You Catch Fewer Flies with Vinegar ...

Teri and I had the idea to do this a long time ago, but the issue to kick it off never seemed to come up ... until now. Thanks, Terri!--Maer

Wednesday, 21 Apr 2523
Durance class Equinox
En route to Persephone
2330 hrs, ship’s time

The past few weeks had been simultaneously easy and hard: caring for Mulan Maersk was a snap, given how stripped down she was, and caring for our would-be hijackers was a chore, requiring watches round the clock in case they did anything to escape. I’d gleaned some intel from Captain LaSalle. He’d lost everything he had in the last war—home and family—and he wanted to preserve what little unity the Verse still possessed, to keep things from falling into chaos again ... so that his family and friend would not have died in vain. The similarities between his war experience and mine rang loud and clear, and they certainly made me sympathize, but there was no forgetting the man was Unity Guard and his crew were Lex Talionis. For those reasons alone, I’d slept the past two weeks with one eye open and my gun on or near me at all times, even as I disliked turning LaSalle over to the tender mercies of the Independents on arrival. I knew how bad it could go for him and while he might have left a trail of corpses behind him before setting his sights on us, I didn’t wish him ill. In truth, had I stood in his shoes all those years ago and had circumstances permitted, I might have trod the same path he’d taken. So yes, it was with some regret we left him and his crew behind with Sigurdson on Njördr.

Of his crew, I had no sympathy at all. They’d made their intentions clear when they shot me and my crew. They would not have scrupled to kill us if given the chance and while they were trying to kill us, I was perfectly happy to reciprocate. And yet, when the topic of spacing them instead of turning them over came up, I vetoed it. Somewhat out of character for me, given my history, and I can only assume that my crew—especially Joshua—had had a mellowing effect on me. But I’d made it clear in our dinner table discussion. Killing in combat is covered by the rules of engagement, but spacing surrendered foes is murder. As much as I hated and feared the Lex Talionis, as much as I despised what they’ve done, I had to draw the line at spacing them.

Nika was the one who brought up spacing. Nika, who agonized over shooting Roger Duncan on Osiris. Nika, who constantly had to haul me back from crossing the line into bloodshed. She, not I, had announced spacing as a viable option, she who supported the nuclear option. I wasn’t the only one taken aback by it. Joshua and Beglan protested right along with me. Kiera and Arden were in the spacing camp and with the table split down the middle, the discussion got rather heated before cooler heads prevailed.

In the end, LaSalle was delivered alive into Captain Sigurd’s hands and after we’d run the gauntlet of debris around Anvil, we refueled and took stock. Supplies had to be replenished—feeding the prisoners had wiped out our food stores—and maintenance had to be done and inspections passed. All of which dealt a bitter blow to our cash fund. For one brief shining moment, we were rich again … and poor again, the next.

And this current business with the murderous Emile Grand killing one of our passengers was piling hurt on top of hurt.

None of which would have Nika in a good mood. In truth, her mood lately had been more off than on. As I poured coffee into a pair of mugs, I realized losing her eyes had shaken Nika badly and skimming through my memories of the past year and a half, I began to suspect she hadn’t really recovered. As I’d had in the aftermath of losing my first ship and my innocence, she’d found methods and the means to cope … but perhaps, as I had, she’d missed something critical along the way.

No time like the present to find out. It’s been too long since we’d last sat down and talked. Some of the blame for that lay squarely on my shoulders. My relationship with Joshua had pulled me away from Nika and our once-easy friendship had by infinitesimal degrees become distant. I couldn’t say when or where that tipping point had occurred. I could only say now that we weren’t as close as we’d been before. I carried the two coffees over to the bridge and stuck my head in. Nika was in the Chair, right where I expected her to be.

“Hey, lady,” I said, stepping across the threshold. I nodded toward the view outside—the stars ribboning by in pulse—and held out the fuller of the two mugs. “Care for some coffee? Gonna need it if we’re gonna stay sharp out here.”

---

With one eye on the viewport and one eye on the sensors, Nika was indeed sitting in the Chair. One booted foot propped on the console as she watched the random patterns in the debris, she had her head tipped back against the headrest. She would look nearly asleep if it weren't for the alertness in those almost cobalt eyes, such a different shade than the almost colorless ice blue of the ones she'd been born with. Her gaze flickered toward the hatch and she smiled for Rina. "Sure. Thanks."

As she reached for the cup, she righted her chair and sat in it more upright. Less relaxed, less casual than she had been when she'd been alone and thought herself unobserved. "How's everything below?" she asked.

