SIX

The loud clunk of the ship's bay door closing never sounded so sweet. Jack scrambled towards the ship's cockpit while barking out orders to what had just become the new crew of the Odin.

"Arissa!"

"What?"

"Do me a favor and get the shields up, pretty please!" He holstered his weapon so he could apply both hands to forcing open a door that had long since ceased to automatically function.

Arissa immediately started searching the main cabin for a the appropriate controls. "Where's the console?"

"Ah, it's not a console." As he struggled against the door, Eden ran up and threw her weight into it, trying to be as useful as possible. The door budged enough for Jack to squeeze past it and into the cockpit. "There's a floor panel labeled 'shields' in in red pen ink! Open it!" He turned to Kane. "Hey, Cyclops. You know how to operate an E.M. turret?"

"Of course we do," Talia responded, way ahead of Kane.

"Then get on it!"

On his way to the console, Kane muttered to himself. "Won't trust me with a hand gun but puts me in charge of a thousand gigawatt cannon…"

"An improvement on his disposition towards you," Talia replied.

In the cockpit, Jack pressed his hand into an ID scanner, activating the Odin's flight control system.

"Jack!" Arissa yelled from the other room. "I got the panel open! It's just a bunch of wires!"

"I know! Do you see the rubber gloves?"

Arissa grew increasingly perplexed. "…yes?"

"Put those on and twist both ends of the thick green cable together!"

"Wait, you have to hotwire your shields every time you activate them?"

"Not a good time for questions, Arissa!" Jack picked up the wireless twin-stick controller on his dashboard and pulled both sticks back with his thumbs. The Odin swayed as it pulled upward from the docking pad.

Arissa put on the gloves and cautiously touched the copper ends of the green cable together. A blinding blue flash filled the main cabin.

"You didn't look at the spark, did you? Jack asked. "I forgot to tell you not to look at it."

Arissa, still covering her pained, overwhelmed eyes, called out, "I hate you, Jack Fox!"

Ignoring Arissa's anger, Jack grabbed a hold of a microphone, sending his voice booming out of an exterior P.A. system.

"Attention anyone on the docking pad. Even though you're shooting at my beautiful ship, I would like to avoid killing you, if possible. As you might have noticed, my main engine is a repurposed capital ship cannon. It will be giving you a serious sunburn in five…four…three…two…"

Jack gave the throttle a modest nudge, roughly ten percent of the ship's potential speed. Arissa and Eden, who had not been properly seated, were thrown to the floor as the ship accelerated away from dock and ascended into the sky.

Everything went quiet. Kane swiveled his gunner turret, scanning their surroundings, then shouted out, "We're all clear!"

The walls themselves seemed to breath a sigh of relief.

"Wait," Kane shouted. "No, we're not! Three ships incoming!" Then, a moment later the engine signatures backed off. "Scratch that, they're gone."

"No they're not…" Jack reversed the Odin's engines, sending the ship directly towards the last known location of the pursuers. "Mercs don't retreat. They trick."

"Oh," Talia said. "This is going to be so good."

Jack did a silent countdown then completely maxed out the Odin's forward thrust. The resulting aft shockwave from the engine blast completely obliterated the leading mercenary ship, which had been approaching under cloak. The remaining two pursuers were revealed, but otherwise undamaged.

"They're pursuing," Kane said.

Arissa joined Jack in the cockpit. "They could never catch us, right?"

"No way." He looked at the dashboard. "Well, they couldn't normally, if I had enough fuel to sustain this speed." He tapped a power gage that was blinking red, showing only nineteen percent. Just then a mercenary frigate, three times the size of the Odin, joined in the chase.

"I'm open to suggestions," Jack said. "Other than throwing Eden here out of the airlock."

"Hey!" The girl smacked him. She was surprisingly strong.

"What? Diplomacy thrives on compromise."

"Other than condemning a girl to explosive decompression and frozen death," Jack said. "In about twenty minutes…" He tapped a few buttons on the Odin's main controls, and a holographic display of the pursuing vehicles sprang to life. "…We're going to need a solution to that."

"I'll need full access to your engineering and power systems," Talia said, plainly. The next instant, a piece of gear on Kane's arm flickered, and the glowing image of the socially graceless A.I. appeared. She was as luminescent as any projection, with a complex, chaotic wireframe of code shaping her feminine figure.

"First of all," Jack said. "Hi. Second, why?"

"I have a way with machines," She said. "Maybe I can get this one to save our lives." She pointed all around, indicating the Odin.

"I'll be pretty impressed if you magically refill the energy reserves."

