No Good Deed

[Sarah McFarlen]

Sparks

---

Cameron shrugged at the stranger's question, rifle strap rubbing a raw patch on his shoulder, and shared a glance with the sergeant standing on the other side of the door. Officially, the Widerstand had no sergeants. Every activist was an equal, bound together by the cause. Reality in the security forces, Cameron had found, followed a more traditional line of thinking. So far, no-one had found the courage to tell it otherwise. When faced with this particular embodiment of it, most people immediately found something very interesting to watch in their shoelaces.

His nametag said 'Hauer.' The sergeant could have stepped out a magazine with a title like 'Bodybuilding Today' or 'Sweat, Steel, and Steroids.' It wasn't just that he was big, though there was certainly that. The Widerstand's slap-dash uniform of cargo pants and second-hand combat armour looked like toys on him.

He had the sort of glare that count cut through the shielding on an industrial reactor and come out the other side looking for a pair of sunglasses. It was, he'd said, one that he reserved especially for disobedient dogs and idiot civilians. Which, considering his view on what constituted a dog, made it essentially all-purpose. He directed it at Vaelin with all the force of a football-ground floodlight.

The stranger didn't flinch. Neither did Hauer. Cameron felt the temperature creeping up, which was odd, considering he'd seen Sparks replacing environmental filters in the corridor just last week. With a world-weary sigh, Cameron let his hands drop away from his weapon and broke the silence.

"Why would I know?" Cameron felt the sergeant's glare switching targets and tried not to make eye contact. "You were in there, weren't you? We-"

"Just get called in to clean up your mess, sir." The sergeant finished, in a tone that might not have been entirely contempt. Cameron instinctively went to take a step back before he caught himself.

Some restraint was called for when you were talking to a man that set off an entire space station's worth of warning systems and then dropped in for a friendly chat. He was clearly unhinged.

"That wasn't what I was..." Cameron started. The sergeant dialled his glare up a few notches and the junior activist fell silent.

Hauer raised a hand to tap the datapad on the wall, still flashing a yellow 'Caution' warning. Unlike Cameron, he kept a hand on his weapon. It was a small station, and bad news travelled at the sort of speed that would have made Einstein blush.
"Heard about your little threats in there. You've got guts to threaten the Vorsitzende. No brains." He paused, measured the man in front of him. "But guts, so I'll give you this for free. If you want to keep them on the inside don't come back. You get on that boat that's coming in, you turn this little station to aft, and you don't turn those engines off until there's another star out your window.

The Vorsitzende doesn’t forget at the best of times, and I’d guess what you did was pretty memorable.” He nodded to Cameron and back to himself. Since we’re here. “Call it a friendly piece of advice, sir."

*

Sparks tugged a coat from the half-open cupboard and tossed it into the duffel bag on the floor. It drifted to the ground next to it without so much as a thud. She swore under her breath as she packed it away, a long mongrel mix of German and standard that would have made a marine consider earplugs. But only quietly. Her heart wasn't in it.

She had meant something here. Had counted for something beyond being just another body on the flight line. Klugmann had meant to do something, and she had been a part of it. And she'd been cut out and tossed away like a second-hand part, don't let the door hit you on the way out, thank you very much.

The bag shuddered a little under another punch. A blue sweater made an admirable effort at escape, drifting between the zipper. She crammed it back in like she was stuffing a sleeping bag.

Vaelin had said that she could still help them. Could set up that repair ship, run a mobile workshop somewhere on that hazy line between the law and the wrong end of a plasma accelerator. Help people, keep supporting the Widerstand from the shadows. She'd need a crew, supplies. She'd need contacts. Klugmann's dream wasn't in tatters yet, and perhaps she could hold it together a little longer from backstage. It was nice to think so. That, just for a little while longer, they could hold back the chaos.

"Screw that." Sparks was surprised at the venom in her shaking voice. Klugmann's dream had ended with her being thrown off a station. Had let people like Freya and Jana take power. Had taken her home from her. She'd seen Zwickau, seen the blood and the anarchy and the death. She'd been in dogfights for his dream. People had died for his dream, and it had boiled away like water in a vacuum. It meant less than nothing.

Sparks had had enough dreams.

She slung the bag over her shoulder, wiped the tears from her eyes, and stepped into the hallway. "Come on. I'm ready to get off this rock."

She didn't look at Cameron's face.

---

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

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

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