whatever you want to call it. Just go back to the ship.”
He nodded and stood up, shaking. Mars gathered the few pieces of rusty metal he had salvaged, placed them in his pack, and let the darkness swallow him up. Dom watched him go, then headed back to her own pile of scrap. A couple of nuts and bolts, some magnets, and the real treasure - an unbroken glass jar. If no one else gathered anything worthwhile, this at least would meet quota for this cycle. Dom carefully packaged it in between an extra coat and some styrofoam from the hallway to the left. She hefted the strap of her pack over her shoulder and headed to the right.
Solstice and Brown were already cataloging the scrap by the time she got back to the ship. Dom removed the jar from her pack and let the rest of the scrap fall unheeded to the floor.
“Where’s Mars?” She asked.
Solstice frowned.
“He isn’t back yet. I thought he was with you,” They said.
Dom tried to control the panic rising in her chest. He probably just took a wrong turn.
“I told him to go back to the ship like an hour ago. Is he lost?”
Brown was at the terminal in an instant. He tapped away and eventually came up with a crude scan of the buildings. Arthur’s little blue dot was panicked, swerving around corners and doubling back on itself. Dom took a deep breath. Steady.
“Brown, order a teleporter. Solstice, see if you can get his comms online,” She ordered. Solstice nodded and began figuring with the comm system, but Brown hesitated.
“Sir - the scrap he’s collected. We’ll lose it if we teleport him.”
Dom gritted her teeth and replied,
“In my opinion, scrapper, a human being under my command is more valuable than a few pieces of metal. Now try to understand that, but in the meantime, order the damn teleporter.”
Brown’s jaw tended, but he nodded tersely and typed in the command. Dom grabbed a rust-covered stake that Solstice had scavenged and slammed the airlock button with her fist.
Outside, the terrain was rocky, and the weather had worsened. Giant shapes miles away moved slowly through the mountains as Dom hurried to the clearing where the supply pod was scheduled to land. A few minutes later, a bright spot appeared in the quickly darkening sky. The pod landed in the clearing and played the sickening jingle, a trademark of the Company. Dom flinched as the trees seemed to growl at the noise. She opened the door, grabbed the teleporter, and sprinted back to the ship. She thought she heard footsteps behind her, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop and look. Her scanner beeped, filing some sort of fauna they’d never seen before into the database.
Back on the ship, Arthur’s comms were somewhat online. They could hear him, but he couldn’t hear them. Dom raced to set up the teleporter before he was eaten by some horrific entity or crushed by a falling beam. Her hands shook as she plugged it into the socket on the wall of the ship. At the terminal, Solstice was furiously tapping away, trying to find some way of communicating with the poor kid.
His voice crackled over the intercom, breathing heavily and clearly running from something.
“What the hell is that? What the hell is that?!?”
Dom finished setting up the teleporter and yelled at Solstice,
“Get him out of there. Get him out!”
Just as Arthur’s scream filled both the comm system and the air. The teleporter zapped, and his lifeless body fell to the floor, spilling blood throughout the cabin. Arthur’s dead eyes stared at the ceiling as his head slowly rolled toward the door.
In the silence, Solstice’s foot shifted, spilling papers and a few bolts onto the metal floor. Brown jumped at the noise. Dom swallowed.
“Brown, keep cataloging. Solstice, scan outside for whatever the hell did this to him. I’ll - I’ll bury him.”
Solstice hesitated.
“Dominic-”
“Go.”
Dom’s shovel sliced into the soggy ground. A few yards away, Solstice’s scanner beeped.
“I’ve got something, Cap.”
She wiped her brow and trudged over to them. A code rolled across the screen, meaningless numbers and letters registering this entity into the database. A description popped up - ETHEREAL > TRANSLUCENT > ANCIENT
“Ancient? Never seen that one before.”
“Alright, let’s just - help me out here. We need to get back before oh ten hundred.”
Solstice nodded and grabbed another shovel.
Ten minutes later, the grave was dug, and they rolled Arthur’s makeshift shroud - a tarp worth sixteen credits - into the hole and covered it with mud. As Dom was smoothing over the disturbed ground, footsteps approached from behind. She whirled around, hefting the shovel, but it was just Brown. Dom relaxed as she took in what he was holding - a small, crudely carved dog made from ash wood. Brown knelt and placed it on the mound, over where Arthur’s heart had been laid to rest. He straightened, nodded to Dom, and walked slowly back to the ship. Solstice followed. Dom took a deep breath.
Back on the ship, Brown was scrubbing the bright scarlet stains from the floor, while Solstice was tapping away on the terminal. Dominic sat on her bunk and asked Solstice what they were doing.
“Looking up Mars,” they responded. “I figure the least we could do is send his family a message. Can’t really say he died doing what he loved or serving his country or any bullshit like that. He died because the Company values profit over life.”
Dominic looked down.
“Shit,” she said softly. “Move over, Sol.”
Solstice recognized the tremor in her voice and shifted to the left. Dom typed the command:
LOCATION > 71-GORDION > COMPANY BUILDING > LAUNCH
She sat back and clenched her jaw. Solstice looked on, brow furrowed.
“I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep, Captain.”
Dom straightened. “We still have to report Arth-”
“I know. I’ll take care of it. You’ve done enough, Dom.”
She nodded, stripped off her boots, and climbed into her bunk.
Dominic was awakened by the ship landing at the Company building. Outside the tiny porthole, rain struck the pavement with all the ferocity of a raging bull. She sighed and pulled on her boots. Surveying the scrap they’d gathered, she selected the glass jar and two lengths of unrusted pipe. Her scanner told her they’d meet the quota.
Outside, Solstice stood with her, ready to fight if something went wrong. The Company building stood before the two, a towering rectangle of concrete against the darkened, smoke-choked sky. The only opening was a small cutout with a wavering lantern hung above the counter, which held a small bell. Dom approached it warily and placed the jar and pipes on the counter, then took a deep breath and rang the bell. She took a few steps back, watching.
The door screeched open and a slimy tentacle lashed out, feeling around for any scrappers foolish enough to linger next to the counter. When no food was to be found, it scooped the jar and pipes into the building, then slammed the door.
Dom released her breath, then glanced at Solstice, whose skin was somewhat paler than usual.
“All good?” she asked. Solstice nodded and led the way back to the ship under the harsh glow of a few sparse lamps lining the path.
“Fucker always scares me. How many quotas have I filled? How many catacombs or tombs or abandoned planets have we explored, only for me to jump out of my skin when I see a slimy bitch?”
Dom smirked. “Don’t worry about it. It’s, uh… it’s stupid, but I’ve never been able to handle Baboon Hawks. Flying freaks. Feel like I can’t go outside without staring at the sky at all times.”
Solstice shook their head. “At least the Hawks can actually hurt you. All it takes to tame the door squid is two feet of distance,” they chuckled.
“Is it in the database at all? Do we even know what the hell that thing is? Or are we just supposed to hand our shit over and not ask questions.”
“Probably the latter.”
Dom hit a button on her helmet and the airlock door hissed open.
Brown looked up, his eyes bloodshot.