"Don't be stupid. My solutions are elegant, not magic. Now, access?"

Jack looked away from the glowing figure and into Kane's eye.

"What?" Kane asked. "You want me to vouch for her?"

"No, I guess that wouldn't be worth much."

"I would have thought saving you earned me a few trust credits."

"I'm flat broke on those." Jack gave a shrug, as if this form of bankruptcy was a true tragedy.

"If I do anything that brings harm to your craft," Talia said. "Then I'll be guaranteeing my own annihilation. Chew on that logic, and once you swallow just unlock admin access. Kane and I will be there waiting." Her image vanished. After a static moment, her voice crackled out of Kane's arm once again. "That's your cue to walk away, tough guy."

Kane shrugged and strolled out of the room. A second silence fell upon the room. Eden broke it.

"I don't want to be any trouble."

"That ship has sailed and sunk," Jack said.

"I know, but. Do you have any food in here?"

"The kitchen's probably empty but you should hit up the armory."

"There's food there?"

"No. Any experience with hand guns, assault rifles, knives, anything like that?"

"I… don't remember."

"Well go root through the weapons locker and see if it jogs any muscle memory. Just don't point barrels in stupid directions or pick anything up by the pointy end and you should be fine."

"Right. Thanks coach." She turned to leave.

"Please don't call me that." Jack's words hit only empty air.

And then there were two.

"Maybe we should have a talk," Arissa said.

"Oh yeah? What about?" Jack rolled his seat to the far end of the cockpit, busying himself ship's systems that were in no actual need of attention.

"Are we going to be alright?"

"I guess that depends on what our glowing friend comes up with."

"That's not what I mean." She edged closer to him, leaning on the nearest console. "I'm talking about you and me."

Jack felt a tinge of sentimental feelings trickle up his spine at her use of the phrase.

You and me.

He crushed and destroyed the feeling with no remorse.

"Why wouldn't we be alright?"

"Be serious, Jack. Like it or not you and I are on the same team now. Do you know what linear time means?"

"Educate me."

"It means the past stays in the past." She moved to the door. "Especially ours. So can we keep things linear?"

Despite his best efforts, Jack let out a puff of sincerity.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. We're good."

Then, he was left alone, sitting at the Odin's controls. This was just how he liked it. Stars ahead, problems behind. He tapped away at a few buttons, sifting through his music library. Nothing seemed to fit, so he defaulted to an ancient song that he had found deep in old Earth's historical archives. The file was degraded and corrupt, but Jack almost preferred it that way. He pressed play, and as a broken track called "Time" by an obscure, forgotten band named "Pink Floyd" played, Jack glanced at the Odin's fuel gage.

Eighteen minutes.

* * *

Eden moseyed her way through the cramped hallways that formed the Odin's veins, thinking about the ships that were tailing them, wondering if all of this was truly her fault. She was pulled out of her pondering when she realized that she was completely lost, an impressive feat considering the Odin's limited size.

She stepped out of the hall and into a room that was completely decked with a web of crisscrossing cables, some the width of her neck. More noteworthy than the décor, however, was the grim man standing before her.

"Oh," Eden said, meaning to follow the single syllable up with something else, but failing to form the proper sounds.

"Kane, look." Talia materialized out of nowhere, luminous, only partially there. "It's the girl you shot out of the sky with a volt cannon. Maybe now is a good time to introduce yourself."

Kane recoiled his arm and slammed Talia's hardware into the nearest bulkhead. Shortly after, there was a loud pop and the man flinched in pain. Eden couldn't be sure, but it looked as though Talia had delivered a retributive electrical shock to the man.

"I'm charged with enough power to stop your fragile human heart, Kane." The A.I.'s use of the man's name sounded like that of a kid, squabbling with their sibling or perhaps a schoolyard enemy. Talia's presence was the one thing keeping Eden from backing away. Kane seemed a lot less threatening when there was someone else in the room, shocking him with what was essentially a dog collar.

"Why did you try to kill me?" Eden found it surprisingly easy to be blunt with the man, now. Surviving the firefight must have given her some zeal.

"If I wanted to kill you…"

"You would already be dead," Talia said, in a deep-voiced mockery of all overly masculine killers.

"Talia. Please."

"I couldn't resist."

Kane took a seat. "A hit like that should have forced the shuttle into a safe emergency landing, not completely fry it."

"So you were trying to kidnap me alive instead of as a corpse." Eden crossed her arms over her chest, then took a slightly less confrontational stance when she remembered she hadn't yet found the weapons locker.

"Sounds pretty damning either way, Kane." Talia seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself.