---

"About as well as can be expected." I took the station to her right and turned the chair to face her. "The quarters we'd kept the passengers in are pretty much back in order. I checked them to make sure no one left any nasty surprises for us. Everything's clean. Speaking of surprises ..." I took a long sip of my coffee and set it aside, then leaned forward, my gaze direct. "That was quite a bombshell you dropped on us, suggesting we space LaSalle and his crew. For once, you beat me to it."

---

"Yeah well," Nika drawled lazily, her eyes returning to the viewports. "Figured I better toss it out there and get people hollerin' at someone other than you for a change." She sipped from the cup in her hands with a faint frown line between her brows giving her a pensive expression.

---

With that, the wall went up. I flopped back in my chair and got comfortable--boots propped on the edge of her platform, arms crossed, butt planted.

"I don't mind being the crew's conversational punching bag, you know." It was too soon to bring out the sledgehammer for that wall. I needed to make a couple of sounding taps first before letting the hammer fly. "Besides, if you keep trumping my play like that, what else will I have to bluff with?"

---

Nika grinned slightly. "Hell, I don't know -- you could say 'I'm gonna let my stealth-ninja-mind-reading fiancé kick your ass,'" she retorted in amusement.

---

"Oh, good one," I crooned and grinned back at her. Not that Joshua would do it quite like that. Still ... He might. Joshua had grown from a blank slate to a man in his own right in the three years he'd flown with us. Our recent run-in with his mother and the way he'd handled it was another milestone. "I'll stash that one up my sleeve, thanks."

I picked up my coffee again and sipped it, letting silence take the bridge for a moment before saying, "Beglan sure took off in a hurry on Anvil. Everything okay with him?"

Damn. It has been too long since we talked. That was weeks ago.

---

Nika's retort was a wrinkle of her nose and a wicked grin. And then she answered the last query with a flicker of her eyes toward the door. "He's fine," she replied. "Perturbed by the fact that I took over the hard line from you or something." She paused. "Wanted an up-front answer on whether I was serious -- decided he wasn't quite sure of me anymore, I guess."

---

"Huh," I said, intelligent as ever. I sipped my coffee to buy some time, frowning. "I understand him not being comfortable with the idea of spacing anyone. The man's practically a priest. At least he had the sense to talk to you privately, instead of undermining you in front of the crew. What else did he say?"

---

Nika shrugged. "Not much," she commented quietly. "He just wanted to be sure whether he needed to leave the ship or not."

---

I hated it when she got cagey like that and between one sip of coffee and the next I instantly understood how it must have been for her with regards to twitchy close-mouthed me. Comprehension stabbed, vicious and deep, which made my own little tac nuke about my family on Sihnon all the more regrettable, even if it had been a necessary one.

"About leaving or not," I sighed. "All I can say is: Go with your conscience and good sense. If he's determined to go, then I'll be the first to hug him goodbye, but I'll also boot his ass out the door if he dares to waffle over it afterward. Makes me wonder what he's got in his past he won't talk about. Which leads to what I said earlier. I'm sorry, Nika. I stayed silent on my family not because it was a judgment against you or your trustworthiness but because I felt it was the right thing to do, the only thing I could do to keep the shit that happened to me from touching them or you. But when Joshua and I were trapped on Puck, with that ship burning down around us, and it looking damned likely we were going to die ... well, it makes you reassess, makes you say the things you don't want to take with you to your grave. And he extracted a promise from me to contact my family and let them know I'm alive if we survived." I looked at her profile, wondering what she saw outside the ship, what she saw inside her head. "To be exact, the promise was to contact them if he didn't survive. But I'm not about to argue the letter of the contract when the spirit is the more important thing. They were my last inch, Nika. The last line in the sand of my old self, and I gave it up. I have to make good on that. Otherwise, nothing I've done for the past three years and nothing I hope to do going forward will mean a damned thing. So I'm going to Sihnon. I'd like it if you and the rest of the crew came with me, but if you can't, if you could drop me off and pick me up on the return, that would work."

---

Nika listened quietly to Rina's thoughts. She had to smile just a little when the realization hit that they had, in effect, swapped places. It wasn't amusement, either. More like... regret. "Of course we'll take you to Sihnon," she told the other woman softly, sipping her coffee. "I'm glad to see you leaving the last of it behind." She glanced at the engineer. "I've never asked you for details about your past... I didn't want to put you in a position to lie outright to me," she admitted. "I figured if you ever wanted to talk about it, you would. But... then again, I guess I figured too that if you hadn't done it with any of us by now, you weren't gonna. I'd come to the point where I took you at face value. Even with what I know of your background. And I'm sorry I reacted badly. I couldn't help wondering if I'd made a mistake in believing us friends."

