Good Luck With Shooting The Moon

In which Raven Reyes braves engineering, and definitely doesn’t worry about her boyfriend.

Every time I wake up, I’m reminded of the fact that there’s an empty space beside me in bed. And every time I’m reminded that I’m the reason he’s gone.

I know what Finn would say. He’d tell me that it didn’t really matter, and that he was fine. He wouldn’t have turned himself in if he wasn’t okay with it. But I also know that he’s far too chivalrous to let his girlfriend go down for a crime, especially if it was technically his idea. And we both knew what would have happened if I was caught. And every single time I go down to visit him, he’s smiling his goofy, toothy, smile and reminding me that everything is alright. He’s a liar.

T minus twenty four hours until I get to wriggle out of my stuffy zero-g suit and go to the skybox for visiting day. Sure, space is pretty sweet, but Finn Collins is the only thing that rivals it.

Unfortunately, I’m stuck inside this tin can for the day, and have to do something to distract me for the next 144,000 minutes.

Of course, Sinclair has made that easy by assigning me the most obnoxious list of repairs known to man, even though he knows how much I hate welding anything that isn’t suspended in zero gravity. Even worse, the repairs are inside the engineering room. Engineers are so annoying that they can’t even weld over the cracks in their own pipes. Useless.

The only bright side is that Sinclair will be in engineering today, meaning that I can pester him just as much as I want. What he didn’t realize when he condemned me to pipe welding hell was that he was condemning himself too. I’m going to make his life miserable… at least for the next 24 hours.

I stride through the open doors to engineering with a grin on my face, hopefully giving the low-lifes inside a taste of what’s in store for the rest of my 9-5 shift.

Sinclair is hunched over a workbench, a screwdriver gripped in his hand as he fumbles over some sort of cuff. He doesn’t even look up when I toss my welding gear on the table next to him with a thud. He just continues with his stupid little screwdriver.

“Nice to see you too.”

Finally, like Lazarus rising from the dead, Sinclair raises his head to acknowledge my arrival.

“Ah, Reyes. How kind of you to grace us with your presence.”

“I’m five minutes late.”

Typical Sinclair. I know he was ready and waiting with that barb.

“Fifteen,” Sinclair mutters. “I know you’re pissy about being inside for a day, but god forbid the honorable Raven Reyes, genius and savant, be gravity bound for 24 hours.”

I just shake my head. “I can leave right now, if you want,” I chide.

“Or,” Sinclair replies, sighing, “You could patch the crack over by that outer window.”

“What? Your genius engineers can’t manage a surface weld?”

“My genius engineers are busy. That’s why I asked my genius mechanic to do it.”

All I can do is grab my welding gear from the workbench and sigh. “Touché.”

I begin to walk away but suddenly pause, something deep inside of me tethering me to Sinclair’s side. Some might call it laziness. I call it a sixth sense.

“Whatcha working on?” I ask, popping my head over Sinclair’s shoulder so that my ponytail gets in his way. My necklace swings wildly, poking the formidable chief engineer in the chin.

He swats it away. Not so formidable once you get to know him, I guess. No one’s very formidable once they come into contact with Raven Reyes. Not Jaha, not Kane, hell, not even fucking Nygel.

Okay, maybe Nygel. But just Nygel. And float Nygel anyway. I don’t even want to come into contact with her.

“Confidential.” Sinclair mutters.

“It’s obviously not confidential if I can literally see it right in front of me.”

“The window, Raven.”

A grin slips onto my lips.

“Oh, so you’ve got secrets now, Sinclair?”

“It’s above your pay grade.”

“Everything’s above my pay grade. That’s probably why you should pay me more.”

“I hired you, Reyes. I can fire you.”

I clear my throat and force Sinclair to look back up at me.

“What was it you said when you invited me to join Zero-G?”

Sinclair interrupts. “Permitted you to join Zero-G.”

“Whatever.” I pause, letting the sweet taste these words have linger on my tongue. “Something about me having the highest scores on the Ark in… what was it…”

“Biometrics.”

“Huh?”

Not quite the answer I was expecting, and it takes my brain a couple moments to process his words.

“The wristband.”

“Biometrics?” I repeat.

“Biometrics.”

Immediately, my expression sours.

“Oh.” I roll my eyes. “Boring.”

“Boring?”

I just shrug my shoulders. “I don’t like getting into all of that medical stuff. It makes my eyes glaze over.”

“And here I was thinking you were a genius.”

“Genius doesn’t mean nerd,” I protest.

Sinclair shakes his head and finally puts down his screwdriver.

“Raven Andromeda Reyes, you most definitely are a nerd.”

————————————

This window is dirty. It’s like covered in grime. Grime that I assume engineers just naturally exude. And it’s caked on pretty thick.

It’s not that I hate all engineers. That would be rude and possibly a slight overreaction. There was this one trainee about a year ago named Montreal or something stupid like that who was actually pretty cool. A dork, but cool, at least until he got busted for smoking weed with his goggle wearing boyfriend. Something about fires on spaceships didn’t sit quite right with the council members. Uptight pricks.

