“Sick? Everything’s an ailment in these times! People flying through space, bringing all kinds of stuff through the door. Doctors are having a field day. They could diagnose a stubbed toe and prescribe you something for it. Everyone’s on something,” Galia waved her off. She tried to sit up, but Deidra stopped her by scooting closer. Galia felt her frustration in waves of heat through her blankets.
“I know a bit about pain medication. Gold Standard and all. Taxotrol… isn’t meant to be taken like that. I honestly don’t know how you’re trying to sit up right now,” said Deidra. Galia’s eyes darted for the door, then the window. Any opening to grant her most base instinct: escape. Deidra’s hands slamming on the bed, on either side of her hips, stranded her there.
“I’ve… built up a tolerance,” said Galia. She was surprised how heavy the words were, how they dragged her eyes down as soon as she let them out. She couldn’t look up from her lap. “And a dependency.”
“Does… the rest of the crew know how sick you are?” Deidra asked. Galia puffed a lock of hair from her eyes, like it was nothing, like it was a ridiculous inquiry. She knew, deeper than her conscious mind, that she was the most ridiculous thing in the room.
“Rey does. Hey, how about we skip the ten-years-too-late intervention, too? At least for now,” pleaded Galia. Her skin regained some of its pallor with a few deep breaths. Her vibrance literally blew Deidra away at least from the bed, when Galia threw off her sheets. “I’d say you’re long overdue for a tour of your ship.”
It was a couple of minutes before Deidra could get anything out of her half-open mouth. The Dreamweaver’s interior was the only thing sleeker than its glossy silver-trimmed shell. Reflective rings shimmered on the underside of each plump, velvet seat. Supermagnets that emitted the faintest visible distortion held them up from the deck. The Dreamweaver’s bridge was suspended on a level with their massive, reinforced viewing screen. Deidra leaned over the edge to see if it was just an illusion. The working guts of the ship were, in fact, visible below, connected by a network of walkways and staircases. She looked closer to see a holographic safety net, should the crew somehow be jostled from their seats. They would never fall further than a foot, but it made for excellent damage assessment. The ease of access was unprecedented, even compared to some of the Gold Standard ships Deidra had serviced.
“What’s… the legal designation on this thing?” Deidra managed, once wanderlust had carried her to every corner of the bridge. She ran a hand over the seat she would take over for Demitri. She gazed down the barrels of the cannons and turrets on the other end of the controls through thick glass.
“Commercial freighter,” Galia told her. She plopped into the cockpit and nestled deep in the cushions, a grin on her face. There wasn’t a place in the galaxy she felt more at home. “Military outpost rations delivery.” Deidra plopped her in her own chair and spun to face her captain, brow cocked in suspicion.
“And what do you really do?”
“Arms dealing,” Galia shrugged, “You’d be surprised how many officers are willing to push their allowed three percent losses on delivery, to make a few thousand credits… does that change your opinion of us? Of… me?” Deidra searched her captain’s face for a sign of deceit, for sarcasm. For the first time since she’d known Galia, she looked honest. After all, the act she played this part for was finally coming to a close.
“You didn’t invent this game. You’re just playing it. Like all of us,” said Deidra. Galia smiled, and laughed, like it was all a joke. She kicked her chair into a spin. She wiped her face hard with her sleeve, while she faced away. When she turned round to face Deidra again, she looked anything but joking. Lines had formed in her face she usually hid with makeup.
“I didn’t always. I wanted to be a WBO pilot,” Galia told her, “I wanted to see the worlds too far for stars to shine on, to dive in caves and climb on the backs of giants, like every kid. Unlike most kids, though, that spark didn’t burn out when I got older. The dirtiness, the difficulty… it didn’t scare me. Maybe that’s why I…” Galia choked on the words. Deidra never figured her for a sharer, but she didn’t know this was the first time she’d shared this story. The only true one. Ever.
“Galia, if it’s too much… you don’t have to...”
“I should have been afraid,” Galia forced herself to say. If she didn’t now, she might not get the chance. Not with how much taxotrol it took for her to get through the day. “If I was, I wouldn’t have wandered into that… thing’s nest, to get a research sample. But I was still a cadet. I wanted to impress everybody. I wanted to show my mom and my sister that I could. But it bit me.”
“What did?”
“That’s irony, isn’t it? I blacked out as soon as it happened, and no one else was fool enough to go back to the nest after that. I remember… wings… and sharp limbs, like a spider’s. But it’s an undocumented species. No studies - no cure. Not for the disease anyway. But it was mostly contained to my lungs, back then. ” Galia explained, “Now… well, I haven’t exactly been in for a checkup.”
“You… need new organs,” Deidra realized. Galia gave her two firing finger-guns and a silent bingo.
“I hoped the WBO would pay for them. I don’t come from much. They were supposed to be my big break. But… they weren’t about to shell out a new set of pipes for a cadet. So I thought up some… alternative methods,” Galia went on. Deidra covered her mouth to keep down the flood of sympathies she wanted to spew. Galia would hate that and she knew it.
“How… long ago was that?” Deidra asked instead.
“Ten years ago. When I met Rey. Man, was he a sleaze back then. Dreamweaver was his, you know,” Galia chuckled at how strange it all sounded now, so far down the road. “‘Course, it didn’t look anything like it does now. It was a wreck, actually. He’d just totaled it in a run-in with the law over some unregistered drugs.”
“Let me guess: taxotrol?” Deidra interjected.
“Not back then. He got into that for me,” said Galia, “Anyway. I always had my eye on the Olympia. Arms dealing pays well, but not enough for all the parts I needed, so it was always a means to an end. I needed the rep for them to consider me. To get
that, I knew I needed a hard-ass crew. I started with Rey.”
“You took the Dreamweaver from him?” Deidra marveled. Galia shrugged.
“Wasn’t all too hard. He was doped up on his own product, looking for the best way to get someone else to off him, so he wouldn’t have to do it himself. Actually begged me to do it, when I marched in here and put him on his ass. I took his ship and his service, in exchange for his sobriety instead. Made me look good, too, to the competition. It was all uphill from there. Or downhill. Depends on what part of the hill you need to get to,” Galia grinned.
“Unreal… you just let everyone believe you’re some heartless outlaw,” Deidra said. She stood before she realized what she was doing. She wandered to Galia, carried by the force of will beneath all her better instincts not to.
“Myself included. I had to, to make it this far,” said Galia. She could hardly believe the audacity of this servant girl, coming to the side of her seat. Putting her hand on hers. Treating Galia like a human. But then, she had never seen just the dust-covered servant girl. She’d caught a glimpse of the warrior beneath, and Deidra had proven her right at every turn. That’s who she was now. Just like Galia had been all those years ago, when she waltzed into the banged-up Dreamweaver.
“Just until the end of the Olympia. Then you can be… who you really are,” Deidra tried to emulate her captain, to be bold.
“And who do you think that is?” Galia dared her.
“A girl. Someone who wants to see the places the stars don’t reach, caves, giants. Everything,” Deidra whispered. Galia turned her hand, to slip her fingers under Deidra’s. Both of them pulled, to meet in the middle, at their lips.