---

“No. Never.” I didn’t hesitate. “The mistake was mine. I should have trusted you sooner. Being my friend helped me more than I can say or you could ever know, Nika. I realize it may be too late to ask you to trust me on that, but I’m asking. And I hope you can.”

---

She turned her gaze to the engineer and studied her thoughtfully. "It's okay," Nika finally said. "I guess we've all done a lot of changing in the past few years." She was unable to hide the flash of regret this time. "It's funny... change is the only constant in life, but it's easy to forget that out here in the Black. The Black itself is ever-changing, but our perception of it is that it's unchanging because of the scale of the changes that happen." Leaning her head back again, she murmured to Rina, "I ... don't know where I fit in the new Verse. In the old days the sides were pretty clear. The War only really had two sides. This one, though..."

She trailed off with a sigh. "Beggar asked me if I would turn them over knowing that they'd be tortured. And I sat there and thought about it... and realized that the answer was no. Not this time. Because I'm not convinced that 'Independent' means what it used to." Nika's tone was weary.

---

"No, it doesn't. It's not the same war, Nika, even though I think all sides in this conflict will make the same mistakes as in the last one." God, she sounded so ... lost. Tired. I knew that bone-deep weariness that came from slamming repeatedly against a problem that would not solve, an obstacle that had no visible way around it. Oh, yes. I knew that feeling intimately. I rose and set my coffee aside and hugged her, letting that simple human contact articulate what I couldn't say. The hum of the machinery and the hiss of the atmo through the vents kept us company for a long beat ... then two ... then three. The hug broke of its own accord and I picked up my coffee again, leaning against her chair. "The last war was simple compared to this one. Everything's Balkanized now. The systems, the people, the whole damn Verse. It's a different beast altogether. And instead of two competing ideologies, you have a collection of them. Freedom for the Califate means one thing, for the Bharat another. And for Red Sun and the New Kalmar, yet another. Georgia? Well ... you've heard the news reports. The Alliance sets it up to get invited to the party, and once it's got its foot in the door, it's going to start calling the tune everyone has to dance to. The Russians will never stand for it and you'll notice Novaya Rodina wasn't in the recent round of invitations. And Blue Sun? Who knows? Too many unanswered questions there." I sighed, annoyed I'd gotten sidetracked. "What I'm trying to say is, I don't think this is a war for jumping onto someone else's bandwagon. It's a war to think for yourself and do as your conscience dictates. If it means helping one group one week and another the next, then so be it. So long as the goal of whoever we're helping agrees with what we believe is right. And right now? Speaking strictly for myself, I think it's more than enough time to let the Rim and the Border systems choose how they want to govern themselves and let them rise or fall on their own merits.

"What the Alliance cannot acknowledge without risk of invalidating itself is this--Peace and order enforced on an unwilling populace isn't benevolence, it's tyranny. And the price of liberty from tyranny is war. The definition of tyranny, of liberty, and of victory will be defined differently by each party fighting it and that's not wrong. The freedom to choose trumps damned near everything else. That's what we're looking at here. That's what we're fighting for. This war will be fought with more than bullets. It'll be fought with ideas. It's a battle for the hearts and minds of the people in it, not just the land they stand on. And in the Core, the Alliance is sitting on a powder keg and they might not even know it."

I leaned forward, encouraged by the lack of negative response.

"The population of the Core has, for the most part, been taught to believe the Alliance is mother and father and is owed a parent's allegiance. And in return, the Alliance will supply everything they need. Aside from the rich and powerful, the Core has this massive population dependent on the government for their living. What happens when the entitlement teat dries up? What then? That's part of the reasoning behind the trade and resource embargo against White Sun and why the Feds came down so hard on it. They couldn't afford any other response. The Feds are riding on the backs of tigers, Nika, and the tigers are starting to look hungry. Maybe all we need to do to bring the Alliance down is show the tigers some meat ... and then show them that they've meat aplenty riding on their backs."