So now Monticello or whatever is in lock up, which is probably where most of these dorks belong. And for what it’s worth, goggle boy isn’t really his boyfriend but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were once they both make it out of lock-up.

They will make it out of lock-up, I’m sure of that. Sure, the council might be petty and pretentious, but they’re not going to float some teenage dweebs for trying to find a little bit of excitement in this tin can. They will, however, float a goofy, grinning, asshole who wasted months of oxygen on a spacewalk. Except he didn’t waste months of oxygen. I did. And he’s going to die for it.

That’s how things tend to go when I’m involved. I always manage to scrape through, and everyone else doesn’t. I’m a cockroach surviving the crunch.

To make things worse, Sinclair has abandoned me for some sort of top secret biometric something or other two hours ago, leaving me stranded in a room full of sweaty engineers and testosterone (see Sinclair? I do know things about biometrics! Ha!).

I pull down my welding shield and gaze out of the window at the twinkling stars. They’re taunting me from out there. Still, they hypnotize me and I can’t look away, staring into the darkness like I’ve got nothing else to do.

I’m still staring at the stars when a ship appears.

Like a real ship. Like a drop ship. And sure, it looks like it’s made of scrap metal and the thrusters aren’t quite firing like they should (if only this drop ship had received a little bit of Raven Reyes TLC), but it’s undeniable that a ship just launched from the Ark for the first time in 97 years.

All I can do is say:

“Holy shit.”

A blonde and mustached dude standing behind me knits his eyebrows.

“Do you not see that?”

The man stares at me, still puzzled… engineers.

I’m not wasting my time with mr. Rocks-for-brains and so I stride out of the room, wandering around the corridors. I’m not sure what I’m looking for but I know that I’ve found it when I turn the corner and am swarmed by a crowd of people in the hallway.

I can’t even fight against the throng as I’m shoved towards a woman at the end of the corridor. Cece what’s-her-face, Kane’s arm candy.

She stands in a neatly pressed suit with a surprisingly placid look on her face as she attempts to quell the crowd.

“Unfortunately that’s all of the information that I can share at this time,” she says.

Bullshit. The look on her face makes it seem like she doesn’t find it unfortunate at all. The burly man in front of me calls her out before I can.

“I saw a ship launch!” He protests, shoving his way to the front of the crowd.

Cece just smiles, like she’s some sort of customer service robot. “Unfortunately, that’s all of the information that I can share at this time.”

And just like that, she’s whisked away by Commander Shumway, leaving the rest of us plebeians to deal with the shit she’s left behind.

A woman behind me mutters to herself. “I heard it was a maintenance error.”

Suddenly, I’m paying attention. “Huh?”

“Nothing.” The woman grumbles.

I’m not ready to let her off of the hook so easily. “No, what did you say? About the maintenance?”

“I don’t know. I heard that there was damage to the ship and they were forced to eject.”

“Damage?”

“Look, kid,” The woman snaps, pursing her lips like she just ate something sour. “I don’t have all the answers.”

But I’m not paying attention anymore. My mind is racing, sending adrenaline coursing through my body. Damage to the ship. I shove my way through the throng of people until I can breathe again.

It sounds like they need a mechanic.

—————————————————

“Where’s Sinclair?” I bellow as I speed towards the airlock.

James turns to me, his half bald head glittering under the florescent lights. Tease him about his hair loss and he’ll bench you for a week. I may or may not be speaking from experience. Still, balding or not, James runs this airlock, and because of that, I need him.

“Not here,” James grumbles. “Why do you care, Raven?”

James is also one of the few people on this ship who calls me by my first name on this ship. Now that I think about it, very few people are called by their first name on this ship… at least in engineering and mechanics.

“I saw the ship launch,” I state, matter-of-factly.

James rolls his eyes. “What ship?”

“Don’t bullshit me, James. I’m your best mechanic.”

“Don’t be so humble.”

I take another step forward so that I’m face to face with James. “Let me help.”

“You’re grounded,” James replies.

I can’t help but laugh. “So what if I’m not on the schedule, boss man? The Ark is in some sort of crisis.” I look around the airlock and notice its emptiness. Not a soul to be found, except for me and James. Wow, it looks like I’m suddenly the responsible one. “And it looks like I’m the only mechanic that came to its aid.”

“No, you’re grounded. We’re all grounded. No spacewalks until Sinclair gives the signal.”

“So Sinclair knows what’s going on?”

“Raven…” James warns.

“Fine,” I reply, raising my hands in surrender. “I won’t ask him.” A pause. “But I do want to be the first one out when the ban is lifted.”

“No promises. First come, first serve.”

“I can wait,” I say. And I do.

I slowly lower myself to the floor, ready to camp out until Sinclair gives the all clear, no matter how long it takes.

Some part of me is saying that I need to know what happened. I need to know why that ship launched, and why no one’s willing to tell me.

——————————-

It takes fourteen hours for James to get the signal, but as soon as he does, I rise from my spot on the floor, a grin appearing on my lips.

James grimaces as I saunter over, eyebrows raised.

“So, James, how about that spacewalk?”