“I’ll leave you be,” Alice’s blue light shimmered dull over her.
“No, wait,” Dawn snapped up, “I can’t sleep now. I killed a Dragon! Then you drop a bombshell like that on me?”
“I apologize,” said Alice, “What can I do to help?” Dawn thought on it, hard. Beneath the denial and stubbornness, what did she actually want? What do I feel? Lonely?
“Tell me more. About Sheba’s research. About all the research,” Dawn grinned, “About everything you’ve got in that weird virtual brain of yours.” Alice’s glow brightened from her neutral blue to light violet.
“Well… Sheba thought Dragons were much, much older than humans, wherever they were. Chrysum is a very ancient mineral, scattered across the Universe when it first exploded into life…”
Alice spun stories of Chrysum and Dragons until Dawn’s eyelids drooped low. She lulled her with tales of human expansion, all the way from before the WCC was born from the United Nations. They talked through hours that would have been night on Earth. When Dawn finally drifted off on the edge of her armchair, a hatch slid open in the wall over her head. Alice dispensed a blanket that floated down over her. She was warm until she had to assign new deck duties in the morning.
“Goodnight, Dawn.”
Chapter Thirteen: Blue Light Burglary
“Wagner, I don’t want to hear it,” Dawn dismissed him. She, him, and a few others were all that remained in the bridge after deck duty assignment. The SkyLine unfurled through their massive viewing window.
“I swept that deck with you every day on the trip out to Neptune. I deserve to do something else!” Wagner persisted nonetheless.
“And you did. Yesterday you primed the Chrysum pumps. The day before that, you reconfigured malfunctioning room conditioners. Now it’s your turn to brush the deck again,” Dawn ordered nonetheless.
“Come on Daw-”
“Captain Redding,” she corrected.
“Now I know this is a lost cause,” Wagner sighed. He slunk off to find his trusty broom.
“Dawn,” a blue line marking the frequency of Alice’s voice shot across the viewing screen.
“Wha- she gets to call you Dawn?” Wagner whined. She did, since Dawn woke up alone with a blanket draped over her.
“You’re dismissed, Wagner,” Dawn dug in, though she winked to offset the show of authority. “What is it?”
“There’s a ship coming within range of our shields. Quickly,” Alice’s blue line jumped with each word. It wasn’t uncommon for ships bound for different destinations to pass one another in the SkyLine. If their shields chafed, however, neither would reach them.
“See if we can connect with them,” said Dawn, thinking to avoid just that mishap.
“Connecting,” Alice announced. Her blue line went flat, then opened to form of a holographic screen. A few idle seconds brought up the silhouette of a stranger. Her face was cast mostly in darkness. A single yellow ring of an eye and the glare of a steel plate on the side of her face was all Dawn could make out. She sank back in her seat at the sight of it, along with the rest of the crew around the bridge.
“Hello,” Dawn managed to grin, “Captain Dawn Redding of the SS Arcadia. Do you need to pass us?” The yellow lens took a curious rotation to one side.
“You’ve strayed.” It was a woman’s voice.
“Excuse me?” the screen shrunk down to the blue line. The silhouette went with it. “Hello?” Dawn tried again.
“She’s blocking any further connection,” Alice told her. Dawn didn’t have a chance to get another word out before the whole room jostled around her.
“What the hell?” Dawn screamed. Another quake of the Arcadia’s frame tossed her from her throne.
“She’s ramming us!” shouted Alice over the disgruntled cries of the crew. “The friction’s cracking our shields!”
“What? Get me a read on their ship!” Dawn ordered, one
hand grasping the throne, “Who are they?”
“Freighters from Earth by legal designation. Their flight patterns show them circling Neptune quite a bit for that, though,” said Alice.
“Scrappers, probably,” Dawn realized, “Who’s their Captain?”