---

It's a lot of words that Rina spouted, and Nika was quiet throughout. She remained with her head back against the headrest of her seat and she says quietly, "I never really thought of myself as being set in my ways. But I am," she admitted. "I leave Kiera and Joshua to handle the dickering for prices because I don't like to mess around -- I want to just give or be given a price and decide whether we'll take it or not. And when I'm fightin', I like it gorram clear cut what I'm fightin' for." She grimaces. "The last war was messy -- war always is -- but this war's gonna be a goatscrew. Because frankly, it's all-out civil war. Last time was ... more a small bunch of people pulling together in one direction. This time it's all splinterin'. And those of us who ain't chosen a particular faction to throw in with could be in a world of hurtin'." She paused. "There are days I'm ready to throw in the towel, Rina. I ain't got no interest in this war," Nika finally admitted, her drawl pronounced. "I don't want to be a soldier in this one. I'm happy to run supplies into Blue Sun. I'm happy to run people who want to get the hell out of Dodge. But that makes me sound like a mercenary for hire to the highest bidder. I can't even figure out where my own principles in this one are."

---

"Sounds to me you've just stated them--you don't want to choose sides but stay neutral. That's a valid position. History is full of examples of it and they didn't all end badly. I don't have a problem with it. I'm not entirely sure what I could bring to the table if a side was chosen anyway. Of course," I added, "that's not to say I don't know what I'd do. I know what I'd do, but I'm not sure how it would be received."

---

"Neutrality is just as big a liability as choosing a side," Nika replied quietly. Hence the pensive expression from earlier. "When you don't choose a side and go all-in, all sides view you as either 'for sale' or a traitor." She just sighed. "It's a circular argument. And I go round and round and round."

---

“Hmm. Pity we’re not a ship full of Shepherds. Nobody thinks they’re for sale or traitors when they declare hands off any conflict,” I snorted. “But still, that’s not really an answer and certainly disrespectful of Shepherds. Huh. I don’t have a way around what people are going to think.”

I sipped my coffee and thought for a bit.

“Half the Verse will think you’re a traitor, no matter which side you choose. You might as well choose the side or the action that best fits your conscience. No point in holding yourself hostage to fickle public opinion. Besides, why let the fickle define the sides anyway? They’re fickle. Unreliable. Go with your conscience. Listen to your gut. Which brings me back to my original statement about being flexible. Huh.” I paused with my coffee halfway up. “Flexible. Coming from me. Imagine that.”

I took another sip.

“As for that circular argument, you could step away from it. Just get off that train and walk for a bit.”

---

Nika shook her head in sharp negation. "None of you are listening to me, gorram it," she retorted, shoving out of her chair to walk to the viewport and look out. "It took Beggar demanding if I was serious about turning that guy over for torture before I really decided, but I have no interest in backing another regime that will torture. I've been part of that before and I don't want to do it myself, and I sure as all hell don't want to knowingly turn people over to those who will. But that leaves us NOPLACE to go, Rina!" Her jaw clenches.

"My sister is now more Browncoat than I can really claim to be. Frankly, at this moment, I don't freakin' know where I belong, but it's clearly not in the Alliance, and it's clearly not any-gorramhell-where else. I don't fit this war. Hell, I don't even freakin' fit my own body anymore!"

---

Now we get to it. As much as I hated to open up old wounds, knowing my innate ineptitude for tact, I felt that at base, this was the real reason Nika was out of sorts. Decisions, big or small, required self-confidence and if she felt alienated from her own body, small wonder she felt the same everywhere else.

"Do they hurt, Nika?"

---

Nika blinked and looked back at Rina with a frown. "Do what hurt?"

---

"Your eyes." I tapped the corner of mine. "Hurt. Do they?"

---

There was a long pause. "Not really." Nika hesitated. "Sometimes. More like I get headaches sometimes." Maybe more often than she's admitting. "Things blur some. Why?"

---

"Mm-hm. Thought so." I nodded. "Look, take it from someone who's had to live as someone not herself, I know it's ... hard. You look different, so ergo, you must be different. Right?" I shook my head. "No. You're not. Trust me, you're not. I've had my face rearranged, Nika. I've had my eyes damaged to cheat the ret-scanners. I know what it's like to look in the mirror and not see the person you expect to see. But close your eyes and it all ... goes away. You are who you are, inside, where no one can see. It's not easy keeping that alive when it doesn't match the outside but you can do it. I've done it. I've had to. And unless I'm really off base, I believe you can do it too."

