No Good Deed

[Sarah McFarlen]

Sparks

---

She didn't even blink. Freya ripped into her life without a heartbeat's worth of hesitation, without a moment's pause. The Vorsitzende found the one reliable constant in her life, the one good thing she had done. The Bundschuh had been a chance to be something more. To actually, honestly, try for something worth having, something that could last. Then, with no more regard than a toddler frying ants beneath a lens, she ripped that future out from underneath Sparks.

The world seemed to spin for a moment, and Sparks was only faintly aware that she was backing out of the room. Vaelin's hand on her shoulder may as well have belonged to a ghost for all the heed she paid it. This wasn't real. The Widerstand didn't just exile people. Not now, not when they had so few, not when they needed her to keep their ships flying. Not for little things like this, not for trespassing. "This isn't happening." The words slipped from her like a madwoman's mantra.

It was.

The soldiers arrived in two pairs, the white and green fist of the Widerstand the only uniform symbol across a motley array of personal equipment. Antiquated sub-machine guns hung loose across their chests, hands resting on the weapons. Subach HL2s, the small part of her consciousness that still noticed such things reported. Pre-Nomad war tech. Good old fashioned sub-sonic kinetics. Almost unbearably slow by the standards of anyone who wanted to fight a ground war, but nice when you wanted to avoid the recoil pushing you halfway across the station and creating a few new windows on the way. The marines kept their fingers well away from the triggers. Not even expecting a fight. Somehow, that hurt almost as much the exile.

"This kind of makes my gift redundant, it’s yours to do with as you wish and sorry.” Vaelin's voice was in her ear.

"Oh. Huh?" She turned and forced a smile that she hoped seemed genuine. "It's okay, V. It's not-." She paused, took a breath, straightened a little, like a balloon inflating. That seemed to help. "It's not your fault."

But it is. Something inside her whispered. It is, and you know it is. Hadn't he wanted a crew? An engineer? He'd spoken to her, asked her to fly aboard Anubis. She'd turned him down to remain with the Bundschuh. Uncharacteristically, he had let it pass without comment. It had seemed strange at the time. This was a man who defied the Order to get what he wanted. Who took what he needed. Anubis herself was testament to that. Did you think, really, that you were any different? He needed an engineer and, oh, would you look at that. You need somewhere to go. How convenient.

She shook her head, started walking towards the approaching guards. As if she could clear her suspicions if she only moved fast enough. Chris wasn't like that. He'd looked after her in the Rouges, kept her out of sight when she wanted to be and out of reach when she had to be. This was a man who had watched over her in the terrifying hours she was alone and adrift in the Badlands. No. No it's not. That was Chris. This is Vaelin, now. She tried to ignore the whisper, but it coiled in her gut like a serpent and, when she glanced up at the man walking beside her, she couldn't help but wonder...

"Sparks?" Damn. One of the guards stopped, recognition surfacing in his eyes. Cameron let his hand for away from his weapon altogether, frowned at the closed door behind her. Of course Cameron would pull guard today. Anything else would have been borderline merciful. "Any idea what's going on in there? Achen called us up to escort someone off-station..."

Cameron trailed off, the Bretonian noticing Vaelin for the first time.

"Yeah. That would be me." Sparks jumped in, before any more awkward questions took advantage of the silence.

"Pull the other one." Cameron tugged at the strap slung over his shoulder. The man had been needle-slim to start with, and living in low-G hadn't done a thing to help the situation. Viewed from certain angles, he had more in common with a hologram than a human being - it looked as though he would fade away altogether. Training with the rifle had chafed his shoulder something fierce. Something he'd made the mistake of telling Sparks and, consequently, had never been given a chance to forget. "Really, what's going on?"

"No, really. It is me." Sparks nodded back towards the door. "You can go in and ask if you really want, but I'd prefer you didn't."

"Right." Silence threatened to re-establish its reign. "If this is a joke, it's a really bad one."

"I know." Sparks slumped a little. "It's not a joke. I'm not that funny. Look, can we just go? Please?"

"Hold on a second." Cameron tugged at another guard, and vanished into Freya's office. A moment later, he re-emerged, face stony. "You know, I thought... Never mind. Come on."

Sparks did. The walk to her quarters passed in the familiar haze of corridors and airlock lights, though the proximity of the firearms behind her was never far from her mind. No-one spoke during the walk down. Sparks, because she had nothing to say and Cameron, she suspected, because he had everything to say and didn't know how.

The guards allowed her to enter her room alone, at least. The door slid closed behind her with the same hiss, but the familiar walls seemed a little colder, a little sharper. A little less like home. Good, then, that she had precious little worth packing. She tugged a rumpled duffel bag, Widerstand eagle stencilled roughly on the side, from beneath the still-unmade bed, and began shovelling items in with the mindless attention of an assembly line.

“Not much to pack. Most of this is theirs, you know.” She didn’t bother turning to look for Vaelin. He would be there, behind her, lingering like her own personal angel of death. ”Uniforms” She tugged a grey and khaki jumpsuit from its hangar, balled it and tossed it to the ground. It drifted like a snowflake in the low gravity. “Tools.” A bundle of well worn view screens and cabling joined it on the floor. “Ship.” She tugged an access pad from the sparse wardrobe, curled her fingers to throw it before she caught herself and lowered it gently next to the bag instead, alongside the freshly-minted pad for Vaelin’s repair ship.

“Everything’s theirs, Vaelin. I practically built that ship!” She jabbed a finger at the access pad, Nostalgia for Infinity scratched along the side. “But, no, they’re just going to throw me out like... Like some sort of garbage.” It was a terrible simile. She didn’t care. Sparks aimed a punch at the wall, hit it, and came away swearing and wiping her knuckles on her shirt. “Everything I’ve done here, and she’s just going to throw it away! I thought this place counted for something, I really did. She didn’t even say anything!” Somehow, that was the worst part of it. Freya had barely addressed her. Jana had flat-out ignored her. They hadn’t even had the decency to make it personal. She’d just been an inconvenient piece on the board. It was one thing to be used by the rogues. They were pirates. She’d almost expected it. To be used by the Widerstand, though, felt like someone had wrapped a hand around her chest and squeezed.

Sparks threw another punch. This time she was cautious enough to aim for the bed.

---

"This is really sort of a personal project of mine."

- James Arland, on single-handedly engaging an enemy regiment.

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