Kane let out a groan "Don't you have a ship to be analyzing?"

"Yes. You still haven't plugged me in."

Kane swiftly grabbed a cable that was dangling from a junction box and inserted it into his forearm mount. "There," he said. "Go to town."

"Will do," Talia said. "Analyzing."

Eden suddenly felt as though she was alone in the room with her almost-murderer. It was an uncomfortable atmosphere.

"Why were you after me?" She asked.

"You know what a mercenary is, kid?"

"Why does everyone keep calling me kid?"

"Probably because you're still not old enough to take that as a compliment."

Eden felt her cheeks go flush. "Yes. I know what a mercenary is. So what did your client want with me?"

"That's my point. Guys like me only get told what they need to know. Apparently I didn't need to know what was so special about you."

"Fine. If not why, then who?"

Kane shook his head in despair. "Wish I could, ki—" He caught his tongue. "…Lady."

"Eden is fine." She gathered the gumption to approach the man and offer to shake his hand. "You can just call me Eden."

"Alright, Eden. I'm Kane. I promise not to shoot at you anymore, for what it's worth." He took her hand, and Talia spoke up immediately.

"Fascinating." She projected her humanoid form into the room once again and stepped close to Eden, studying her. "I'm picking up an anomalous reading."

"What kind of reading?" Kane asked. "Where?"

Talia raised a single digital eyebrow. She pointed at Eden's head.

"I think we need to have a conversation with the others."

* * *

Arissa made her way to Jack's weapons locker, hoping to find Eden there for an exchange of answers. Just a little girl-talk would go a long way right about now. She ran her hands over the old familiar bulkheads of the Odin, reminiscing, just a little.

She stepped into the armory to find it empty. Either Eden had already come on gone, she had gotten lost, or she decided to avoid the weapons entirely. Being here unsupervised suddenly made Arissa feel like she was rooting through an ex boyfriend's underwear drawer. She took a step back, but her curiosity quickly conquered her and she found herself plunging into Jack's goods.

His collection had expanded a great deal since she last saw it. Most of the firearms were in line with Jack's antiquated tastes and took classic, kinetic ammunition only. Lead, steel, copper, and so on. There were a few energy weapons lying around, but Arissa knew he was only holding on to them for the sake of selling, or using their circuitry to help keep the Odin running in one way or another.

Then she came across the only locker in the room that was actually sealed. A touch screen displaying a simple keypad configuration was staring back at her, begging for a four-digit pin number.

"Don't be nosey, Arissa," she said, issuing a first and final warning to herself. It would have been an easy warning to heed, had she not been almost positive what the requisite code was. Without hesitating, she punched in their old anniversary date.

ACCESS DENIED.

"Asshole," she said, some how offended that it had been changed. Next, she tried her birthday, then his.

DENIED.

DENIED.

Before walking away, a stray neuron fired in her mind, igniting one final idea.

Zero-two-four-nine.

GRANTED.

Arissa shook her head at what was clearly Jack's emo side showing through. Their relationship had fallen apart over the course of an entire month, February, 2649. Apparently he wanted to commemorate the loss.

"You're such a sad sap," Arissa said, opening the locker. Inside, she found a familiar lacquer-finished wooden box, tall, flat, and thin. She delicately removed the box from the locker and placed it on a nearby table. Clicking both clasps, she opened the box to see its contents pristine, gleaming, and untouched.

Two katanas sat nestled in clean black velvet. She was almost positive he had jettisoned them into space years ago. Positive because he had told her he was going to do it. Yelled her, if she was being honest. And yet…

"You kept them," she said to herself in a whisper.

"Of course I did." He was standing in the door, looking a little less than happy. "They're worth a lot of money. You ought to know, you bought them." He crossed the room, shut the case on her, and placed it back in the locker. He pressed the "reset" button on the keypad and entered a new pin. When he turned to face Arissa again, it was clear that he was biting his temper's tongue. "Is this what you meant by same team' and 'Past stays in the past?'"

"Couldn't help myself." She shrugged.

"I know," Jack said. "You never can. Where's the girl? She grab something that can kill?"

"I don't know, I haven't seen her."

There was a loud static pop from a ceiling mounted speaker. Talia's voice glitched, stuttered, then seeped into the room.

"Attention fellow swashbucklers," she said. "Sorry if this is a little loud. The Odin's systems and I are still getting acquainted. What was I going to say? Oh. All crew report to the bridge for an important mission meeting." There was a moment of static. "Shit I don't know how to end the call. Oh wait, there it—"

Jack stepped back from the door and gestured an open hand towards the hallway.

"After you."

She left. He followed.