---

"Not myself. Ain't that a laugh," Nika snorted. Though she's not laughing. She's silent as she looks out into the Black. For a long time, she doesn't say anything at all, and when she does her tone is tight. "In the past five years, I have participated in a mutiny, committed cold-blooded murder. saved the life of a spy I shūshì xìngjiāo only to find that his long-term girlfriend is on the crew with me -- AWK-ward! -- flown to a black planet to save the man I love to then turn around and leave and then get offered everything I ever wanted from him on a silver platter and have to turn it down because he's out of his mind. I've taken command of a ship, finally started feeling like it was mine, then got shipjacked a couple times, got blinded, got new eyes and handed my command to the XO, then I took it right back away from him, apparently emasculating him in the process. That is just for starters. Who I am doesn't match the outside? Good gorram heavens, Rina, I don't even freakin' know who I am on the inside, so seeing my sister -- who I could NEVER measure up to -- on the outside? That's just icing on the cake!"

She took a quick breath, overwhelmed by her own rage. "We are little more than a piece of flotsam in the Black, and you know.... all of my reaction times are off. My perspective is shit, and in the end every gorram time I turn around, I'm making a decision that bites us in the ass." She shoves a hand into her hair, confined as always in its braid, and she blows out the breath she took slowly. "We're in the middle of a gorram civil war. There is no right side. All there is .... is survival. And I can do that... but it goes against everything in me to just survive. It's all I feel like I can do. Personally and professionally."

---

There is a reason why people leave worm cans alone: what slithers out tends to be ugly. I sat there and let her blow, wondering if what she said had ever been spoken aloud before or even acknowledged. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, better outside of her than in, poisoning her by inches. Self pity, I understood. That grinding sense of futility, of never being in control? I understood those, too. It would be all too easy for Nika to nurse her hurts and fears alone, to keep them close and let them define her, rather than let those who loved her know about them and help her. It was a lesson long in coming to me and I couldn't have attempted it if it hadn't been for her first overture after Mike had been taken on Beaumonde. But was I up to the task of doing the same for her?

Go carefully. Baby steps. Give her space to respond.

"If everything else wasn't getting in the way, how would you define doing more than just surviving? What does that picture look like, Nika?"

---

"Hell if I know," Nika said softly. "And that's probably part of the problem too. Doing something to help. Taking the sleeper agents off Boros is the only thing I feel like I've done in months that's worthwhile. Getting them the hell out of the way. Supplying the Independent cause by running their goods... that I'm okay with. I even want to do it. But I don't like all the cloak and dagger tripe. I don't like playing both sides. I need people I know we trust to deal with. I don't want to question every damn mission we take because the people on board might be killing one another." She grimaces. "I do okay when we've at least got a base. A place I know we're safe, people I know we're safe dealing with. Right now... everyone's got an agenda in a civil war. And if you're WITH us, you're AGAINST us. The Independent movement of now is not the Independent movement I believed in. Then it was just plain revolution. Now? I don't know what this is. And I don't know how to negotiate it either."

---

"When did our choices become so narrow, so black and white? So either-or? What happened to also? Look, I realize that's pretty damned ironic coming from me, and yet ... I'm looking at the Verse out there and I'm seeing more room to maneuver. I—." I paused, sensing I was a cat's whisker away from ruining it. "That extraction op—that was pretty cut and dried. The issues were clear and the course we charted was simple. Get in, get out, don't get caught. Job done. And you're right, it does seem that lately the jobs that looked simple on the surface turned out to be more complicated. Some of those can be attributed to the people we deal with—I never liked Badger, just so you know—but some of those can be attributed to bad luck."

I sighed, trying to find just the right words to nail down something as amorphous as smoke, that feeling inside me that our current downturn wouldn't last forever, that it was only temporary. Maybe later. Now might not be the right time to mention it. She needs something more concrete than a feeling. At that, things got a little clearer.

"Problems come in pieces. You solve them one at a time. If you're backed up against a cliff and death is coming for you, you jump. Because while you're falling, you've got that much extra time to figure out a solution before you hit bottom. The same with the jobs. Don't try using them to figure out the big picture. Take them one at a time, a piece at a time. Vary them if you can. Know that you're going to run afoul of one side or another, no matter what. There are plenty of people out there making a living and staying out of the conflict. Do some of those jobs if we can. Also? Just because Salizar whistles, it doesn't mean we always have to jump. If we tell him that we're not advantageously placed for mission security or success and that he has to find another party, so be it. It would be irresponsible for us to take a job for the Independents otherwise. I realize we might not always have the luxury to turn him down, but I'll bet you there are going to be times when we can. And while we can't control all the variables, we do have an ace card, an asset that we're not using effectively."

I paused, mentally crossed my fingers, and let the idea fly.

"If having the inside track on who we can trust will help you navigate the Verse, ask Joshua to Read people more often. Whether this new war is drawn along the same lines as the old one or differently, people will still be people and Joshua will still be able to read them. He's your XO and he's crew—lean on him. Let him help you execute what you need doing. It's what he's there for and quite frankly, if you flat out asked him, he'd love the chance to show you just how much he could really do for you." Okay, back off. You've pushed enough. End on something light. "He admires you, you know."

---

Nika let Rina just talk. And talk. And talk some more. The engineer had a lot to say, and the blond wondered when she'd stopped being friends with her, stopped just having coffee and shooting the breeze. Was it when she lost her sight? Was it when she'd taken command back from Joshua? Her mind wandered while Rina yammered on—and though she hated to think of it that way, that's what it was ... a buzz in her ears while her mind was elsewhere, her focus lost to meandering through the Verse inside her head.

"He can't read everyone we come across," Nika says finally. "And somewhere along the way the tables turned." She moved to pick up her coffee, sipping from it without looking at her friend. "I became the one who looks at everyone and expects to get stabbed in the back. And you became the one willing to give them a second chance." Nika was not merely talking about the people they dealt with.... there was a weight to her words, a darkness, a sadness that only came from betrayal. As much as she might say she was over what Kiera had done... she wasn't. The actions of one of their own had cost her… everything. "I don't know if I can trust anyone anymore," she admitted softly, finally looking toward the woman who has been her best friend for the past five years. "I don't trust what I see. I don't trust my own instincts about people anymore. I can't... find the center." Her smile was a bit nostalgic—the phrase apparently brought someone else to mind. "And the rest doesn't work when the center doesn't hold." It's not just about a group of people pulling together, but about an inner self as well.

---

I saw it when she started tuning me out but said my piece anyway, the way you'd talk to a comatose patient on the assumption that even asleep they would hear you on a subconscious level. And when she spoke I shut up, put my own thoughts aside, and listened. When she was done, I refrained from speaking and thought through what she'd said.

I discovered this was something that went beyond physical injury, though the injury was severe. It was beyond the events of the moment, though they were undeniably crappy. This was deeper than that. My instincts had been right—Nika was echoing my life from a decade ago, echoing it so closely it made my blood run cold.

Right now, Nika was standing where I'd stood just before Janus died at Highgate. Trust in others destroyed. Future ruined. Faith in self completely gone. The only thing I had going for me back then was my spit and vinegar, that sheer spite that refused to lay down and let the bastards kill me. It's a twisted sense of logic, but it worked for me. From it, I learned the human body can take an incredible amount of punishment, that there is a resiliency that comes of having survived so much damage that getting hurt no longer terrifies you. So goes the flesh. The emotions and the psyche? Not so much.

Thinking back over the five years of our association, I started putting pins on the map of Nika's damage. Roger Duncan on Osiris—shot in cold blood to protect the crew from discovery. Brian's near-dying on Miranda and her choice to leave him in better hands than hers—abandonment laced with cruel hope. Jake's death on Trafalgar, Rick's sacrifice on Colchester—both of which I knew she rightly or wrongly assumed the blame for as their Captain. Her reunion with Brian two years after she left him—her hopes crushed by the realization that he'd been forever changed by his injuries. Kiera's betrayal of us to Potemkin and losing our beloved ship, of losing her eyes—the fallout haunted her still. And lately, the choices she'd faced as our Captain had been increasingly untenable. The Tong cargo job, the mine boss on the Purple Hearts job, Boston's obstinacy on Puck, our Mexican standoff on Ghost, our recent delivery of Mulan Maersk and LaSalle's crew into Independent hands … All those cases had a definite element of no-win to them. A commander had to win, or be perceived to have won, in order to be effective, to lead.

Nika did the best she could with the crap hands she'd been dealt. We'd walked away alive from each, but in retrospect I could see she didn't come away satisfied she'd done well, that she'd done enough. Each incident had left her increasingly withdrawn in pain and disillusionment until now, it was hard to recognize the woman before me as the one who signed aboard the MakeMake five years ago. In truth, there was no way she could have survived everything we'd been through and remained the same. The cumulative losses she'd sustained over the years were robbing her of her strength, of her momentum to go forward. It would be all too easy to stop and give up, to sink into her depression and never resurface.

I’d lost everything I had in the war but I'd caught a lucky break. I was given a task that kept me busy, one that had given me an enemy to fight. I was a natural born resistor and had already refused to give up, no matter how bad it got. Nika? I'd always admired her grace under pressure, the way she could cut to the heart of things and chart her course with clarity … but all of that was nearly gone now. How to get it back? As usual when faced with a problem like this, I went with what I knew. I broke the problem into pieces and chose the likeliest one I could fix.

Please God, don't let me fail …

"No one on this boat is the same anymore, Nika. Nobody has their old surety of position—not morally, philosophically, or physically. Everyone's lost their innocence. And you know what? That's just words. Air through the engine. Something you don't need or want right now. Come with me."

---

Nika looked toward Rina, her brows pulled together in a frown over those dark blue eyes that she'd been given as 'payment' for betrayal. She wasn't sure what Rina had in mind but it looked like the Russian wasn't going to just let up so she sighed, set her coffee cup down on the console, and followed.

They found themselves in the cargo deck and Nika was somewhat surprised when Rina locked it behind them. She had some inkling that there was going to be something coming up, but the first punch totally threw her—Rina split her lip with it and Nika stared at her. One hand came up to wipe the blood on her chin, and she looked at it a long moment. "Really." The tone was dry as dust. And then it was on.

Evenly matched, though differing in style, the two women went at it in a full-out brawl in the middle of the cleared section of cargo bay. Neither had much of an upper hand, but Irina delivered several solid face shots and then on the last punch Nika got a lucky, solid smack right on Rina's nose. At which point the engineer tapped out and called a halt.

Breathing heavily, Nika was incensed. Pushed way past her comfort zone and she wasn't anywhere close to ready to end this fight. "What the gorram HELL was that about, Irina?" The demand was wrenched from her in rage. "You know what? Never gorram mind." She shoved away from the open space and punched a container hard enough to split her knuckles. "You think you know everything. You don't know anything. You think you know what I'm goin' through, and now you're gonna bring me down here and try to kick my ass to fix it. Well there ain't no fixin' this, Rina -- or whatever the hell your name is." THUD "You been lying to me, to my face, for five years." THUD "And generally I just ignore it and leave it the hell alone cuz you know... when you're ready, you'll tell me." THUD "You trust me with the man who has your heart, but you don't trust me with the truth about who you were once." THUD "As if it makes any gorram difference to me because you'd already proven yourself. But gorram it, Rina, you don't come talk to me?" THUD "No, I get to find out same as everyone else. Like we ain't the only two left on this crew besides Arden, who's done gone insane, from the ones who started."

With her right eye rapidly swelling closed and watering, the blond had the disheveled look of brawling for certain. And she turned back to look at Rina, tears sparkling in her eyes and her hands a bloody mess. "And you wonder why I don't trust anyone anymore? Why the gorram hell should I?"

---

"Why does it matter so much to you that I was someone else once? The war took that life away from me, Nika. I had to reinvent myself or die by firing squad--and that for something I didn't even do! There's no statute of limitations for treason. Everyone I met from that day forward could be charged as an accessory, as aiding and abetting. By not telling you, you had deniability. But really, that isn't the point, is it?"

I sucked my lip and spat blood.

"You're just pissed off and sorry for yourself that everything's harder than it used to be. That the answers aren't as easy to see anymore. So what?! Life isn't supposed to be easy. Nobody gets any guarantees in this life or any other."

I took another step and gauged her reach. I was close enough to for her to hit me if she chose, and right now I was going to push her to it. She'd been beaten down by events for too long. She needed to beat on something, to prove that she still could. If it had to be me, so be it.

"Whining about people having secrets, of having lives before they met you? That's bullshit. Everybody has a past. Everybody lies. Admit it—there isn't a thing I've done to this ship and crew that showed me false to our well-being, no matter my past. I didn't give us up to Potemkin. I didn't lob the grenade that ruined Brian. But it's soooo much easier to blame me and my misguided discretion for all your trust issues, isn't it? Rather than pulling on your big girl panties and dealing with the fact that you're not always going to know all the answers, or have the upper hand."

I got right up in her face and snarled.

"You're a coward, Nika Earhart. A fucking coward who can't even fight like a girl."

---

The fist that flashed out had Nika's whole body weight behind it, and the blond decked the petite Russian square in the face sending her flying back to land on her back on the mat. "Tā mā de sǐ nǐ, nǐ shǎ bù zhíqián yīnhù. You didn't want to hear what I was thinkin', you shouldn't have asked." Her tone was cold as ice. "Next time, I'll tell you the same thing I've been tellin' your ass and everyone else's for months -- not a gorram thing." She pivoted on a heel and walked in the other direction, leaving Rina on the floor where she landed.

---

Tighten your gut before the blow lands. Roll with the punch. I wanted to get her mad at me and she didn't disappoint. I hit the deck hard. Everything was spinning like crazy but I got my feet under me and scrambled up again.

"Not finished yet, Nika." That was the only warning I gave her before I tackled her from behind.

---

The taller woman turned but too late to keep from landing face-first on the mat. And in spite of the fact that she was pissed, it had gone beyond the hot anger to a colder place. Nika was good at the cold fury, good at locking it all down. Instead of fighting Rina, she went limp and simply... stayed put. Refusing to engage.

---

I twisted her arm right up behind her, planted my knee in the small of her back, and pulled on her elbow to make it hurt. She wasn't going anywhere. She didn't resist but I knew better. She had that cold stiffness to her that told me she was freezing me out. How to thaw the ice?

"Listen, you," I hissed in her ear. "You say I've kept secrets from you? Well you've done the same to me. Instead of coming to me when you were hurting, you hid it. You kept it a secret. From me. You say I didn't want to hear what you were thinking? Bullshit. I asked because I wanted to hear what was going on in that head of yours. I needed to find out where you were, what you thought, how bad off things really are. And it's bad. Because you don't want help. You don't want to get better. You want to marinate in it and I'll be damned if I let you take this ship or this crew down doing it."

---

Nika made a soft sound of pain as Rina pinned her but she still refused to struggle. There were ways out of the hold. She knew two off the top of her head. But ultimately.... she wasn't going to allow it to go further. "Think what you want. You will anyway," she grunted. "You go tell your Reader fiancé your opinion. I'm sure he'll take your word for it. Y'all can stand up and declare your independence from yet another captain, and we'll all go our merry."

---

"Walking away solves nothing," I said, steel to her ice. "Neither does running. Giving up is the easy way out. I don't do easy. Neither should you."

---

Remaining still in Rina's hands, Nika's voice is neutral and still cold as the Black. "Are you finished?"

---

Her tone made me want to scream, to kick, to freakin' bite something, anything, to shake her loose from the dark funk she was in … but at this juncture I could go no further. I'd pulled my punches during our fight knowing full well if I hadn't, I'd be standing up from a corpse instead of my Captain. I resisted the urge to give her elbow a parting yank as I rose but I was breathing hard and my blood was still pounding as I said through my teeth, "For now. But it's not over, Nika. Not 'til you pull your self-absorbed head out of your ass and deal."

Already my hands were curling into fists and I knew I had to get out of there. It was that or mop the floor with her. The crunch of Grime's nose under my knuckles came back to me then, and I heard the sick crush of his skull against the bulkhead.

Leave. Now.

---

Nika picked herself up off the floor, cradling her arm just a bit. Something had strained. Without looking at Rina, the blond simply commented in that deadly neutral tone, "Good to know your opinion of me. I like being squared away." And she walked out of the cargo bay.

---

Fire combined with ice nets you steam. You can contain it and make it work for you or it can get away from you and explode. I watched Nika leave and when I was alone I blew a gasket and took it out on the nearest convenient surface. The starboard bulkhead, as it turned out. I exorcised my rage on it before it forced me to do something irreparable. When the pain without overcame the pain within I stopped. Blowing hard. Dripping sweat. Hands bloodied. Toes aching. Throat raw.

Head quiet.

Bones creaked as I uncurled my fingers and pulled my bandana to wipe the worst off the bulkhead. Some of it stuck stubbornly to the metal and I let it go. I stuffed the bandana back in my pocket and took off for the galley to get some ice for my hands.

HOW TO SPEAK CHINESE

Tā mā de sǐ nǐ, nǐ shǎ bù zhíqián yīnhù = 他妈的死你，你傻不值钱阴户 = tah mah duh suh nee, nee shah buh zuh-chyen yeen-hoh = Fuck you die, you stupid worthless cunt Sound clip

See also: Further definition

shūshì xìngjiāo = 舒适性交 = soo-shee sing-jyow =comfort fucked Sound clip

See also: Further definition

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Go to Nika's Crew Page or Rina's Crew Page
Go back to: Season Six, Aug 2522 to May 2523
Go to EPISODES or TIMELINE